General Dominions 3 comparison...

[sector24]

The extra design points are not the equivalent of the bonuses the AI gets in GC2. Dominions 3 has a hard cap on bonuses, for instance you can never take Order 7 and Growth 5. So the "cheating" that the Dom3 AI gets does not significantly increase the difficulty in the way GC2's AI does. If you gave the Dom3 AI an extra 5000g and a Wraith Lord every turn, that might approximate playing GC2 on Suicidal.

If you compare apples to oranges, the GC2 AI is better. This is because Dom3's AI doesn't scale up to the same level of difficulty. But if you compare apples to apples, that is GC2 on intelligent vs Dom3 on Normal, the two AIs are roughly equivalent.

GC2's AI is only good at certain things. When you give it an unlimited cash stream and huge production bonuses it can buy buildings and produce ships very well. But it can't build planets intelligently, its diplomacy model is easily exploitable, etc. Dom3 is the same way, it's very weak in certain areas; SCs and magic. I don't think GC2's AI is significantly better, I think GC2 is a less complicated game. Therefore the AI is more capable of playing it.