I finally got around to playing a game and so far it's great, one note so far, it seems that the AI's in my game are not investing as much in research as they should. I'm only 6th by total score but my research output is 5 times higher than any of the other races, in fact they are all still very close to the amount of research they started out with, and none of them seem to have build any research stations in the last 4 years (it's 2408 now). They keep up quite well when looking at the amount of tech levels they have researched because of their AI bonus, but they could do much better.
Here's a screenshot of the scores, it's a high tech cost, no intel game, I changed the monster's flag in my game because it looked a lot like the neutrals (I forgot to switch them off at the game start) I'm player 1 (the taera shipset)
The problem is probably made worse by the galaxy settings, (small, sparse galaxy) at this point most of the planets have been colonized and there's not much room to expand or build additional research facilities. Anyhow it couldn't hurt if one or two of the AI's were designed to build more research stations.
Anyhow, even though I'm doing well on the research front I'm having a lot of trouble keeping my empire together
, I did manage to conquer the Jraenar empire early on, but now the Cue Cappa attack me from behind. They use a lot of seekers (which are far more difficult to defend against in Devnull) and because of AI-bonus they can support
huge fleets. (i'm having trouble with my upkeep at only 26 ships) My ships don't stand a chance against their fleets out in open space, but well designed weapon platforms with lots of pd at the planets bordering their empire can just stop them for now. I however still lost two far away systems to large Cue-Cappan fleets over the last year. Also the space monsters have picked me as their favourite victim
I'm getting monster attacks almost every turn. Looks like I'm really going to need the research advantage I have build up
.