I remember the AI in GC2 very well; I played that game a lot (really a lot) until 3 came out.

The AI tended to behave like General McClellan - its campaigns were plodding and mostly consisted of roaming fleets knocking out planetary defenders and wanting the skies to stay clear for a turn or two before the transports were wheeled up. I was almost always able to 'tech rush' my way out of trouble and I recall lots of battles where my fleet would vaporize wave after wave of enemy fleets, taking no damage in the process.

I'd say it was reasonably challenging, enjoyable and sometimes irritating. I was almost always able to 'tech rush' my way out of trouble and I recall lots of battles where my fleet would vaporize wave after wave of enemy fleets, taking no damage in the process. My early games were usually very tight... honestly I think the AI went downhill in the last installment, but as I understand it that was due to circumstances beyond Stardock's control.

Compared to any of the Civ iterations, the GC2 AI was an Einstein.

I consider the AI of GalCiv2 to be very good, even today. I played on subnormal to normal, which sufficed for me.

In GalCiv 3, I find the normal difficulty games I currently have to be not as challenging as they were in GC2, but maybe I just have learned over the years. I would love to have more difficulty settings and variations to differentiate.

Things that can be improved upon:

If for example the AI declares war, it should be commited to that cause. "You can start a war whenever you want, but you cannot end it whenever you want." Machiavelli.

So if the A.I. declares war, it should want to win it. It should make preparations beforehand, and be more ready to take you on.

For example, the tons of small defenders around a planet are completely and utterly worthless. Its good to have one of them in orbit to prevent the invasion of an undefended planet, and they may give a fake high military strength rating. Yet, I had to send two of my large ships to wipe their entire defenders without my hulls being scratched.

- The A.I. should value higher class ship hulls higher, and research them earlier, and forget about the "swarm of small defenders" tactic.

- The A.I. should value engines higher. Instead of twenty defenders, have a fleet with two or three medium cruisers, good engines so they can cover a large area, and keep them behind to prevent player invasions. When I have transports near a planet, the A.I. should send one or two of their defenders to catch those undefended transports, right now I can park them undefended in intercept range like vultures and they will not be attacked.

The question is how the "ship role model" will develop. Right now, one can completely exploit it by making one or two "escorts" filled up mostly with defenses, either balanced or tailored to the AIs weapon class, and the rest of the fleet as Guardians with all the weapons. The escorts will act as "tanks" just like tanks in an MMO, taking the aggro and saying: "Hello, please target me", and the guardians with no defenses and only weapons act as the "damage dealers" and will never get attacked. Throw in a support vessel as "healer"/sensor jammer/whatever if you like, which will act as the healer of the group.

The game is a strategy game, so players want to find out strategies (or read them up in a forum ), and your job is to see how these "allowed strategies" look like.

I think people call something a "stupid AI" when it is clear that it is an AI, and doesn't "simulate" the behaviour of a human person. I.e. it does something because of the programming rules it has to follow, and a human clearly wouldn't do that. I'd suggest you guys at Stardock do more Multiplayer games yourself to see how people use tactics you've never thought of. Also, the thing Frogboy does is very good: A test game of the AI, seeing what the AI is doing and also what happens in the code at that time. The rule of thumb should perhaps be that the AI acts "stupid" if it does something a human player definitely wouldn't do.

As for balancing: One can also make an AI too good. I mean, every aimbot in a first person shooter will always be better then the player, but for the player it is not "fun" to play against an aimbot. At the end of the day, the whole universe of GalCiv3 is created for one thing: That the player has fun, is challenged, and proud to overcome these challenges and be the victor.

The AI of Rome 2 Total War I consider to be really good, and also realistic (it wasn't that much in Rome 1 or Medieval 2). It will make those sneak attacks on you, find your weak spots etc.. But if I turn the difficulty too high, I still can win, but it isn't "fun" anymore, its a hard and bloody process of many setbacks, so the difficulty for me personally becomes to high to be an enjoyable process. Balance-wise therefore I think the AI is good if it acts "like a human", with a realistic longer-term strategy, but in the end it has to fail .

I think "brain dead" is something you can always write about any AI in a computer game, when you finally identified the loopholes of the game mechanics/AI. I think we all agree that no matter how many effort Stardock/Brad will put into the AI, at some point loopholes will be found, demonstrated and than you can call the AI brain dead...

