[Egregius]

I'm currently in a game where the Kithra Consortium (me, having made a neutral into a player because I like the race pic and the description) is warring the Colonials among others.

This race, though not overly impressing me, is EXTREMELY defensive. I was constantly attacking them and I did my best to get a technical weapon superiority, and continually destroyed their ships with mine at high losses. Their homeworld was constantly churning out new ships, and had a construction space base.

Then I came around to start taking over planets, and their homeworld was undefended basically, not even weapon platforms, and 12 sattellites. They were toast. Refusing surrender however, I went to take their second best planet..which was surrounded by 71 sattelites and had 10 weaponplatforms (I modded WPFs to get 4 extra range and a bit better accuracy I think). 10 destroyers lost to level 1 and 2 missiles, PDCs and level 3 Uranium cannons, while I had level 5 PDCs, level 5 APBs and armor lvl 2.

Anyway, lesson here: AIs CAN defend themselves if they're designed to, seeing I have no hope of taking that planet for now. It may hinder themselves a bit though, but I play even more defensively anyway (trying to build defenses to withhold 7 ships at least on every planet).
However the AI has to be altered smartly to avoid undefended homeworlds etc.
Just make sure every planet has troops and WPFs and sats in production once in a while.

[ 06 February 2002: Message edited by: Egregius ]