[Captain Kwok]

Actually the most recent patch fixed an error with the AI was researching items they did not have access to - that's why the script files were updated in the upcoming patch.

The AI does the following though: They will protect some of their warp points with about 6-10 ships. They'll also launch the occassional attack, with the more aggressive races being proactive about it. I would say they are certainly not building enough units right now, but that shouldn't be too hard to tweak.

One of the problems with the stock races is the way they are assigning colony types - based solely on a set percentage of a colony type desired rather than evaluated the planet's resource value first and making sure it's one of the resource colony types if the value of the planet is good. In many cases good resource planets are being waste. This was something that has already been changed in the Balance Mod.

The AI is slow on expansion because a) they are not building enough colony and explorer ships and b) they are spending too much time surverying systems (hence the slow down in processing times turns ~4-15) rather than exploring first than surverying as most humans do. By the time they get 5 or 6 systems they are bumping into other empires or singing stupid treaties that hurt their growth.