I have been playing strategy games since the beginning of the 1990s, when I got  my first PC (386-DX40). I started with Warlords, Dune2000, Civilzation etc. Up to now, GCII (with all expansions) is unchallenged in terms of AI competency IMHO. In fact, the main reason, I became elite founder was the prospect to get (one) of the best AI in 4x games.

For example: if you watch experienced people play Civ5 Deity games (such as Marbozir), basically, the trick is to "play" the system. I.e. you can just outmanoeuver  tactical AI with ranged units (and AI is not able to move and then attack with ranged units in the same turn). So, surely brain dead! Is it? In fact, I am sure 90% of the gamers are fairly challenged on Emperor difficulty already. I consider Civ5 AI in a fairly good state for what can be expected today. It is as simple as that. (And in fact, I play Emperor, because I just do not enjoy the constant struggle for optimisation... And I like to get a wonder from time to time... )

I read somewhere that you targeted a "C" for release. I think this has been achieved (counting ongoing AI bug fixing). Me, personally, I would really love to see it being further developed. If we can get a B+, that would be great. That being said, I think the question you ask is clearly justified in terms of focussing effort and where to spend resources. Not an easy decision to make! If you focus on the things perceived by the vast majority of the player base, you will still have all of the 4X "cracks" posting in the forums about the bad AI. The average player comes around, sees it and gets a wrong impression. If you spend a lot of time to  satisfy the "cracks", most probably 90% of the players won't even notice.

I am mostly excited about this interactive AI that was mentioned, learning from the strategy of human players. I haven't heard too much of that lately? How is that coming along? 

Vandewusel I think the thing your are missing is that the "cracks" are those who keep playing the game long after the mass have switched to something else and are those who promote the next game to the mass as well, they are also the one who get founder status etc...

the AI in GC2 was good, imo. comparing the AI in GC2 or Fallen Enchantress to other 4X games alsways felt unfair. the AI in Civ 4 was fairly strong, too. but not because it's a good AI but because the game desin was more "AI-friendly".

custom unit designs is a very big factor. if you give the players such a powerful tool, that's not going to end well when your AI can't use the designer as efficient as a human. Civ 4 or other games just have a bunch of premade units and the human player doesn't get a big advantage just from crapping the default design and using something that is twice as powerful for the same price.

so you put in a lot of effort to make your AI really smart (compared to other game AI) but in the end the game isn't more challenging because you also have a ton of options in the game that are largely "human only" and can be used by the human player to beat the AI. other games take an easier route.

so i guess the real question should be if it's more economical to simplify the design so the AI can make better use of it, or to try and make the AI smarter at using the many many options available. simper game design is the easier route to a similar level of challenge, tbh.

i'd say AI development is mostly a "fan service". AI is already good enough for the casual gamers who probably make up the majority of your sales (not going to speculate on numbers, but i'd be surprised if the majority of players ever played on a difficulty hgher than "normal")

GalCiv2 AI was very good.  I've always been impressed with the AI.  I know sometimes it makes bad decisions, but that's the problem with trying to design a good AI.  It has so many factors to consider when making decisions, it's likely to get a few wrong, even if it gets most right.  GalCiv2's AI was way ahead of its time compared to any other strategy games I played at the same time.  I'm confident that GalCiv3 will get there eventually.  It's a different set of rules though.  And it may take a while to tailor the GalCiv3 AI to those rules.

GC2 AI is the benchmark by which I measure a decent AI tbh. It's rarely surpassed. Of course, it is still just an AI and so a little plodding, but I'd be have rather surprised if Stardock had produced Machine Sentience instead. 

The GC3 AI isn't dreadfully bright yet - if it can just get to grips with the adjacency system it'd be a big improvement. But at this stage in the game's life cycle there's whole mechanics which might be changed between patches; it'd be pointless teaching the AI to play systems which may change completely month-on-month.

I have to break into the creaky vault of mine called memory for this. Lots of cobwebs there....

Overall, the GCII AI was very good. 

I agree with most of what JTS80 has to say, although I don't really think that much of the Total War ai strategically. 

The biggest issues I had with II are there in III

As JTS80 stated, shipbuilding

Slow ships that are ok for defending, but too slow to react. This makes it easy for the player to build a fleet(s) that have the proper counters and kill them. Heck, by the time that slow fleet gets to me I have researched a couple of techs! IIRC. sometimes you could play "rope a dope" and bait the fleet away from the planet and zip in with your speedy transports. Also high maintenance because it needs more ships to cover the areas. This leaves holes in the defense and limits the attack.

