Agreed, the AIs calculations of military strength need a little tweaking. But the issue isn't limited to ships or attack vs defense. In my last couple of games, the AI's have initiated the first war with me, seeing that I only had a few measly defenders around a portion of my planets. Where this shortcoming is exposed is when they declare war, I immediately shift my largely Research and Social economy to one that is now Military focused. Since my research and industry levels dwarf theirs and they haven't really begun to gather their forces for an adequate attack I am able to quickly field a force that is able to devastate them in short order.

To wit, military power is more than ships in the field, its also the industrial capacity to produce them in numbers and the technological advantage to be able to kill more with less. The AI needs to be better able to recognize that I think.

Cheers,
Reaver

At the very least, change the military rating from total attack\defense added up to something closer to the best fleet they can put together. It doesnt matter if they have a rating hundreds of points higher than me when they are incapable of destroying my ships.

I think we need some sort of progression system in place. The AI should judge based on the passing of time, not just what you have currently. So if you go from 0 military to 140 in two turns (I've done it), the AI should be more worried than if you went from 0 to 140 in five years.

More importantly, the AI ought to be able to judge how well you're doing during a military campaign. If the AI has 5 times your military rating at the start of a war but they lose half of their military and a quarter of their planets in one turn--which is about how every single war I've ever started went--it shouldn't mock you for "being on the losing end of such a young war." That's lame.

It actually shouldn't be all that hard for the AI to calculate how fast you do things, though of course the exact numbers of what they consider significant would need testing and tweaking.

I think the military rating is a feature kind of like influence or the diplomacy ability; it wouldn't work against a human player, but it allows interesting strategies against the AI. It gives me the choice between building a "paper tiger" military that rates high but is useless at actual combat, or an effective navy that uses engines and military starbases but rates low, or a potential military that I won't build until I need it. You could say that the AI is playing poorly because it doesn't accurately appraise your power, but it's also playing poorly when it allows its planets to defect without declaring war on you, or gives you better deals because your diplomacy ability is high. I like the interesting strategic choices these features offer more than I'd like an AI that plays its best.

Also, people are suggesting that the AI should be afraid to attack a civ that has no military, but lots of money, technology, and production capacity. Attacking such a civ is the ONLY hope for success. If the AI doesn't attack, this civ will continue to research and build, extending its lead even further, until it wins a tech victory or decides build a military. Yeah, it would help a lot if the AI actually capitalized on that civ's current weakness by doing an alpha-strike sneak attack, but that's understandably hard to program. I think the solution here is to increase the difficulty level you're playing on so that your economy and production are not better than the AI's. Then you actually have to play better than the AI to win.