I figured that given all my whining about the AI's flaws, I should mention some of the stuff that I've been impressed with!
In my current game, I'm playing as the Yor, with my ability points poured into a +2 speed bonus. I did reasonably well during the Colony rush, though definitly not fantastic.
Nearly from the start, the Thalans were beginning to look like a huge threat. They were going down an influence path, and flipping planets left and right. They'd have to be dealt with eventually... they were spreading like wildfire. However, my military was small, my tech was low, and I didn't have enough planets. I needed to expand to be able to stand toe to toe with the Thalans. Directly to my north were the Altarians, who were rapidly gaining power themselves and being fairly antagonistic. I started lining up my fighters and transports, and then moved them into position above their planets, hoping to get them to declare war first. I didn't want the diplomatic issues, and I certainly didn't want the Altarian super ability kicking in and bringing everyone down on me.
They declared war preemptively, upon which point I took out the Altarian worlds closer to my border. A better strategy for them would have been to have held their fire until I made the first move, so that I'd get crushed by the much more powerful good civilisations. My tech was low, my military was small, and their military was both technologically advanced and substantial in size. The only reason they didn't crush me is because they kept their ships in orbit until the late stages of the war...
Long story short, I claw planets away from them one by one, eventually using my new medium hulls and captured plasma techs to fight toe to toe with their military. Despite the fact that they were obviously losing ground, they kept telling me how doomed I was and refused to talk peace because of my lower military rating. It was fairly amusing... apparently, the fact that my apparently inferior military was, pound for pound, dealing exponentially more damage than theirs wasn't an issue.
I wasn't too impressed by the Altarians... their tech and empire management seemed pretty strong, but their handling of the war was poor. They eventually wanted peace on the basis of it "taking too much of their attention", but they never considered me a real threat because of my lower military rating, despite the fact that my empire increased in size drastically in this time. However, I WAS quite impressed with the Arcean AI.
At this point I'd paid the Thalans to go to war with the fairly powerful Korath, who I hoped would put a dent in them while I parked transports in orbit of Thalan worlds in a surprise attack. I was actually shocked to see the Thalan's military... it was huge, but their frigates were still using lasers. It was a matter of how much of their empire I could gobble up in a short amount of time... which wasn't huge.
The Arceans were being pushy because of their military strength... where the Altarians were sporting a large high tech military, the Arceans were topping them in absolutely every category. They eventually had enough of me when I refused to casually hand over my treasury, and declared war. While the Thalans weren't an issue, the Arceans were a huge one. They were flying around with fleets of Frigates armed to the teeth with beam weapons, and while none of them had engines, they'd chosen a speed bonus exactly like I had. In other words, they'd set up their race and ships exactly as I would have set up a race with first strike. On top of that, they were managing their fleets very well. My nearly decimated military had to run from a massive mob of fleets... even with my superior speed (impulse drives on my ships) they couldn't be engaged without losing the precious attacking fleets.
I am really impressed with the war fighting abilities of the Arceans.
The game is still ongoing, and I'm beating them back at long last. Here's where a few criticisms have to go in. The factors that have let me do this are:
1) While they're doing a fantastic job of putting potent escorts along with their transports (frigate level, full fleets), there aren't many transports at once, and they often didn't have a full load of soldiers. They didn't capitalize on the huge military advantage they had... if they'd taken my planets from me while I was down, I would have had to REALLY work to get them back
2) My ships were still faster, because I was using impulse drives on top of my +2 speed bonus, where they were just utilizing the +2 speed bonus they had. This let me get around their first strike ability, which crushed me most of the time it came into play. The Arceans need to be really sensitive to the speed of their opponents... with the first strike ability, you really want to be the fastest.
3) I blitzed my way to barriers and started using ships that could take a few hits (thanks to the patch that made it much worthwhile). This let me fight full Arcean fleets with a chance to actually win
4) Absolute biggest factor: luck. I've got four ranger class ships, and even though their defense is against mass drivers (or perhaps BECAUSE of it... bug?) they've been able to carve through Arcean fleets. No one else is using huge hulls, and those ships let me get back on my feet.
Damn, I'm loving DA.