Keeps too many obsolete units and rarely builds fleets of the "latest and greatest". I think perhaps the AI is too focused on kicking out little ships NOW vs building larger and faster ships. Especially when it feels like it is behind. 

Ships always had laser and shields, missiles and point defense, kinetics and armor. Sometimes they use a little defense of each. I don't recall seeing lasers and missile defense, etc. Human players use the diplomacy screen to see what kind of ships an opponent has (exploit) , then builds ships that will defeat those ships. THEN the human declares war. 

Building too many scouts and having multiple scouts moving through the same area instead of spreading out. When they are done scouting the area they can reach, they tend to park in one area together. Either station them on your borders for early detection or delete them as they are a maintenance cost of no value.

I have to agree that the AI needs to be "All in" when declaring a war. 

I like the AI priorities in the faction builder of GC3, however I fear it may be too generic. The player doesn't stick to one strategy all the way through. When you are expanding, you have different priorities than when you are building up, which are different when you go to war. You could be the most peaceful person in the galaxy, but when pressed by 2 or 3 factions attacking, you have to get your angry eyes on!   Not research entertainment or trade!

For III in the short term, I would focus on diplomacy/trade and ship building/obsoleting/upgrading. Build fewer rally points, remove rally points when they are no longer valid (like when you lose a planet, don't dribble in ships to the enemy territory). Perhaps have an expiration # of turns? Merge small or single ships into fleets. It seems like when the aren't sent to a rally point, they never merge fleets. This allows for me to attack with say 25 logistic fleet against 3 or 4 6-8 logistic fleets resulting in them all getting wiped out with little damage to my ships.

Pull back damaged units/fleets and combine them and repair them. When we get commanders with experience and perks, if the ai doesn't focus on keeping units alive, the human will have an even bigger advantage.

Perhaps when a battle starts, all ships in the hex go to battle instead of 1 fleet vs 1 fleet? Of course, that would lead to the "stack of doom". Perhaps you only have fleets in the hex that total to the logistic cap go to battle? 

Instead of the surrender mechanic, how about client state status? Then they can break that status by declaring war on you later if they so choose.

Keep up the good work Brad! I know these things aren't easy. I bet you like the challenge and that is why you like to do it. 

I think the OPs question was designed to get some interesting feedback and therefore was sufficient, but I would have phrased it differently:    Was the AI in GC2 good enough to provide an enjoyable experience for the gamer?  That's what a game is supposed to provide, in my view.

Suppose one could create an AI that was as good in GalCiv as Deep Blue is at chess.  Well, that would be interesting to see, but not much use to me as a gamer trying to have an enjoyable experience.   I would just be seeing how long I could last before I got crushed.   A game is an entertainment vehicle, not a vehicle for measuring one's tolerance to humiliation.  

So was the AI in GC2 good enough to provide me with entertainment?   I would say definitely yes, though hardly perfect.  It certainly was at least as good as in any other 4x I played, and I have played a lot of them.  I will break it down into what I think are the key components.

Does the AI build itself up sensibly?  Fairly well, but the Community Update currently in play was prompted largely (if I am not mistaken) by the problem that the AI (in TotA) was not using its tech tree well. or perhaps I should rephrase and say it couldn't use its tech tree well.   My experience suggests that it does much better in the CU.

Does the environment one plays in seem alive?  That is, are the AI doing things that appear sensible, do the AI factions interact with each other, making friends and enemies, fighting wars or making alliances?   It seemed that way to me, but one would have to go into debug mode and study to really tell.   But all I care from an enjoyment standpoint is whether it "feels" ok to me, and I would say, yes, it did.  Some have said they want the AI to recognize who the human player is and play against him.   That doesn't feel right at all to me.  They should behave "normally" according to their traits and respond to objective threats and opportunities, not automatically dogpile on the player.  That would feel very wrong, but its just me.

Here I need to comment about the constant discussion about the AI "cheating".   I have a different view I suppose --- what I care about is what do I see and how does it feel?  What's under the hood, well, that's for the garage mechanics and engineers to argue about.   How does the car feel on the road is all I care about while playing.    There are some sorts of AI operations that don't feel right and look artificial --- for example, units suddenly spawning from nowhere, clearly without having to be built or moved into position, etc.   That's bad, but not because the AI is "cheating"  but because it "feels" wrong.  To me, anyway.  Didn't see that in GC2. 

