[God Emperor]

Dmm,
Agree with you entirely. I stopped using mines several games ago and have begun to avoid doing things that I know the AI is weak at - still enjoy the game anyway. The ultimate challenge as we all know is human opponents so the AI should be considered as practice. I always try to play in the manner that I would against a human opponent and avoid taking advantage of the AI's blind spots - only the blind spot concerning mines is annoying as it makes it hard to practice tactics.

Anyway, the important thing is that the game system hangs together well, has many options (game and strategy) and is very flexible.