I'm in a 300 ish turn game now, and have just finished running into the last 3 godlike AI's. I setup 6 in my game, plus 10+ Incredible, and the rest gifted (former minor races).

Only 1 of the godlikes is even with me in score, the rest are behind by a factor of 3-6. The incredibles, are well behind, with the very best being 4x behind my score. The gifted AI's hardly register on the score board, 15-50x below my score.

It used to be that the Godlike AI's would steamroll me unless I had a good start, I once had a game with 70+ planets and was top 4, with only one godlike AI in game who I finally met who had 450 planets and like 20x my score. Was crazy, I stopped using godlike AI's after that game

Incredible would usually be stronger than me for 2-300 turns, and by 400 I could usually pass them (this is on very slow), but they were generally a solid fight for me, now I don't think they have the teeth, even with my house rules of not terraforming.

One thing I'm not sure you were intending, or if it's considered an exploit, but I often fund my early game with Duterium (sp). 5 units of the stuff usually nets me 65 credits per turn from most AI's.

Again, this was stuff that ought to be locked out by various chunks of xml in the diplomatic behaviour files, yet the effects do nothing. I suspect either a substantially missing chunk of hardcode which ought to point to these values, or else something being rather bugged (perhaps multiplying incorrectly).

For example, the xml in the mod pretty much blocks alliances at under 70 relations (very hard to achieve) by making the AI refuse it; this has no effect. In vanilla, they just lock it out completely at under X relations (though this does not appear to respect the rescaling of relations to a 100-poinmt scale, even though other parts of the code do).

I'm also unconvinced that the diplomatic price adjustments are working properly either - the AI should be much more unhelpful that the behaviour which we're seeing, with values rising very sharply at negative relations. This simply isn't happening. In all, I'm pretty much convinced that the diplo module is only semi-functional.

As to the difficulty levels - wait and see how it interacts with 1.4. I'll make further adjustments after that, but for the moment I'm not too worried about it; I'll probably have to do a fair chunk of re-writes on it at that point anyway, so no point wasting time putting something together now.

I would strongly disagree with this, as the economy (and even government expenditures in normal times) is much more civilian than it is military. There has to be some accounting for this fact.

cant say that I'd be in favor of lowering social manufacturing either. would it just be to slow manu worlds down?

If you make factories only provide military production, it's going to make building up new worlds take a _lot_ longer, and upgrading will eventually take forever. Generally, the first thing I build on a world is a factory, even if it's a research or money world, because that cuts the time taken to build other things down enough that it's worth it.

I guess you could make a colony-unique building that provides social production (with upgrades further on in the tree) to allow social production to keep up with the costs of upgrading to higher-level buildings. Or (assuming it's actually possible) make it possible to upgrade the colony capital.

On the other hand, it might be a good idea to wait until 1.4 comes out to make sure the AI doesn't suddenly gain the ability to do the same thing the player can do now. (I can actually see the rules you would use to allow the AI to adjust the military/social slider intelligently, but I doubt it can be done in a mod (unless mods are a lot more flexible than I expect, not having looked at the modding capabilities for GalCiv III)).

Unless, say, you have a partly built-up world, and you need it to mostly focus on building up its infrastructure, but also to contribute _some_ production to your shipyard so that you can get your new defense ship/colony ship/etc built more quickly.

Many of the decision trees probably need to be tweaked now that defenses weigh so much less:

HP vs Capacity = for almost all ship sizes you get much more bang for your buck with 10% capacity vs 15% hp, as well as flexibility to go offense instead of buffed defenses.

Defense size vs Defense Bonus is a null choice now that defenses are 2 mass (.2 reduction in size vs 10-20% increase in effectiveness is a no brainer, there is also an iconian tree decision that also asks this choice, probably others as well).

Its just an observation, but it still seems beams are the best weapon technology. I'm not quite sure how to objectively test it, but whenever I delve into misses or kinetics I lose fights / ships that I dont think I would have with beams.

The Happiness and Food % bonuses sections in most trees may need to be rethought, they cap out at 50% boost in Happiness or Food, but in almost all planets its better to just have another farm or happiness buildings. Uber planets can benifit, but its rare. The first two levels of the tech 10% and whatever the next one are should never really be built.

Certain buildings like the Embassy and Molecular fabricator (iconian tech) can be rebuilt once the next generation model is complete. Im guessing that is a bug. The molecular fabricator line (capps out at industrial) seems a little lackluster for a civ special building.

Ship ranges feel pretty high, especially as you progress down the tech tree and add the hyperion buildings. I rarely build life support on my warships as it's really not needed. The AI always adds a bunch, when it really only uses them to sit in my space instead of it's own, or generally clump together in some distant part of the map rather than defend its own territory ^.^ So many times I've seen one AI chomp another AI to pieces because the AI getting owned has parked all of its ships deep into my territory, while the other AI gobbles them up. Doubt you can do much, other than alter the building plans, and nerf life support and force the AI to work more locally (which may be a good thing?).

A number of races seem to churn out high attack no (or low) defense ships. I usually do the opposite and cut through those ships like a knife through butter. This is especially prevalent during the early to mid game. Most ships I see are weighted very high on offense and have hardly any defense. I'm pretty successful in employing the opposite.

Have you updated the overlord ship plans with the mod? I don't even know what to do with these things, they are so awful when the event pops

I'd love to see a pass over of the galactic events. I'm not sure if you can control them or not, but some (ie doubling of engine speeds) are pretty silly overpowered.

Has anyone else seen fighter modules on starbases work? Since the last version of the mod was released they do not seem to add any fighters to my bases.

Can't wait for 1.4 and the new AI, as I do feel the bonuses you took away from the AI the game went from pretty challenging to fairly average / kinda easy on godlike. The dangerous AI's overbuild until they nearly collapse (three to five hundred low tech ships) which stops them from colonizing and growing, whereas before they seemed like they could do both at once.

You must play on a smaller map size.  35 planets is nothing on immense as there are literally hundreds of planets.

I play on insane abundant. and you see the issue. Me with 35 planets is like the AI having 100+ (I still beat them in terms of economy and production / science without the bonuses on godlike).

Additionally prior to the removal of bonuses the godlike AI could walk and chew gum at the same time - build a military, colonize a lot of planets, have a decent econ/science.

I've found without the bonuses that the AI has lost this ability. They usually hemorrhage themselves building that early military and fall hard in science /econ and stop colonizing at 35-50 planets. Its really hurt them, hence I tried to limit myself to even the playing field and am still running away with it.

I agree. plus those early ships are always missing something critical, either no defenses, poor engines, or very weak weapons (they always do have weapons).

Also, I know you redid all the blueprints at one point reflecting the current state of the game at the time. However now that defenses are so much more viable (which I love, though I'm not sure about the exact values) the AI seems to focus way more on offense than defense and I cut through their early and mid game ships with absolute ease.

I think its a combo of early builds (without proper tech) and the offense heavy focus.

It does in my games

I suspect it might be something to do with the colony capital upgrades. Will revert them to vanilla style.

Meh, they're handy for balance tbh; I dislike the idea of a scientific discovery causing a huge jump in output overnight. But it's causing too many issues.

As for tech; I suspect the AI's big hard-on for military is more down to them usually being at war with one person or another for huge chunks of the game (without either side actually fighting, usually). I'll see if I can tweak the weights some.