I've read lots of comments on this forum as well as reviews saying that this game's AI is much better than other 4X TBS games... since I hardly played any other games in this genre (aside from CnC2 Red Alert), I am curious then, in what ways is the AI better? So for you veterans who had the luxury and experience to compare, do share your observations...

It is and it isn't better. The AI in this one is clearly a lot better than many of the older 4x titles. Some titles have too complicated of systems that are difficult to program AI for. Or ones that include tactical combat usually end up lacking in the AI department.

There are ultimately holes in the AI which allow for all sorts of gamey tactics, but it's getting there.

Red Alert is not in the 4x genre, it is in the misnamed RTS genre.

I wouldn't say it's a misnamed genre. Although the real-time is not true real-time it sounds a bit better than "Unpausable Strategy" game or "Non-Turn-Based-Strategy" game. If your complaint is that it's called strategy, most games that are strategy games are not strategy in the military sense, very few model any sort of "realistic" strategy, it's strategy in the way some would call a puzzle game a strategy game. And you can't get away with suggesting that a game like RA is "tactical" (again ignoring issues of realism) because it deals with issues that are abstractions of both the strategic level and tactical level.

Figuring out whether it is better or not is hard and somewhat subjective. There are no TBS games where the AI is all that smart.

In my all time favorite SMAC, the AI did a horrible job of colony development and force deployment. It built bad units and depended on rush tactics to win. I suspect that AI cheats were built in to keep the game competitive. That is the common way to keep the AI competitive in TBS games.

IN GC2 the AI plays on a level field up to tough but it still makes some gaffs in some games and does better in others. Brad keeps tuning it and sometimes the tuning has unexpected consequences but over the long haul it will get better (+2-1).

I agree with Franco fx - in fact, a good example of this is recent developments in AI awareness of an impending lightning-strike invasion.

In previous iterations of GC2, the computer was exceedingly vulnerable to a well-planned and well-orchestrated sudden invasion of multiple planets. And while the AI is still vulnerable to this, I would drop the "exceedingly."

In several games I've gotten warning messages from AI's about positioning my transports near its worlds - and often the messages were not just warnings, they were declarations of war (i.e., "How dare you position your transports near our planets? We declare war!").

But at the same time, I've also had civilizations declare war on me because of transports when my transports were not all that close - and threaten me even though I'm gathering forces near one of my own worlds, which just happens to share a system with one of theirs. The AI can be a bit *too* sensitive now. As Franco said, +2, -1.

You could interpret that as paranoia... if an alien race landed on Mars, and then started massing troop ships nearby, what would you think? I'd rather the AI were a bit oversensitive than undersensitive. I've never had war declared on me for this reason. By the time they see that my troop transports are a bit near to their planets, it's already too late...

There's a couple of things that, to me at least, seem relatively simple, and would make a major hike in the difficulty of the AI...

1. Colony management: The AI should always start building a colony with at least one, preferably two factories. They should leave bonus tiles clear until last (unless the building they are planning to build is of the right type). Bonus Influence, farming and morale squares should sometimes be built over with something else, but Manufacturing and Research tiles should ALWAYS be used for their respective building types. If all they have left is a research/manu square and they really want to build something else, they should upgrade another building rather than build it on the bonus.

2. Troop transports: I understand that getting a computer to coordinate multiple fleets is processor intensive. But if they just coordinated one fleet of troop carriers with one fleet of warships, they would be much better at taking planets. If the troop ships just follow the warships everywhere, then invade the planet when the warships take down the defenders, this would make a huge difference. At the moment, there's just too long between the warships hitting the defenders and the troops arriving. The computer could then stop wasting resources on those useless Escort ships, which only work against the 'Cargo hull full of engines plus one weapon' exploit.

I said this in another post, but it bears repeating. The GalCiv2 AI works best when it is doing high-level thinking. Who it should attack, perhaps what techs to research, making proxy wars to soften up an opponent, etc. It's pretty good about that sort of thing.

It fails when it tries to actually execute some of those actions. It doesn't have a clue how to fight, for example. It doesn't know how best to use attack ships, or how best to prepare defenses. And it only has a minimal clue as to how to build a good world.

Even the SMAC AI was better at attacking and defending (when they had tech pairity with me) than GC2's AI.

RTS stands for Real-ime Strategy. It is not, it is Real-Time Tactics. There is little or no strategy in any RTS game I have ever seen, even the choice to invade one country or another first, or one country from one border or another, is borderline. Here is a link that will explain the distinction in terms of games and game design:

As I person with a large collection of military theory and history books and having spent a long time studying it, I can refer you to better places than a link on game design (which fails on many accounts at understanding the difference between the two).

Production, research, resource allocation, etc are all strategic. The RTS genre abstracts two levels of warfare into one setting (it abstacts the strategic aspect into the tactical battlefield).

That link is way too simplistic and number of the things it claims as strategic aren't - or they apply to all three levels (if you subscribe to the theory of strategic -> operational -> tactical). What a RTS misses the most is in fact the operational level.

the diplomacy part of the AI is better in GalcivII (in the demo at least, I'm sure its revamped in the main game through patches, etc) and I find that its more interactive and somewhat more feedback.

1. Colony management: The AI should always start building a colony with at least one, preferably two factories. They should leave bonus tiles clear until last (unless the building they are planning to build is of the right type). Bonus Influence, farming and morale squares should sometimes be built over with something else, but Manufacturing and Research tiles should ALWAYS be used for their respective building types. If all they have left is a research/manu square and they really want to build something else, they should upgrade another building rather than build it on the bonus.

They already do this in general. 

I'd say the AI is about the same as other 4x games. Perhaps a tad better, but not much. Unpredictability would add a lot. Sometimes have a race do a military rush right out of the gate, after building a set number of colony ships depending on map size (0 for tiny, 1 for small, 2 for med, 4 to 6 for large, maybe 8 to 10 on gigantic). Sometimes have them keep their transports with their massed fleets. Sometimes have them separate. Sometimes have them build fast armed ships, sometimes with one engine, sometimes with two engines, sometimes none. The current escort ships tend to be too predictable to be valuable against human players.

Keeping the human player off balance would add a lot to the game.

These could be preprogrammed for certain races, if that would help players enjoy the game more.

Well its still isnt it, i bbelive it will get better eventually but for now t cant compete with human players... sure ppl that start have great fun but after you start to play on masochistic the Ai is so predictable and the only challenge is to use all exploits ( ai weaknesses) to win vs a 200% economy cpu. Until something isnt done with the tech trading i stopped playing it ( also becouse i have oblivion ^^).

There are no TBS games where the AI is all that smart.

The Problem is that just nobody knows the lil game called "Arena Wars". It has the best RTS-AI I've seen so far.
It was capable of defeating even the best players without any advantages.

It is not scripted and will learn while the match is going on and adapt to your strategy. Your best bet to beat it is if you play only a short game to a score of 3 and try to surprise the AI before it adapts.

Well since the only space turn based strategy games (i REFUSE to use the Quicksilver MOO3 made up term 4x) in recent years have been Space Empires 4 and Master of Orion 3 I think this game has incredibly smart AI. Compaired to those games its near humanlike.

If I compaire it though to Civilization and Alpha Centauri and those games i'd say the AI is simular to SMAC if not slightly worse but FAR better than any Civ game.

There are no TBS games where the AI is all that smart.

Wrong. I've played a few... SMAC, Silent Storm, Heroes of Might and Magic, Fallout Tactics... the Tactical games usually have good AIs.