In my current game (tough/medium/custom race) I settled the 2nd planet of a system containing a minor race. This minor race was going nuts building ships and starbases...and they built numerous influence bases in the same sector as the system, and they built them up (no defenses, so must've been adding lots of influence modules).

I hadn't gone out of my way to pump influence and the minor's influence starbases seemingly had no effect on my influence.

It doesn't seem like minors even project influence. (Never seen it yet so I'd guess they don't)

Do minors get some kind of tourism income from their potential influence radius even though they seem to not have the same type of influence as majors? Maybe. Considering these fools only had one planet the were insanely productive with ship building, social building, and tech.

Otherwise it'd seem like the minor was building a lot of useless startbases.

Those starbases did make for nice target practice while I waited for a second wave ot transports to arrive...they did at least defend their world decently against my first invasion - enought to cause me to build more transports.

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Some other observations from this game that could be way off - can't really know for sure what's going on til I've played a LOT More games! So take this for what it is - initial observations...

I need to play more on tough but there are some other things the AI does that boggle. For example, against this same minor, they had a lot of ships so they ended up with a fleet parked just off their planet. I invaded with a superior fleet to wipe out all their orbiting ships (they had OFM so there were some good battles - but I still rolled them). I then sent in 6000 troops (spread on 6 transports - this was early and my invasion tech sucked) and just barely failed to conquer. So their planet now has no ships in orbit and my fleet was out of movement. I end the turn. The AI never moved it's other fleet at all - not to counter attack, not to the planet to defend - nothing. I wiped that fleet out the next turn then went on a rampage of starbase destruction for kicks (could've just let them poof after assimilation).

I'm guessing that the minors don't operate with the same AI as the "intelligent" majors.

At about the same time the Drengin, who had declared war on me weeks ago from the other side of the map (as did the Yor who had zero chance of ever getting a ship to me, who then asked for peace, and then declared war again 2 weeks later), finally get some ships somewhat within range of me (picked up by my 14pc sensor drone well ahead of time). The first Drengin to arrive were 2 unguared transports. So I send a fleet out to greet them. Drengin fleets are starting to appear in the distance well behind the transports. I move my fleet towards the first transport - and it retreats. Yes! But, after one turn of retreat it never moves again - it just sits there til I destroy it. The 2nd transport had halted movement when the 1st retreated - and it too never moved again and I destroyed it too with the Drengin fleets giving chase (with 2pc movement compared to my 4pc movement it wasn't much of a chase). (I then took out 4 Drengin fleets in a row while losing only 1 of my ships - my speed let me stay the aggressor - and they asked for peace shortly after, which was smart, even though I had no intentions of attacking them.)

On "normal" difficulty the AI sacrificed unguarded transports to me regularly. I hoped this would be different on "tough" (where all AIs are "intelligent") and the behavior was slightly different but still essentially suicidal/defeatist.

I've seen a lot of instances of paralzyed AI ships. Attack and they never move some ships - they just leave em sitting til you destroy them. I saw this a lot on "normal" and expected to see it less on "tough" - and I haven't played enough "tough" yet to know for sure, but I have seen it in a few instances already.

Another bizarre thing the minor race did in our short war was that it kept on moving its many constructors and freighters all through my warships and my empire while I was pounding its planet. You would think it might try to move some of those undefended ships a bit out of harms way, or scrap them for BC to buy warships, but no, they just kept on truckin (til I slaughtered them for sport).

I question the AIs war declarations. This is on a medium map and fairly early in the game. It's exceptionally unlikely that the Yor who are diagonally all the way across the map from me, will ever get a ship to me at this time. They're also at war with the Torians who are between us so it's even less likely they'll ever get to me. Yet they demand BC and declare when I don't pay. Then after a few years ask for peace, and two turns later demand BC then declare again. It's kind of silly for an AI to make tribute demands when it has zero chance of backing up its threats, even if they have a warmonger personality!

