How to beat a crippling AI
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I thought to help out newbies with some pointers and to those who are wondering how to beat the AI on painful or crippling difficulty levels. I play as I line out here, and after a few victories against high level AIs, I find it to be increasingly easy to beat them. In fact, the AI is still pretty dumb, it misses obvious exploits and strategies, and is really no match for human ingenuity. That doesn't however negate the fact they can still put up a helluva fight!! 
First of all, you need practice and experience. If you find that you are having a hard time beating the AI on normal, you are probably not ready yet, and the AI on higher difficulty settings feels very different from the one at the lower levels.
Pick your universe!
Try it out on small or medium first. There aren't too many planets, the game develops quickly, and you get a better feel for the AI. Also, with few planets, there is less time spend micromanaging your empire. In a huge or gigantic universe, the AI will have the definite and unwritten advantage of never tiring of micromanage. It will tweak and maximize every planet under its control, and do so every turn. I once started a tiny map against a genius setting AI, loaded cheats, gave myself load of money and revealed the map. I paid close attention to how the AI in the first stages of colonization operates and what it researches and tweaks its colonies.
Pick your enemies!
Which ones you choose aren't really that important, but don't pick too many at once. Try it out with 4 or 5 at a time. Also consider their ethical alignment and the one you have in mind. If you want to play as good, pick altarians and torians and the drath, as they share your alignment and are therefore less likely to declare war on you. I've seen a couple of times I play evil and the Altarians, apparantly out of nowhere, decide war on me because of my evilness.
Which starting bonuses and abilities should I pick?
Distribute your picks among Diplomacy, Economics, Morale, and Research. Highlevel AI's own you with their economies, especially in the beginning, it is therefor of supreme importance to have a healthy econ. to start with. Research is also of great importance because the AI seems to trade and share a lot of tech among themselves so often you have to compete against the combined research potential of 2 or more aliens. Strong economy and strong diplomacy skills are very important for reasons explained in the next section.
Politically, I usually choose Technologists or Industrialists, as I do not pick manufactering bonuses in my abilities, Industrialists give a nice boost nonetheless.
I have found it is imperative to not underestimate to importance of Morale, and I always pick a medium or high Morale bonus to begin with. Morale is sort of a universal boost. Its primary role is determining population growth and (low morale, less potential) economics because it also determines how high you can set your taxrate.
Starting the game!
So you are all fired up and anxious to send out those colony ships to show those pesky aliens whose boss! But hold on, not so fast! First take a deep breath, and look at the minimap. Observe how those stars are distributed, and see where everyone starts. If you're pushed in a corner with virtually no stars in the immediate surroundings - don't bother playing. If you are confident and very well experienced, you can later on always experiment, but for starters, pick a good starting point.
If your minimap looks okay, proceed with the next step, if it is worthless, get a new map by pressing CTRL+N until you find one that looks promising.
Now you have a map that looks just right for your future empire. The next thing to do is make a quicksave. Now, destroy your colony ship, and use your Flagship to explore around nearby star systems and scout for useful anomalies.
The thing to look for when you scout around are resources, the nearby star systems, and not in the least anomalies. It can be a killerboost if you just happen to have a 2500bc anomaly just under your nose, just make sure you get there before the AI.
When you look around, chart potentially useful systems, it pays to mentally make a plan of colonization. How many ships in which direction, how fast to get there (based on the distance to the aliens), and also important which systems not to bother with, either because they have no useful planets or because the system is too deep in alien territory.
The especially nefarious can always speed this up by loading the quicksave in cheat mode and press CTRL+U to reveal the map and immediatly spot where all the resources and frisky planets are. Just don't forget to load the map again in normal mode.
And so it begins!
