[PvK]

Hmm. To me it seems like:

1) It depends on the number of empires in the game. If there are only 3-6 empires, then ya an alliance of the two strongest is likely going to be hard to beat, depending on details. If there are 7-20 empires in the game, then the top 2 may be easily squashed by an aliance of 3 or more others. Again, it depends on details.

2) Seems to me that it's not a problem for the top two AI's to ally. The AI needs all the help it can get to challenge skilled human players. Now, I suppose if two top humans were partners, the AI might be well advised to try to gang up on both of them. Then again, there are several things humans can do to out-do the AI besides that, and I'm not sure this would be good in all cases.

3) MEE is really meant as an attempt to get the game to be more interesting and challenging once one empire starts to become a dominating super-power. It's supposed to provide a major reaction to what would otherwise be a "well, the game's decided from now on" point, and so prolong the interest/challenge from the AI. I originally suggested MEE mainly to counter the problem (before SE4 was released) where players would go capturing homeworlds in the early game, and/or expand like mad without the AI "noticing" and responding to try to limit the threat. It's a strong reaction designed for extreme circumstances.

I wonder though - by reducing the anger levels from MEE in the AI files, and also reducing the threshold, it might produce interesting results - the player who was currently leading would tend to lose treaty support over a few turns... could be interesting.

PvK