Well EXCUSE me for living!

[Baron Munchausen]

Yes, the AI now works like many other strategy games in that it automatically turns against any player that gets more powerful than a certain threshold. You can find the settings that control it in the SETTINGS.TXT file. Just set "AI Uses Mega Evil Empire" to "false" and it won't happen at all. Just remember, people were complaining about the total lack of CHALLENGE in the earlier demos. This was part of the fix.