Does the computer play by different rules?

DL, DA, or TA?

What difficulty level?

Difficulty normal.  Randomized intelligence.  Ultimate Edition.

DL?  DA? Or TA?

I ask because I pretty much play just DA.

One thing to check is (assuming you have some intel level) to go to the Diplo screen and look at the report data you have on the Krynn.  Among the things it will tell you is the bonuses that race has, like eco mil, etc.  Have you looked the map over for mining bases of theirs, especially green ones?

I have seen races rush buy ship after ship which they could support with huge eco bonuses and high taxes.  Also, there is one or more racial choices that give a good discount when rush buying ships.

Still, with that said, the AI should have a tough time doing the above on Normal.

Do note, though, that if one builds only lots of research facilities, that one can still build lots of ships on those same planets via setting "focus" on those planets to mil (ship production).

At the onset of war, my first move is always destroy the mining starbases and take the resources (if possible).  That can make all the difference in the verse.  A race can dominate quickly if it has enough green resources, and can loose military might instantly if you take them as they can no longer afford the maintenence.  Taking planets away also rapidly diminishes the enemy's financial capacity.

Have many spies on hand as well.  A spy placed on a farm will in one turn eliminate any population above 8b on a non-homeworld (cha-ching!).  Just be sure and pull your spies out of a world just before invading as you won't be able to elliminate him after you take the world (bug).  Knock down their money, they start decomissioning ships once the money depletes and it will very quickly when they start countering your spies.  If you hit the poket book, they won't be able to afford the ships no matter what techs they have.

Also, firepower and defensive capabilities can be trippled with enough red resources, so take them out first and capture them if possible.  Just park plenty of ships in orbit to defend your worlds while your fleets hit them where it hurts.  If you park a warship and a fleet of at least 8 constructors near each one ahead of time you can turn the table around in one turn.

You can also, if the enemy depends on starbases and nearby colonies to obtain the range to hit you, knock them out just in case.  You might just stop them cold.  I've seen enemy ships stop in transit because their location suddenly became out of range.

In DA, I have always had my pre-invasion spies returned to me after taking the planet.  One loses spies if they are placed in the race passive espionage boxes when the empire ceases to exist.  (As Loup has termed it, they become archaeologists, and will even send you reports on their incresing levels of espionage on the extinct race)

The delta is important because one tactic in invasions is to reduce the population by nerfing the farms (in DA, it's 6B), as you said, then using info warfare to bring some to your side.  The number that come over to you depends on the morale on that world the moment it is invaded.  hence, when using info warfare, one puts spies on any morale structures right before one invades.  The enemy can neutralize the anti-farm spies one puts there one turn early, but the enemy cannot neutralize the spies you put there as you invade.

Hi!

On normal difficulty level it shouldn't. The situaton you're describing can be the result of many quite probable scenarios:

• Krynn simply having more/better planets than you have,
• Krynn having taken most galactic resources (or at least econ and morale ones) or
• you started the game with randomized inteligence checked, and Krynn got significantly better "inteligence" (and bonues) than "normal" (BTW don't do that - it severely unballances the AIs) 

All of this you can check with the game in racial statsistics or with spying intel.

BR,  Iztok

Iztok -

On random AI levels, I have done that sometimes to get a very different game.  That is, before moving up to straight Suicidal, I found that random settings changed which AIs prospered.  Unbalancing the AIs helped set up varying huge confrontations in the later game between my empire and the lucky-settings AIs who had crushed others.

Quoted for truth, although I tend to end up sandwiched betwee two of those "lucky races" which I then have to fight off claw and teeth. When I eventually beat them, the universe is just as open as it would've been if I'd not randomized. >_<

That's just my luck though.

Quoted, yes.  My point, though, was that allowing some AIs to prosper at the advantage of others let them become dangerous enough to give me a fun game.  At the settings much below Suicidal, I just steamrolled whichever AIs there were.  At full Suicidal, I was among the steamrolled.

It was sort of like "Suicidal-lite", with one or two Suicidal AIs instead of eight or nine, and who could feast on other empires besides mine and the Minors.  In full Suicidal, the AIs have just the Minors and the human player to snack on early.  So, the extra grace period is no longer there like it is in "Suicidal-lite" where the Suicidal AIs view you early as more formidable than the weak non-Suicidal AIs.

Only after I was able to consistently win in "Suicidal-lite, did I judge I was ready to begin beating my head against Suicidal as a wolfling race.