Having noted mentally your plan of attack, or if you decide to go it by chance, here it begins. Prioritize the planets, if you have a rich cluster somewhere, send your ship there first so that colony can churn out colony ships fast. The key here is to be fast. Don't bother with millitary production to make the ships. Just buy them, but don't loan! Go to the income screen, maximize tax revenue, but don't let moral fall in the red zone, but aim for in the low 50ties. Next, set millitary spending to 0, while distributing 50-50 among research and social production. Millitary spending at this point is useless since you are buying the ships immediatly and building up your infrastructure is more important.
Having done so, go about a few turns and buying colony ships. This will give you about 5 colony ships in the first 7 turns. If you are lucky, and stumble upon profitable anomalies, you can send out as much as 3 extra ships. If you are supremely lucky, there also happens to be a minor race in the neighborhood.
If you have progressed a few turns, and are starting to run out of money, you should by now have researched a few techs. Go to the minor races, and talk to them. Persuade them to buy your tech, and since you hopefully have a diplomacy bonus, you should get big buck$ from it. The higher your diplomacy, the more money you can get for tech trades, or any trade at that.
More money means you can buy more colony ships, which means more planets. By now you have colonized some planets and are out of money, and AI ships start appearing. Let them colonize your 'mars', a level4 planet has no value and in many cases they just flip to your side in mid game.
A warning about Loaning!
Beware of loaning! Do it only after the utmost consideration, especially in early or embryo stage, because if you over do it (say, 2 or 3 times) you can be sure financial death awaits you. Against the lower AIs it might not have been a big deal, but the higher levels sure aren't so forgiving! The constructor rush.
All the way up to here you should have busily explored, or in the strategy I lined out, you already know where the fat resources are. You also, by massive social spending, should now have a planet with a couple of factories on it. Crank up millitary spending and rush to make some constructors, aim at making a constructor within 4 turns, and send them to nearby resources. Don't bother in the slightest with far away resources, you can be dead sure the AI or the Minors will long since your ship reaches the spot will have snatched it away. In fact, if minors get it, so much the better - it simply means they are keeping it warm for you while you are busy elsewhere
Such nice people, these minors.
All the different resources are very important, except possibly influence, unless of course an already powerful alien has control over it, or if you are aiming for a cultural victory. If you discover an AI beat you to a resource, quite likely because if they don't have many planets they adapt by controlling all resources, don't despair, but plot to take them down.
If you are confronted with that alien sitting unjustly on that precious economic resource, and it is still early game, there is plenty of hope yet. You should have researched lasers by now. Research a lot more so you have a bit of advantage over the others. Build a simple attack vessel, and simply seize control over that resource. Naturally they declare war on you, but that isn't a big deal yet. Wait a few turns, trade all the tech you have with all the minors for money, and you should easily have a 5000 credit surplus.
Now, because of your superior diplomacy (it really is a big help if you built the Diplomatic Translators achievement first, not too hard, and doesn't cost much, in fact you can often buy it outright), offer them your tech and money, and they are easily blinded by your majesty and accept peace.
Effectively this means you just bought their resources for a couple of 1000's. In any case, don't make the fatal mistake of waiting it out, because the AI is very clever to quickly upgrade their mining bases with weapons, and in the early and midgame your ships are no match for starbase defences. If you decide to take down an armed starbase, its going to be a very costly and lengthy affair since you most assuredly need a fleet of ships with your latest tech.
What next?
So you have colonized a majority of star systems compared to the others. Now it comes all down to your skill in micromananging them and by deploying clever layouts. For example, if you have this planet with that hammer 700% production bonus, hesitate not to designate that world as your production capital and throw it full with factories. This is a huge help, because having such a world and place enables you not only to produce capital ships at a moment's notice, but also to grab that galactic achievement within a mere couple of weeks.
So specialization is the key. Another very important aspect is to place those xeno farms on your planet, 1 on each at the very least, and those with farm bonuses are excellent places to put those economic structures like trade centers and stock exchanges, they bring in a lot of revenue, and this brings me to why morale is so important.
If you have a bunch of planets with farms, you can have a very large population base. If in addition you have well developed morale skills, you can consistently charge them with sky high tax rates and they still are happy. Having this constant flow of a lot of money enables you to put your industrial pedal to the metal, and set your industrial spending way above 65%.
