[geoschmo]

By playing with the politics file you can get the AI to be completely inert, as I did in the No AI Mod on PBW. The AI wont' accpet or offer any treaties or declare war. It might send you general Messages, or it might completely ignore you. You can also make the AI love you and accept all your treaty requests by playing with this file.

Research for the most part can be shut down. There might be some hardcode overrides that will kick in for some techs, mines eg. Not too sure about that. But as SJ says, taking out the research facilities will put a stop to it. Taera's suggestion is a better one though. Instead of taking the facility out, raise the tech level above the max level for that tech area. Stuff being added and removed in the middle of a file can cause problems during a game.

Design and construction are easily shut off. IIRC though the AI wont even attempt to design a ship unless you research some new tech, so that may not even be nessecary if you are taking research out.

Ships are hard to control. The AI is going to move them around some. Not much can help that.

Geoschmo