Way to amp the enemy AI

[Yef]

My favor trick to make the AI stronger its to begin the game with 20 Empires, no neutrals, and players see all stats. Then, as I'm going making contact, I consolidate the AIs by surrendering the weakest to the stronger, as part of a roleplayed storyline, so it makes sense.

Right now I'm about turn 350, and only 12 AIs are left, most of them surrendered to the Amon'krie, who have become the biggest fish in the quadrant.

Next turn, probably next week because I have very limited time to play, I will log in as the AIs to leave only 4 of them, make peace between them, and then declare war on myself . It will be 4 HyperEmpires against my Kingdom. Oh, and I will leave the Sallega as my ally for roleplaying purposes. The Sallega only have 3 systems, so it will not alter the balance of power in my favor.

I have also come up with a few in-house rules to have a more challenging game against the AI:

1- Colonize only out of Homeworld. Using the Border systems as forward colonizer builders give you too much of an advantage when playing the AI, because the AI builds espensive colonizers with cloacking devices, shields and even PDCs, who take too long to build, and are built only out of core planets.

2- Space shipyards only on Home system.

3- No closing of warp points. Closing a warp point is the worst exploit we can make against the AI. My rule is that for every warp point I close another have to be opened in the same system. This is to allow for a sensible rearrengment of the warp point network for effectiveness sake, but not as a military strategy against the AI. So, the objective is to eliminate the creation of artificial choke points by closing warp points as a mean to channel the AI into a killing pit.

4- No mothballing. The tactic of building a mighty fleet during peace time, and mothballing it on top of a planet with ship and fleet training facilities so they are fully trained 13 months after mobilization, is way too unbalancing in the player's favor. Whatever you build, you should pay the maintenance for.

5- No sun or planet destroying. Way to easy.

6- No switching of pops to breathable planets. The AI doesn't do it. (As far as I can tell)


That's what I got so far. I'll see if I can find any other tactic that may be thought of as "unhonourable" against the AI.