I often have it so that after midgame, I can at the very least run my empire at constant 90% output, and still earn cash.
The AI starts to look beyond its borders.
If you have expanded correctly and sufficiently in the colonisation phase, you will have cornered some aliens, and high-level aliens don't like to be cornered. As a result they grow sour with you, and eventually they will declare war. Having the insight to predict when the AI will declare war is important. To do so, keep constant tabs on your diplomatic relations with the other races, often also looking at the rundown of positive and negative factors. As research progresses and the aliens start building their fleets, keep a close eye on what offensive weapons they pick and where they concentrated their defenses.
Trade is important. It keeps them happy,and you get some cash. But no matter how much you trade, if your millitary rating falls below theirs, they will declare war. If you notice everyone starts to grow weary of you, and you are not quite ready yet to pump out that defensive force, the only option you have is stalling. Keep them happy, pay tribute, give them tech, whatever it takes to smoothen your relationship.
Now the millitary rating is the primary statistic the AI uses to determine if it should go to war with you. Your millitary rating is defined as follows, the combined Hitpoints / 10 + Attack Points + Defense Points of your entire combat capable fleet. The total figure Att+Def+Hp of all the races combined, devided by the number of races, gives the average of this figure. Your Millitary rating is just the percentage of your figure to that average, 100 meaning exactly the average.
If your rating should fall below half of the others, you are seriously risking war.
Midgame
You are now at the stage where everything seems to be going according to plan. You control on average the most planets, have some mining starbaces, and are catching up in the technology gap, and planets are fully developed and upgrading. This is usually the time when some aliens decide you've been around long enough and finally declare war. I've run some tests, and it became apparant that beside the usual preventible wars by giving stuff away, there are also resolute wars. I've tried giving them everything, with relations in the neutral zone, yet they still declare war the next round.
By now you should know their millitary strengths and weaknesses, and obsessively focus on their weak spots. If you have only beam weapons, focus your millitary research on shields and mass drivers, etc.
There is however no single-way-fits-all approach, since the attack strategies and layout of weapons are as diverse as the races themselves. The drening seem to pack their ships chockful of beam weapons and no defences and creating a frightning attack potential. The Korx on the other hand seem to go for the balanced approach. Just watch what they are doing and adapt.
If they do attack, your fleet should be capable. Maximize military spending and turn out those defenders (all weapons no engines). Take your main fleet in enemy territory and seize their outlying planets. The AI still has a tendency to leave their own space wholly undefended, so grabbing their planets shouldn't be hard at all. Once you grabbed a few, sue for peace. Take advantage of the time by upping your defences, preparing the next invasion, and repeat, this should work well.
Another strategy I've found very helpful and quite amusing is this. If your opponent has few planets, but a massive millitary, make a few transports and some solid attack ships and equip them with fast engines. Send them in the middle of enemy territory, which is of course undefended, and attack and grab their planets. By carefully planning, saving and reloading and a bit of luck, you can take out an enemy race within 1 single turn despite their huge millitary.
In this fashion, they diminsh and wither, and you gain their planets and strengths, and at a certain point there isn't really any doubt who is going to win anymore.
Putting it all together.
Play clever, plan ahead, anticipate AI movements and don't let them catch you with your pants down. Keep your millitary at a competative level, not best, but competative, while focussing heavily on research. Once you are so much ahead of them researchwise, you can produce invinsible ships.
In the early game up to the midgame, minors play a very important part. They have plenty of cash, and little tech. You can give them tech at a pricelevel 3 times higher compared to the usual big races. Whenever you're short of cash, go to them. If, at some point, the alien races decide to elimate the minors, act first. Lign up some transports to their planets. Let the aliens do the dirty work by clearing their planet of ships, so you can take them at your leasure (after, of course, getting them to give you one big check for the last time).
