I am pretty sure it's cheating - I just want to know to what extent. The dev did mention it was being "helped".

I think that the general impression from what people are writing about the AI is that it provide good resistance and is fun to play against. But, like you my curiousity has been peeked

Well it isn't easier to beat it after they fixed the AI-building bug in a patch. Not sure how it cheats tho. The programmer is not keen on disclosing any information lol. He did say somewhere on the forum that it gets "a little help" - whatever that means. - But apparently its supposed to play by the same rules as human players. Thats all I heard.

Maybe thats the wrong guy to ask. They are bound to not tell something like that imho. Or maybe it was that guy that left the company who did the AI?

They just posted on the forum that LE got a review! Haven't read the full review yet, but he likes the game but wants better UI and multiplayer matchmaking. He gives it 6/8.

http://jaguarusf.blogspot.com/2007/07/lost-empire-review.html

Nice review, but...

He asks for two things, a minimap and not having to scroll through all his ships in a big game. To my knowledge BOTH these featuers are in there already.

You can press M to get the Minimap up (zoomed map) and you can use pageup/pagedn to select the ships that you still need to give an order.

On the other hand, I could use a ship list and planet list, and more than just the one that is in the planet information window.

I read in another thread devoted to the game, that you could research "ice beams" in the beam weapon tree, so it sounds like it doesnt want to be taken too seriously on the sci fi front. I realize that such terms are only cosmetic and its all nonsensical on some level, but I think you should generally try to aim for a level of sophistication in terminolology slightly higher than a "Space Ghost" cartoon, if you want your game to be taken seriously by the sci fi strategy gaming crowd.

I still reserve judgement, but getting meaningful info about the game from the developers seems like prying teeth, which is usually a bad sign.

Just bought it and am liking it very much so far! Here are the latest patch notes:

Patch Notes for Patch 1.04 Final:

- Leader names are now read from a file (Greatly improving names), more on this later.

- The starting distance can now be chosen freely. (You can now start Much further apart)

- When designing a new ship, instead of scrapping all ships with the old design, the player can now select to upgrade them, for a price....

- All sciences can be seen by toggling a check box

- All resolutions from 1024x768 and up are now supported

- Wide screen is now supported

- Tweaked Starvation to kill at max 20% of inhabitants in one turn

- The text for level 18 moon base is no longer missing

- The AI can no longer build more than level 18 moon bases

- The pop up on expand base in planetology is no longer stuck when reaching level 18 moonbase

- When clicking on a news item concerning fleet / planets, in addition to centering on the event, the fleet / planet will now be selected.

- The game can now be run in XML 3.0 mode

- You can now go directly to news event from the news window

- Drone and Fighter bug will no longer disappear (fixed again)

- You can no longer activate designs with less than 0 free space

i really hope Pollux does a fantasy 4x after LE is released. if they decide to move away from sci fi for their next game, imo it makes sense that they might move in that direction.