Sudden AI Research Blitz of DOOM.

I was once in a similar situation against a neutral. He was big but not that much bigger than me but his research suddenly jumped insanely high.
A short way into the enevitable war I found out why, I took a planet off him which had about 8 neutrality learning centers on it and I think a tech capital. Suddenly the research roles were reversed.

My guess is your "dengies" had a similar stroke of luck out side your view.

I've played several games where the Dregin get a bit heavy on the research. I think it adds a lot to the game to have someone that can try to keep up with me in research that is also agressive.

Yeah, I'm in the same position in my current game. The Drengin have triple the research of anybody else but still not that many more colonies but their ships are so much better then all others, even mine.
It's gonna be a fun game.

Patch 1.1 really makes some nice change about the AIs, I'm usually fine with spreading my research among different weapon for improvising purpose, prior to 1.1 it's ok this way since AIs pretty much do the same thing.


Not any more though, while I was jumping between Phasor and Photonic Toperdo tech the ... what is their name, those little green head? (not the Torian) jump me with some ships ... guess what they're carrying: BLACKHOLE

AI research is pretty varied these days...

I just wish it wasnt always the Drengin whooping ass.

Another theory is getting ahold of research mining bases. Each mining module is therefore a plus to your empires research ability.

i had that happen to me in 1.0X with the yor. they went from dead last with 3 planets, to doom rays in about 40 turns i guess, i dont check up on enemy tech progression all that often but usualy every 50 turns at the most.

anyhow i could find no cause for it, once i noticed it i took them out the next few turns and nothing was out of the ordinary with their planets, the only thing i can think of is that they perhaps got that event where their power doubles every turn and i just didnt get the warning message for it.

going from laser 1 to doom rays in 50 or so turns with only 3 planets just doesnt seem feasable any other way.

A potential possibility was that the AI noticed that it was falling behind technilogicaly so it rebalanced it's spending to catch up and surpass. I have, with few planets, suddently climbed far into a tree by not doing much of anything else so I don't see why the AI can't (and am glad if that is what it is doing).

I have even spent a couple of turns switching from factories to research and then back to factories and again don't see why the AI can't...

well in my case ive never see them do it before or since. and thats a long haul from laser 1 to doom rays in 50 turns, especialy with only 3 planets and non of them dedicated research worlds like a human could do, im not sure it would even be possable for a human to start with 3 worlds with all research and progress like that. since you would have no form of income everything would shut down in 10 turns or so due to lack of funding, or your planets would all rebel because of taxes being too high.

but that event where the AI doubles power every turn would account for it. its pretty much the only thing that could imo. just wish id have gotten the warning sooner, as it was i got lucky and stoll the tech on the first world i took from them, was kinda funny puting doom rays on small hulls but i managed to out build them, otherwise it woulda been game over.

ohh well it adds to the charm