I played a game with the same game settings than the one I tested on 1.1.8 to be able to judge the difference on the AI behavior. So small pangea, 3 peaceful factions on very hard and me as the religious faction.
Overall I would say the AI has done progress, but is not perfect yet.
During the colonial era the AI was doing a great job to produce and upgrade its troop, I saw very early armor upgrades, a lots of avenger tanks and various devices used (even a couple of artillery!
) Alien nests were cleared really quick, sign that the AI armies had more punch. One AI even had an alien queen sitting in its cap, first time I see that. Should an AI had attack me at this stage it would have been really tough to win the war. Things however got weird during the mecha era, with the AI starting to produce some mecha infantry, but then suddenly switching back to its previous behaviour of piling up loads of colonial infantry and non upgraded mecha infantry. There was a then a looong period where I saw nearly no improvement in the AI military, just more and more colonial troopers with just a few good level mecha infantry. No more tanks, no planes, no artillery...
Things start moving a little in the Trans era, with the AI doing a better job at producing transcendence infantry, but nothing impressive enough to make a difference. I attacked terra Salvum once they built black holes, around turn 300, and I totally crushed them. They had however a lot of trans infantry around strength 40 and a bunch of scary strenght 80 NU aircrafts, but they made no difference as I was able to do a lot of damage with my artillery.
Once I conquered TS I stopped the game as the 2 other faction had really outdated armies, unable to compare with what I had.
One interesting thing to notice however : For some reason terra salvum outperformed the 2 other AI big time and actually manage to keep a better tech rate than me for most of the game. TS army was way superior to the 2 others, with more and better upgraded troops. Seem to me the AI economic development is to weak to follow up with its production and refit routines, making him believe he can only afford low quality troops.
To conclude I found the AI overall a little stronger ( or shall I say a little less weak?) but still not performing as strongly as it should. I really think you should find a system to make the AI stop producing outdated troops. Producing strength 5 infantry in the late mecha era is just useless.
I have made saves at the same turn then previous game so you can have a look and compare the level of the AI armies.
Other comments and observations :
- Tech tree works now perfectly, well done
- I noticed AI did not prioritize nukes, and they came really late in the game. Not sure if i was a particularity of this game or you change it, but I liked it
- AI still don't build the morale improvement buildings, this need to change as it gives a massive advantage to human player. In transcendence era its very easy for human player to double your power in terms of military, research and economy leaving the AI far behind. In all my games I played until Trans era I always end up with a science output at least 2 times more important than the AIs one. I think the fact AI doesn't build the morale improvement buildings is partly responsible for that.
- I never saw the AI building the late game improvment such as the double move or psy upgrade ones ? If they also do not build the +25% production output and +25% science one that would also explain why its so easy to leave the AI behind in late game.
- Alien spawn rhythm is not affected by the pace of game. I tried to play a marathon game on very high alien settings. I barely survived the wave of aliens but had to stop the game because half the AI factions on the map had been wiped out. While it takes you twice as much time to produce an unit, alien are not affected by this making the game broken.