I know why they did it - I had a zero military rating for a dangerously long time (or not so dangerously - I've yet to be threatened in any game doing this). I tend to build up a lot of tech before I ever build warships because it's exceptionally unlikely that an AI will ever attack before planetary invasion is researched (and tech whored) - they AIs don't seem to be into pure terrorist attacking and it takes some time before anyone researches planetary invasion. I had finished the 2nd tier of my selected attack and defense techs, finished the 2nd tier of drives, got some mini going, and had medium hulls before I ever built a warship - so I was last in power rankings for years. Even then, and even though I developed a nice sized navy, I still rated lower than the AIs with their multitudes of weak small hulled ships. But those small hulled ships were/are nothing but fodder for my mediums with better tech.

The Drengin declared for the same reason, I'm sure, but they at least could get to my space (dunno if they could actually reach a planet since they never got that far and it was a long trip). But still - it was a LONG trip for them at 2pc/wk - had to take them 15+ weeks to get a ship to me, which is crazy (and of course, being the Drengin they were at war with multiple parties at once - although so far in every game I've played everybody is at war constantly once planetary invasion is researched).

By the time the Drengin got to me (well, within 20 pc of my nearest planet since I wiped em plenty early) I had about 16 medium ships, developed OFM and built it on my better worlds, and I'd traded for tech from the minors and majors to get multiple logistic techs, fill out the entire terraforming tree, and get lots of other goodies. They were such a nonthreat that I sent one fleet of 3 ships to handle them and took out the minors to grab their nice 15pq world. Which brings me too...

The AI have some whacked ways of valueing techs (purely IMO). I might try to trade for a logistics tech, for example. If I try to trade tech for it they'll want multiple solid techs in return - which usually feels lopsided (in their favor) and I'm loathe to do it. However, if I give them BC or a junk tech with some BC I can get what I consider to be a steal. Hell yes I'll trade 1000BC and a junk tech for a logistics tech that would take me 10 weeks to research. But I'm not going to trade 3 critical techs of mine for it. Minor races are exceptionally generous in this regard. It's almost like having them give you advanced tech for free. I could sometimes trade them a junk tech and a couple hundred BC for something glorious like Terraforming, which would've taken me years to research. Bounce back and forth between minors and majors and you can gain ridiculous amounts of tech without giving up much and maybe even while making a profit.

This is something that I felt was semi-exploitive in GC1 that I was hoping would be different in GC2.

It's a tough call. I had good BC going at the time and spare BC on hand. I often see the AIs with similar funding and/or even more BC (20k+). It's hard to put a BC value on tech, but tech is critical in a game like this and some tech is more valuable than others. Problem is, the value can be situational and/or involve a lot of sliding factors. I've also been in games already where I was strapped for cash, had too much population and morale problems, and even at one point went negative for cash and froze my empire (but this was 1 turn before victory so it didn't matter). In those cases several thousand BC means a lot more to you.

But in this game I went from feeling kinda techno backwards (kind of a misconception since I had a lot of tech nobody else had and most AIs were sharing tech and all had the same stuff) to being technically dominant in about 5 trades and less than 5000BC (I had over 10000BC at the time without even trying, just normal savings running 100% producion and taxes low enough to keep mid 60's approval rate).

I gotta say - one thing Civ IV changed that I really like is they reduced the tech whoring aspect of Civ III drastically and AIs won't trade every tech in the game back and forth amongst themselves. It makes for nice diversity and puts a stop to the tech brokering cheese you can do as a player.

I'm sure every game is different and I won't see this every game. I'm also thinking I need to play on larger maps or have more good planets because it's far to easy for an AI (or player) to get stuck with a really tiny "empire" and be an easy victim for a neighbor.

It does seem like AIs, especially minors, have some "interesting" ways of give value to techs. It seems borderline exploitive to be able to get tech from them so easily. But of course, it does appear that the AIs trade techs amongst themselves with no limitations so it sort of balances out in a twisted way. I would prefer to see the AIs value their most recent tech more, or value techs that only they have exceptionally higher, for ex....but I can deal with the system as is.

Lastly, keep in mind that I'm loving the game and could write volumes about the positive things and smart things the AIs do. But those things don't need to be investigated, repeated, and possibly re-evaluated because they work just fine!