The biggest change I've noticed was how the computer reacted to me developing a high level of influence. Where before it just looked over at me and sort of said, "Oh hey- he's getting big," and then did a little work on building influence, now it affects diplomatic discussions. Despite all sorts of things in my favor, relations were Cool. Of course, they also reacted to the fact they'd been entirely outflanked by someone with a much larger military- 'Don't kill me!'

I'm going to boost the difficulty to see what else happens.

I love it as well. I put the game aside after 1.0X, and started a brand new 1.1 game : it rocks. The game feels really more polished, there are tooltips explaining the numbers, the AI is far better than before, even if i lost this game at "tough" it was still pure pleasure. At one point i thought i could win, i launched a surprise attack on the Iconians ; concentrating all my forces in their sectors. But they launched a surprise attack on my homeworld ! I had problems getting out of this war, i finally won the iconians, but then the Drengin and Arceans allied and both attacked me. They were the biggest civs in the game, and they crushed me.

But i had fun ; and more fun than with previous versions. That's what counts !

Playing on tough I was expecting a litle more from the AI. My observations so far:

- It's still not capable of decent techtrading. Forcing you to play without techtrading enabled, which imo doesn't leave much left of the diplomacy part in this game.
- The evaluation and calculation of military might is way off. So called very powerfull civs are not that much of a challenge when you start actually fighting them. Things like speed and logistics should be taking into account when evaluating military might.
- The AI doesn't seem to valuate diplomacy techs that much. Making it easy to become an ultimate techbroker, even on the harder settings: just trade everything except for the diplomacy techs.
- The AI is focussing way too much on building embasies instead of researching influence techs. Making itself
unneccessary vulnerable. Too many times I've conquered planets with 7+ embassies but with nearly any research, economy or production centers on it..
- The AI doesn't seem to valuate speed enough. I can always outmanouvre it's fleets, my fast constuctors always win the race for mining resources and I have never been surpised by a lightning attack from the AI.
- Some weirdness I observed: Two of the races were building an economy starbase on the other site of the map, near a Thalan planet (?). When I invaded the Thalan planet and left the troop ships in orbit I got declared war by both races because "my troopships were surrounding his planets" Btw I was close with both races..
- I've yet to see the AI making alliances and going for a diplomatic victory.

- It's still not capable of decent techtrading. Forcing you to play without techtrading enabled, which imo doesn't leave much left of the diplomacy part in this game.

I try not to exploit it too much. Particularly when I have a load of diplomacy and they don't/

- The evaluation and calculation of military might is way off. So called very powerfull civs are not that much of a challenge when you start actually fighting them. Things like speed and logistics should be taking into account when evaluating military might.

Agreed. A ton of defender ships with 0 speed does not mean you have a strong military!!!

- The AI doesn't seem to valuate diplomacy techs that much. Making it easy to become an ultimate techbroker, even on the harder settings: just trade everything except for the diplomacy techs.

Agreed. Diplomacy rules and the computer undervalues it like crazy, to the extent that even if I'm the evil dregin going for conquest victory, my diplomacy skills are still Godlike compared to theirs...

- The AI is focussing way too much on building embasies instead of researching influence techs. Making itself unneccessary vulnerable. Too many times I've conquered planets with 7+ embassies but with nearly any research, economy or production centers on it..

People have complained about this, I looked closely at my last game and it appears to be true. While it was true I had powerful influence, planets far far away from the border were at no danger at all , so why build 4-7 embassies?
This is at tough, so no bonuses for them

[Quote]
- The AI doesn't seem to valuate speed enough. I can always outmanouvre it's fleets, my fast constuctors always win the race for mining resources and I have never been surpised by a lightning attack from the AI.


Definitely! It's not just race for resources, it's for everything. Speed kills! If AI values speed more, I suspect, the game will become a lot tougher.

-The AI isn't very good at conducting war by taking into account speed.

When my ship out ranges his because of speed, and closes in for the kill, he should attack me, rather than sit there and wait for me to come attack him. If he attacks me first, the advantage of the first strike might how ever unlikely let him win, certainly if he doesn't attack me, the very next turn i will win 100%.

It's still way too easy to slip in and destory transports them move out of range of the nearby escouts. It's kind of like playing chess really, taking into account speeds and moving according...

Some of these might be computationally expense, taking into account speed of nearby ships, but 1.2 is supposed to offer the option to give them resources to calculate ....