I remember a game of Civ4 in which I thought I was doing ok against the Chinese, but after I penetrated their frontier I was faced with a stack of several dozen units.  I just about fell off my chair.   It was mid-game and though it was a very nasty surprise, it didn't feel like an exploit.  After taking a deep breath and doing some thinking I managed to figure out a way to wear down that stack and eventually I won the game.   Question is, were they able to build this stack because they were "cheating" or was it just good organizational planning, etc,?   Don't know, don't care - except in an academic sense.  It was sufficient that it seemed plausible at the time.   I think at that difficulty level they had some production advantages, etc., which one could look up, but I didn't.    I had a fun game, though I was "moderately" stressed for a  while.  I don't play a game to analyze its mechanics, even if that may be interesting in another context.

Does it avoid immersion breaking mistakes, of omission or commission?   I think GC2 was fairly opportunistic if I left an "opening".   Current example:  A few weeks ago I was about to attack an AI colony in GC3 but stupidly left a transport unattended near a  planet that was defended.   I think I had thought that it wasn't, and wanted to get the transport close enough to invade the next turn.  Oh well.  The AI could have sent out his fleet and destroyed the transport, but just watched.   His fleet could never have beaten my main fleet but he could have delayed the invasion many turns.  (Beta 4 I guess, not sure).   That's the sort of thing that the AI should jump on; I don't remember getting away with that kind of sloppiness in GC2.   And I am not sure I could get away with it now in 1.03.

Does the AI organize attacks with a purpose and try to carry them out?    Yes, I think so in GC2, though most times they are not the best plans, that's not critical.   A bad plan is better than no plan.   Heck, I would say most casual players don't often actually compose a plan of any depth.   That's the first thing I see, say, on Civ Fanatics as to how to raise your game level.   Make plans.   Why is Marbozir so good?   His plans, made very quickly it seems in his let's plays, are quite deep and generally spot on.

And lastly and most difficult, does the AI, seeing a threat, organize against the threat by trying to use cooperation with other AIs or with the player?  That's a tough one.    I am not sure that really worked so well, but I don't have a clear picture.   What I do know because it is more recent is that  in GC3 I have been asked by the AI many times to declare war on someone.  This points in the right direction, but so far I have had the feeling that the AI really isn't as threatened as it claimed and that it doesn't follow through cooperatively against its "enemy".  Rather, I wind up conquering the opponent, while the original AI makes peace!   Well, it has a ways to go.

One last overall comment about AI.   A lot of the discussion seems to revolve around how difficult the AI makes the game for the human player.  I translate this to mean, how hard is it to win, and how much "help" does the AI need to make it challenging for the human player to win?    Well, as in RPGs, there is another point of view.    Does the game have to be about winning and nothing else?   You can play Skyrim to finish the main quest, or  you can role play, bringing an entirely different mindset, and with the objective being the journey and there not needing to be a destination at all.   Heck, the Metaverse is broken anyway because of the blatant exploits people are using to run up scores, so who cares?   I posted earlier about bringing some more role playing types of play into GC3, but of course, as always, that is just me, and the branch I am sitting out on seems to generally be pretty thin and pretty lonely.

My 3c.   I am charging more because I am on a fixed income.

That was the point of the arcade games back in the day! It just got harder and harder and faster and faster until you died! The whole point was to say "I got to level X! and got on the leader board!" 

But in this type of game, I have to agree. Spending hours at a time playing variants of "Kobayashi Maru" would suck.

The Ai in GCII was excellent. It was indeed ahead of its time. As stated many times some posters fail to see the forest for the trees in the way. At the time and even now, it offered a player a challenging game which not many other 4x games can still claim. You were hampered by the fact it was hard coded so the amount of  work you could do was limited by putting in hundreds of hours of code rewrite, something nobody wants to do.

For GCIII Brad, please do not get discouraged by naysayers. This is your game and the brilliance of the current AI shows through it. I do hope you take time to work on it 'continuously' for the next several years ahead!  This time around you have the 'api hooks' in place and the coding is not as set in stone as GCII was.

I've been playing the galciv games going all the way back to 2003/4 so i've got a bit of experience with your A.I.   It's been a while since i've played galcivII but i think i remember the jist of it. Note i've only ever played on large maps (biggest maps) and played very long games so my experiences might not tally up with someone on small maps. I also only play  conquest and or alliance victory games. Some of the things i might mention also could be down to game balance + A.I. rather than just the A.I.

Normal settings used to be great for a beginner imo to ease themselves in to the game. Middle of the high setting range used to be about the most fun though. Unless i started to cut back on the number of A.I. then i could crank up the settings to insane (hardest). As there would be more space on the larger maps to grow in to before i clashed with the other factions.