The "AI level" determines what economy modifiers and what AI routines it uses. So Yes if it gave you an AI rated higher then normal they are gonna get an economy advantage. Such as

Gifted-5% boost

Genius- 10% boost

Incredible- 25% boost

Godlike 50% boost

Ultimate 100% boost

Hi!

Could be valid for TA, but in DL and DA AI gets significantly more. You can check wiiki for how much.

BR,  Iztok

Hi!

That's why I wrote "Could be valid for TA". But you have posted hard numbers, that are very off the "standard" values in DL and DA. Have you checked validity of those numbers with the game, or with developers' jurnals?

BR,  Iztok

Hi!

Game manuals for GalCiv were proven wrong many times. Have you checked that with the game? It's quite easy: run game in cheat mode, start a new game with ultimate AI, play for Krynn (if they still get a free spy at the start of the game), reveal map and check with the spy what theoretical production AI planets have. Now just compare it with added production from factories, labs and colony building and you'll get the real numbers.

BR,  Iztok

The AI ABSOLUTELY cheats.  I regularly see the following on 'tough' difficulty, and it's very annoying:

On an immense map, the AI will--within maybe ten turns--suddenly take three or four galactic resources in completely different directions that are very far away from their homeworld.  There's no way they legitimately explored that huge an area and discovered them, they just bee-lined directly for them.  So the AI absolutely knows where things are right off the bat.

charon2112 -

The AI does know where every planet and resource anomaly is from the start.  There have been many threads on this, with several players recounting their playtesting of it.  At one point, a player found a juicy planet in a corner, and staked it out much like a hunter might tether a goat and lay up in a hunter blind when trying to kill a marauding tiger.

The player put sensor-equipped ships or bases on the approaches, and parked a colonizer adjacent to the planet.  Soon, AI colony ships appeared on a straight-line approach when there was no way they could know that the planet was there in the corrner.  Then, the player reloaded and colonized the planet, and the AI colony ships never came.  Then the player again reloaded and colonized the planet as soon as he saw the colony ships at a great distance on their way (he now knew where to be posted to see them very early) and the colony ships aborted and diverted to another planet.

Any who had denied that the AI had perfect knowledge of the planet situation ceased protests after that test.  Some opined that the AIs might nort have the same knowledge of the anomalies, but the behavior is the same as for the planets.  The colony rush by the AI is imperfect, though, as the AIs do not seem to prioritize planets as well as the human player, so the AI advantage is small if it is there at all.  The same cannot be said for the anomalies, of course.  Still, the AIs seem to "forget" the anomalies a lot, in that those that suddenly become free (especially from an Empire surrender or destruction) are left unclaimed for longer than would seem reasonable, letting an alert human player often grab them.

BTW, sometimes in the early game, when I spot a minor AI 1-move constructor plodding along, I will rush buy a faster one, plot the AI's course, and run ahead to try to grab the anomaly that I know MUST be somewhere ahead on that flight path!

It depends on what you consider cheating.  Sometimes I wish the AI would cheat a little better.  They don't cheat in the sense they have to play the game in the same manner as a human player.  They do have a lot of advantages, but they need them.  If they didn't have those, the game would be too easy.  For anyone that finds the AI too intense, simply turn down the difficulty level.  You may want to adjust their intelligence individually.  I haven't found them to be as balanced as I'd like.  I wish a few of the races had higher intelligence than ultimate.  I've given the Iconians all kinds of additional bonuses and I can't get them to keep up with the rest of them.  I had to really lay it on the Altarians and Arceans, but I finally got them up to par.  Conversely, I run the Thalans on Incredible and the Drengin on Godlike.  The Thalans are completely psycho on Ultimate, I don't play the Krynn much, but I think they're the same way.  This is with TA.  I don't play the older versions.  There's just no reason to when TA has so many excellent features.  But, if you're still learning the game, it's probably better to play DA.  TA is really complicated with all the unique tech trees.  Took me a long time to get a handle on it.

Thanks.  I didn't know about that test.  Very informative.  Why can't the devs make the AI have to search just like a player.  It's really unfair and unbalanced.

charon -

The AIs do seem to be required to build scout ships and deploy them.  Thus, the devs did mitigate that AI advantage considerably, as human players do not waste time and resources on scout ships and simply scout with colony ships and/or constructors.  Also, a player can "upgrade" one to the other in place when a juicy opportunity is encountered - - the AIs do not do that.

EDIT:

Here's one of those earlier thread:

https://forums.galciv2.com/361996

Is it possible that a placed agent will increase the chance that the targeted building will still be there after a successful invasion, and/or that the technology of which the said building consists of is stolen?

Because this happened pretty often to me (in TA) although I donno if it´s just acciedently...