Wow!  Thanks for this.  I've been playing with this mod as Thalans in a huge galaxy, Challenging difficulty with 7 stock AI factions (all Gifted).  Every AI faction but the Iconians has colonized more planets than me.  I think this is the first time I've seen that happen.  It's finally going to be a challenging game!

Note:  I refuse to use the Pragmatic constructor-to-colonizer cheese.  Here are the counts (gathered from trade display).

Turn 46

• Thalan (player): 4 colonies, 1 colony ship, 5 starbases, 0 constructors, 4 other ships.  I've colonized everything available in my range.
• Krynn:  5 colonies, 4 colony ships, 5 starbases, 7 constructors, 9 other ships
• Iridium:  4 colonies, 5 colony ships, 5 starbases, 6 constructors, 9 other ships
• Iconion:  2 colonies, 6 colony ships, 1 starbase, 0 constructors, 5 other ships
• Altarian:  7 colonies, 3 colony ships, 0 starbases, 2 constructors, 15 other ships

Turn 61

• Thalan (player): 4 colonies, 1 colony ship, 6 starbases, 1 constructor, 4 other ships
• Krynn:  5 colonies, 0 colony ships, 13 starbases, 10 constructors, 18 other ships
• Iridium:  7 colonies, 1 colony ship, 9 starbases, 7 constructors, 15 other ships
• Iconion:  2 colonies, 4 colony ships, 1 starbase, 0 constructors, 8 other ships
• Altarian:  7 colonies, 3 colony ships, 7 starbases, 10 constructors, 22 other ships
• Drengin:  7 colonies, 2 colony ships, 8 starbases, 7 constructors, 28 other ships

At this stage, I have yet to meet the Terrans, and the Altarians have declared war on me.  I'm looking forward to this!

Fairly similar - there's a lot of the same ideas in gov.xml and glaciv3ai.xml.

My strategy AIs are much, much more wide-reaching. rspiccaver has modified the existing strategies, but not added any; I've split the strats into 10-turn chunks for each personality type covering the first 100 turns, to try and get more fine-detail control over what the AI is doing on, say, turn 40 that it might not want to be doing on turn 53. That's probably a liability for mine on smaller maps, though - I'm anticipating the AI meeting other empires around turn 75, which isn't like to happen on a small map.

Quoting TurielD,

reply 4

We really need to start working together on these things

I think this was mostly just rspiccaver throwing together some quick-fixes because someone asked for it, rather than a proper mod  

I suspect the best approach is to divide the game up into sections - start, midgame and endgame - and each work on a set of strategies for each personality type for that part of the game. Call it turns 1-100 (which I've done for all but about 4 traits), 100-250 and 250 onwards. These eras can then be further subdivided by trait if need be (and it's needed; there's 15 personalities, each of which need to be split into short-ish chunks; I've written around 150 and still need to do 40 or so more).

That would allow us to develop a common AI script framework, which people could then specialize to suit their own specific mods and game sizes. But let's take that to the other thread, and leave this one for feedback on the kickstart AI

No arguments from me about that .  But I'm an adventurous diner and I wanted to try something else -- look at the all the choices!  Having to fight my way out from so far behind in this game is the most fun I've had with Gal Civ since Twilight of the Arnor.

I know the AIs aren't any smarter with this mod, but it's sure great that they have out-paced me after the colony rush has ended.  The Altarians and Iridium have declared war -- each on a different front -- and are making it a decent fight as they have more manufacturing and war ships than me.