I'm playing a no-tech-trading game with 7 (or 8?) opponents. The plague event occured about a year and a half ago, causing a continual erosion of planetary populations. I researched the plague cure and it's prerequistite in about 7 weeks, but so far, none of the AI players appear to have researched the cure after 75 weeks.
This event is breaking my game, because the AI doesn't place a high enough priority on finding a cure. I recently conquered the Yor and their worlds were a sad collection of 1-2 billion population ghost towns. Iconia itself had barely over two billion people.
The difficulty setting is Painful, and the AI's are set to use max CPU.