Have you ever been beat by the AI?

[DirectorTsaarx]

I actually had to concede defeat once; I had an AI race on either side of my starting systems (Ukra-Tal on one side, Xi'chung on the other). Life was pretty good at first; I set up trade & research alliances with both, I had colonies everywhere I could get to without going through the AI's space, and then the AI decided to claim the systems I'd colonized. And backed up their claim with warships. Since I'd been playing fairly peacefully, I hadn't bothered to mine the warp points or build weapon platforms. Well, the AI came through with warships and started glassing planets. And not just one per turn, the AI would actually hit every colony in a system in one turn (sometimes it would take two turns to hit ALL the colonies, but the AI was following through on that second turn!) Anyway, I spent a number of turns building up minefields and had minelayers constantly replenishing the minefields, but the AI eventually had enough minesweepers to make that tactic useless. I did manage to get a plague-bomb-armed ship to a Xi'Chung colony, and the population was wiped out by the plague, but that was a minor victory. I eventually got tired of fighting a defensive war, and conceded defeat.

I think that was my one and only high-bonus game. I've stuck with medium bonus since then. (Always use high difficulty, of course; large (254 system max) galaxy, large number of both AI and neutral races, 5000 racial point settings).

I've also gotten in the habit of putting minefields at every warp point entering my territory (and the more strategic warppoints within the territory as well). I'm still pretty lax about weapon platforms, but I haven't had my head handed to me in a while, so it hasn't hurt me much.