I'd started the DL campaign after upgrading to 1.3 and was horrified at how badly I'm being owned by the AI. It looks as if the Altarians will rule the day and trash the Drengin long before I'm able to grab planetary invasion.

After five(!) restarts, I was finally able to grab three planets, but only by devoting all my racial points to speed and outright purchasing of colony ships. Even so it was a very close thing. (And yes, the Altarians are on my side, but on my first post-1.3 attempt I'd only gotten a single planet (the one next to my home planet) and the Altarian lead was far greater.

Here's the thing: I'm on cakewalk difficulty. Take a look at their research. This is right after my initial planet-rush.


Were the 1.3 changes tested with the DL campaign? Has anyone played through the campaign since upgrading? Is this just my imagination and/or paranoia? I'd started a campaign (on challenging) while using the 1.2 version and did not find it anywhere near this difficult. I've won sandbox on (1.2) sucidal-difficulty so I find it hard to believe I'm just doing something wrong here.

Would not a new player who'd just purchased the game and (reasonably) updated it to 1.3 be put off by the huge lead the AI seems to have in the campaign?