[grumbler]

Have completed 3 games to 200 turns with the Gold mods.

As the Minbari, I was pretty much on the way to victory in 200 turns. The Ai doesn't seem to get population to the outlying planets fast enough to get around the production limits (and this is especially important - even more so tha getting around the build limits). thus, no one's planets under the AI seemed to be producing more than 50% of the available research points.

In the EA scenario, the EA didn't seem to be getting the rapid-fire missiles. I'm still looking into that. Perhaps its just as well - missiles that reload in a turn seem pretty powerful! OTOH, the Minbari and Shadows were ripping up EA ships with their long-range weaponry.

With the shadows, I shadow-danced to total victory in just under 200 turns. The living AI, molecular weapons, and bio-engines made them simply unbeatable even two or three ship sizes down. They make much better oponents than human players.

A consistent problem was the lack of speed for the AI-designed ships. I tried to mod the engines in the components files to produce "small" "medium" and "large" engines of each type to get the AI to invest more in speed, but while that worked for combat ships the AI continued to produce colony ships and transports with speeds of 2 to 4. Meantime, the ideal speeds were in the range of 12 to 20.

AI satellites also didn't seem to use "large" and "huge' weapons much. Maybe I just didn't play long enough - those big satellites cost a bunch of research to produce, but BOY is it worth it!

Lots of fun in the early game, though. The Shadows START with the ability to build speed 20 armed scouts. WHOOHOO!