Am I missing something, or is the AI just completely braindead? After coasting through some Terran games at easier levels, I decided to try something different and give it a shot with the Drengin at Tough. This is with updated Ultimate/ToA. Settings were for a medium-sized galaxy, no tech brokering, all VC's enabled, use max CPU, otherwise default. I figured the Drengin early strategy would be to raid a potentially powerful builder neighbor and destroy some infrastructure in order to set them back enough that I could tech Invasion before they got medium size ships. While I was at it, I'd take a couple resources and hold them with my early fleets to help offset my poor building skills. Well, the Terrans are next door to me... they should fit the bill perfectly.

After building a few fighters and moving them into range, I pull the trigger, wipe and replace an influence resource, shoot down a couple colonies/constructors/miners, and blow up their asteroid mines for good measure. Fine so far... I was well coordinated and they were surprised. Now, what I'd expect is that the Terrans turn their still-considerable resources to building some fighters and eventually reclaim their space. Instead, for the next 30 turns or so, they continue to research building techs, all the while pumping out 0-attack "defender" ships for me to destroy every couple turns. WTF? I mean... OK, maybe you figure Planetary Invasion is a ways off so you'll give up your space temporarily while building a stronger engine to research the weapon techs just before the Transports come online. That's plausible. But throwing production (and money) into dead-meat, 0-attack defenders for 30 turns? That's completely ridiculous. For all the bashing the Civ AI (sometimes deservedly) takes, it's nowhere close to being *that* dumb. I'd guess I killed about 60 defenders all told.

All the while, Jenna Casey steadfastly refuses to give up even a single tech for peace, so we just stay at war. In the meantime, I also fought another, similar war with the Thalans, wiped out all their starbases, and took more influence and research resources. I'm now at a total of 1 morale, 2 influence, and 3 research resource bases, most of which had at least two constructors invested. I eventually call the Thalan war off, maybe for a tech or maybe because I was bored or because I wanted the ships elsewhere. I don't recall.

Transports eventually come online and I capture Earth. Before this point, I was briefly considering whether the real game would be avoiding an economic death spiral, as my costs were getting pretty high. That was actually looking like an interesting problem. However, Earth had an Innovation Center on an Influence booster tile. Between that and my +20% influence from resources, my influence area instantly doubles or triples, flipping a nearby Terran colony on the next turn. My income goes from -70 per turn to +70 per turn due to the new tourism revenue. There goes the interesting economic dilemma. A few turns later, another Transport rolls up to one of the last two Terran colonies. Jenna calls, and now she's feeling generous, giving up all her tech (about 2000 points worth) for peace. I take it, then attack her anyway. None of the other civs bat an eye. Again, WTF? Nobody ever thought this was a problem?

Five turns ago, I was a backwards crew of barbarians with huge bills to pay. Now I have a stable economy, a vast military, and a slight tech edge over everyone but the Altairians. Presumably, they'll do the same thing I've seen them do in every game and research 1000's of points in the Invasion branch, yet never launch a single fighter and eventually just get wiped out. If I hadn't quit out of boredom, I'd leave them alone and finish off the single-planet, no-military Thalans next, picking up a couple more resources in the process, then take out the Altairians. That would probably net me an influence win right there, as even without the Thalan territory I owned nearly half the map, all before the end of the second year. If the Altairians actually managed to build a ship of any quality, I could just take out the Krynn instead.

Please, tell me there's just something wrong with my configuration, because this isn't even fun. This game has been out for years. People seem to play it and enjoy it. It wins praise specifically for the quality of the AI. But as far as I can tell, this game is just fundamentally idiotic and broken, not to mention full of interface blunders and other annoyances. I'm sure I could crank the difficulty some more - eventually the AI will just tech through half their trees and finally build some ships before I can invade. But that's hardly very rewarding, certainly much less so than Civ4, which at least attempts to put up a fight even though it often stumbles on tactical details. Something about this game keeps people playing it, but I sure can't see what it is apart from pretty starships. I'd certainly like to figure it out, because I think the underlying mechanics of the game are pretty neat. But unless someone can convince me otherwise, I'm going to have to give up on this one.