AI is just not attacking enough....

[Elwood Bluze]

Ok, I haven't installed the Mephisto mod pack yet. Is it going to make a difference? Will the AI mass ships and come after me? Will it stop being so danged passive? (I love the game by the way!)

[dmm]

One way to help the AI greatly, is to play like an imbecile for 30 turns. No, really, I'm serious. Pretend your empire is being ruled by a royal house suffering from horrible inbreeding. Or communists. Then you stage a coup and you take over and start setting things straight. Now try to win.

Another fun thing to do, is to kick yourself out of office occasionally. Give the AI ministers total control for 1 year out of every 10, representing your fall from power, or sabbatical, or whatever.

Another fun thing to do, once you've established a clear winning position, is to pretend that your ungrateful minions revolt and depose you. Enraged, you take over the biggest remaining rival empire (whose people wisely receive you as their only hope for survival) and vow to take revenge.

[Barnacle Bill]

I like these ideas, dmm!

Building on them, one way to "play like an imbecile for 30 turns" would be to just turn on all the AI ministers at the start and sit back for 30 turns.

The idea of periodically taking yourself “out of power” is also a good one. For a nasty but realistic twist, the time to do that is when something goes wrong. Every time a bad random event occurs, you lose a big battle, you discover than another empire has some important tech you don’t (like a bigger ship size), you are subjected to a surprise attack, an ally cancels a treaty, etc… then pretend your government has fallen because the public thinks you screwed up. You then have to let the ministers run your empire until something bad happens again (in which case AI party’s government has fallen).

I’ve done the switching sides thing, too, after my original empire got too big. You can even take over neutrals, you know. For a real challenge, take over a surviving neutral in late game (when all the good real estate is gone) and see if you can win from there!

You could use side switching to sort of create a scenario (until MM releases the promised scenario editor). One of the recurring themes in science fiction is the big but decadent empire threatened by the vigorous barbarians. You can create the big empire by playing until you dominate the galaxy (turn off Mega Evil Empire), then switching sides to one of the little guys. To really control the starting scenario, you could actually play all the races hot-seat yourself until you get the situation where you want it, then change the empire & all but one of the other players to human control. Ever read the Foundation Trilogy? An SE4 AI “big empire” would make a dandy Galactic Empire, with the lesser AI empires as the “Barbarian Kingdoms” and your human-controlled little empire (maybe a neutral so you start with only one system) as the Foundation.

[Nyx]

Is there any way to deliberately make one of your worlds get angry? I mean a specific world. I know that putting people of different races has an effect, but what else can I do? I want to provoke riots and rebellions from time to time.

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[SunDevil]

If you have a specific planet in mind, scrap all system happines facilities and then take off all planet happiness facilities. Then move all troops, fighters off planet and scrap all defenses. Then wait like 40 turns and you have a riot. This is how I did it.
Hope this helps.

[Tomgs]

Another thing don't use any bonus points in happiness at the start of the game, maybe take a few point off of it to make your planets tend to get mad without help.

Also your happiness type has a lot to do with it. If you are bloodthirsty colonize a lot, don't build many ships, make treaties with the AI, and lose a few battles. If you are peaceful declare a war or get some non intercourse treaties. If you are neutral do anything. They don't like changes so anything you do will make them unhappy, go explore and meet new empires.

[Mithra]

Another idea to make the game a little harder is to start a game with a lot of empires and when you are getting to strong to beat them let some of the computer opponents surrender to each other. That way you get some strong opponents instead of a lot of weaker ones. Also you could also support them with some lacking tech or planets. By letting them trade with each other or your own empire.