[Puke]

I agree, but you are describing a tactical wargame rather than a imperial strategy game. somehting with fixed number of units, and canned scenarios.

part of the challenge in the 4x game is how people expand and exploit differently. for along time, crystiline was thought useless. now its in vogue. weapon fads come and go. you might have one formula now that you want a minister to follow, but someone else has a different formula.

and the trick - the fun of it - is discovering and inventing new methods to play.

MOO3 was supposed to have some of that customizeable AI that does what you want. but you know how well that turned out. SMAC was supposed to have a brilliant AI as well, but brillian AI never quite turn out to be. and they can never exploit the same range of options that humans can.

the are sometimes needs that come up where you are forced to build a rad extractor on a 45% radioactive world, because you are in shortage. by and large you can make sweeping judgements about tactics, but the challenge comes in the one-off situations where you have to improvise something different with what you have got.

those may be few and far between, but its what keeps me playing.