Two things that stand out in my mind that used to annoy me. Was the A.i. completely ignoring the victory setting and doing it own thing. What i mean by that is instead say building up it's fleets and miltary tech to fight it out with me as i only had conquest victory selected. The A.I. (bloody Torians) would ignore that and go nuts on building influence buildings. So even though i don't want to play an influence based game I'd get dragged in to building all the influence buildings and researching that tech instead of fighting it out the way i want to.

The second thing, was late game the A.I. it didn't matter what setting's i played on, the A.I. (hardest) would be a walk over. They just could never take full advantage of their tech to build the best ships and or fleets. They would have loads and loads of fleets but filled with crap. Even their best ship would be at best a third as good as mine.

Also the way they upgrade their plants was just frigging nuts as they would have any old random crap built there with no thought to what the planet was going to be used for. The worst thing was i've even tried helping the A.i. by giving them loads of built up planets ready made ships and tones of money to try and get a good game out of them. The daft sods though wreck the planets by demolishing the premade buildings and then rebuild crap. The ships, god knows what they do with them, maybe they fly them into the closest star when there of their face on all the drugs booze they bought from all the money i've just gave them, waste of time it was trying to help them.

I'd like to make a suggestion for the A.I. here though, if possible is there any chance you could add the ability to alter the A.I. level of difficulty once a game has already started. As i think it would be great if i could start a game on lower A.I. settings so i can establish myself in the galaxy and then crank up the difficulty to give myself a good game latter on. As atm in galciv3 (and 2) it's a pain in the arse getting a long game going as you never know if you're in really bad starting location or not. At least with the lower setting A.I. in the beginning you've got a chance to get setup before being overwhelmed, If you do get one of those crappy starting positions.

This is of course correct. On the other hand, I think the influence or significance of the "cracks" (no negative pun intended, maybe "enthusiasts" would be the better word?) is overestimated. How many people are registered to these forums and actively post in it? Compare this to the sales numbers (which I do not know exactly of course, just see the Steam stats). The same goes for e.g. Civ5: It is still one of the most played games on Steam, with e.g. 40.000 active players today! If you go to the Civfanatics forum (the place to be for Civ and 4x fans), you will find that the crowd there (me included) is not very representative. The number of active people there is insignificant compared to the total player base.

This is how I personally interpreted Brad's question. He is looking for the right decision on how to invest resources. (I also seem to perceive a slight hint of frustration or burn out in that post, but maybe that's just me. If it is the case: Absolutely unjustified!  )

The Gal Civ 2 AI was the reason I played the game!

Candidly, the Gal Civ design has never been my favorite (I like it, but not my favorite). But the AI brought such good challenge that I loved to keep playing it.

Let me help you here a bit. In GC2 there were a few mechanisms at large that could do this. Most of this was based against the leading faction in military might.

<Phrase Morality="0">
<Text>We wanted to inform you that we have decided to go to war against the [AGGRESSORNAME]. Their brutal and unprovoked attack against the [DEFENDERSNAME] had to be responded to. Let this be a warning to all civilizations who would needlessly go to war.#We felt that we should inform you that the [DEFENDERSNAME] have been ruthlessly attacked by the [AGGRESSORNAME]. To stop such warmongering, we have decided to put together a force to deal with the [AGGRESSORNAME]. Feel free to join in.</Text>
</Phrase>
<Phrase Morality="1">
<Text>The [DEFENDERSNAME] are under attack by the [AGGRESSORNAME]. In the name of galactic stability, we have decided to come to the aid of the [DEFENDERSNAME]. We felt we should allow you to be aware of this in case you wanted to join in.#The [DEFENDERSNAME] are the victims of a war of aggression by the [AGGRESSORNAME]. We have decided to intervene in the name of peace.</Text>
</Phrase>
<Phrase Morality="2">
 <Text>The [AGGRESSORNAME] are our kind of scum. The [DEFENDERSNAME] are weak and ripe for destruction. However, it is not in our interest that we let them go around conquering our food, err I mean our neighbors. So we have decided to take this opportunity to remove the [AGGRESSORNAME] from the galaxy. Feel free to join in the fun.#As much as we approve of the weak being wiped out, the [AGGRESSORNAME] are becoming too much of a threat. Their war with the [DEFENDERSNAME] is the perfect opportunity to deal with them.#The [AGGRESSORNAME] are beating us to the punch at wiping out weak civilizations such as the [DEFENDERSNAME]. But we cannot afford them to take over the entire galaxy so we have gone to war. You should join us in this task.</Text>

Usually the AI is reluctant to go to war versus a stronger civ, but in this case they would do this and the delivered message is an example to collaborate against it by combining power.

It also could happen on a larger scale via a mega event:

[Alliance] During a secret meeting, it was decided that the %s menace has grown too great. They have concluded that the only way to stop them is to work together both openly and covertly. The war has expanded.

Finally, there was the Altarians SA that intended to unite all good civs against their attackers. With the Drath also ingame, who made everybody attack everybody, that process got accelerated on grand scale and would even throw the Drath themselves into this if they made someone attack the Altarians^^

I think word of mouth coming from the enthusiasts actually has a bigger influence than that. Just look at the ps4 xb1 consoles for example (i think there is only little difference between both), only enthusiast would care or even know about regional restriction \ always on connection required \ tv focus of the xb1 and all the stuff that gave the x1 a bad reputation at release yet that highly impacted the x1 at release, most entusiasts jumped on the ps4 instead of the xb1 and recommended it to their friends then it snowballed into the current situation were the xb1 removed all their bad policy and is now cheaper yet it still only sell at half the rate of ps4.

I haven't played GCII in a long time, pretty sure it was Ultimate Edition I played though. I remember the AI as being functional in most aspects at the very least, with no glaring errors for its time. I do remember loving the game! So much so that when I discovered GC3 was in Beta 4, somehow I managed to not hear about it at all until then, I insta-bought a copy.

I seem to be one of the rare players who prefers to play the soft game. I like to win by any means but conquest and I will never declare war, just win them. With that in mind the AI was engaging, frustrating in the right ways, and generally enjoyable to play against. I do know that it was a vast improvement on the closest, and much older game, I'd played before it, Birth of the Federation. With BotF it was a steamroll for me or the AI and I could never get anything approaching a fun challenging game. With GCII I must have played for several months before moving on, and that was because the game continue to be fun even as I played around with the setup settings to be wildly different.

The one thing that I've not been happy with in any game I've ever played from any developer, is diplomacy. It just never feels right and is always easy to game. Maybe that comes down to my obsessive need to make optimal strategies and the AI won't ever be able to compete with a dedicated human in this area. I want it to feel like there's a real give and take, I want the AI to propose a trade for once that isn't so bad I don't laugh in their face. Some wildcards occasionally are okay, but in general it needs to be much better.

With all that said GCIII is a great game, and it's getting better.

Strategic Studies Group (SSG) had games with some of the best AI that I've ever played against. After that I'd have to list GC2 and then some of the Paradox titles.

I can never meet you in person Larsenex. I have these vision of a deep, rich voice expounding wisdom. Anything less and my life would shatter...

Wow, SSG. That is a name from the past. I think the first tactical game I had was Gray Grigsby's Kampfgruppe. Then Steel Panthers. That was a heck of a learning curve, but I loved it. Met a very good friend playing SP turn based. This was dial up days and internatoinal calls were expensive. So we would call the other person, let it ring twice, then hang up when we where having a weekend session to let the other know the turn was uploaded. Otherwise during the weekdays, he did his turn first (since it was earlier for him) and I did my turn when I got home and sent it back. Great times!

GC II had decent AI, but it was still about speed in the end, once you got on top, it didn't have the ability to surprise you.

The problem I think with all of the AI in ALL 4x games is the diplomacy screen.  

The diplomacy screen should instead be renamed as the "This is where the human gets to troll the AI and manipulate him to do whatever the human wants" screen.  

I felt the AI on galciv2 was very good.  It is Stardock's AI (particularly Brad's love and care for such) that sets the galciv series apart from other space based 4x games.  If I did not expect galciv3 to have at least as good if not better AI then I would not have near as interested in the game.  My time is fragmented and inconsistent so playing multiplayer is not really an option and so a entertaining AI is king for me.

Oh, one other thing having said the previous.  I was surprised that Brad did not feel the Twiight of Arnor AI was as good as DA.  Any particular reason for that?

TOTA introduced alot of new stuff (mostly from new technologies, example: Atlas modules, stuff that enhances your attack/defense fleet- or shipwide) and the AI was never coded to use it. In that particular case the ship designer would totally ignore any of these modules, the combat mechanics did prioritize any ship having such a module as a first target, making them very weak overall even for the player.

The usage of race-specific buildings & the researchpattern adapted to the unique techtrees is (mostly) fixed with the Community Update.