Don't get down or panicky in the early game. The AI has a killer economy and you quickly fall behind, so rely on superior numbers: starbase control and number of planets, so you can catch up and surpass later. This is why diplomacy bonuses are so important; the ability to keep the AI happy until you are ready for them.
If some of you will find some points in here to be useful, my mission is complete
First of all, you need practice and experience. If you find that you are having a hard time beating the AI on normal, you are probably not ready yet, and the AI on higher difficulty settings feels very different from the one at the lower levels.
Pick your universe!
Try it out on small or medium first. There aren't too many planets, the game develops quickly, and you get a better feel for the AI. Also, with few planets, there is less time spend micromanaging your empire. In a huge or gigantic universe, the AI will have the definite and unwritten advantage of never tiring of micromanage. It will tweak and maximize every planet under its control, and do so every turn. I once started a tiny map against a genius setting AI, loaded cheats, gave myself load of money and revealed the map. I paid close attention to how the AI in the first stages of colonization operates and what it researches and tweaks its colonies.
Pick your enemies!
Which ones you choose aren't really that important, but don't pick too many at once. Try it out with 4 or 5 at a time. Also consider their ethical alignment and the one you have in mind. If you want to play as good, pick altarians and torians and the drath, as they share your alignment and are therefore less likely to declare war on you. I've seen a couple of times I play evil and the Altarians, apparantly out of nowhere, decide war on me because of my evilness.
Which starting bonuses and abilities should I pick?
Distribute your picks among Diplomacy, Economics, Morale, and Research. Highlevel AI's own you with their economies, especially in the beginning, it is therefor of supreme importance to have a healthy econ. to start with. Research is also of great importance because the AI seems to trade and share a lot of tech among themselves so often you have to compete against the combined research potential of 2 or more aliens. Strong economy and strong diplomacy skills are very important for reasons explained in the next section.
Politically, I usually choose Technologists or Industrialists, as I do not pick manufactering bonuses in my abilities, Industrialists give a nice boost nonetheless.
I have found it is imperative to not underestimate to importance of Morale, and I always pick a medium or high Morale bonus to begin with. Morale is sort of a universal boost. Its primary role is determining population growth and (low morale, less potential) economics because it also determines how high you can set your taxrate.
Starting the game!
So you are all fired up and anxious to send out those colony ships to show those pesky aliens whose boss! But hold on, not so fast! First take a deep breath, and look at the minimap. Observe how those stars are distributed, and see where everyone starts. If you're pushed in a corner with virtually no stars in the immediate surroundings - don't bother playing. If you are confident and very well experienced, you can later on always experiment, but for starters, pick a good starting point.
If your minimap looks okay, proceed with the next step, if it is worthless, get a new map by pressing CTRL+N until you find one that looks promising.
Now you have a map that looks just right for your future empire. The next thing to do is make a quicksave. Now, destroy your colony ship, and use your Flagship to explore around nearby star systems and scout for useful anomalies.
The thing to look for when you scout around are resources, the nearby star systems, and not in the least anomalies. It can be a killerboost if you just happen to have a 2500bc anomaly just under your nose, just make sure you get there before the AI.
When you look around, chart potentially useful systems, it pays to mentally make a plan of colonization. How many ships in which direction, how fast to get there (based on the distance to the aliens), and also important which systems not to bother with, either because they have no useful planets or because the system is too deep in alien territory.
The especially nefarious can always speed this up by loading the quicksave in cheat mode and press CTRL+U to reveal the map and immediatly spot where all the resources and frisky planets are. Just don't forget to load the map again in normal mode.
And so it begins!
Having noted mentally your plan of attack, or if you decide to go it by chance, here it begins. Prioritize the planets, if you have a rich cluster somewhere, send your ship there first so that colony can churn out colony ships fast. The key here is to be fast. Don't bother with millitary production to make the ships. Just buy them, but don't loan! Go to the income screen, maximize tax revenue, but don't let moral fall in the red zone, but aim for in the low 50ties. Next, set millitary spending to 0, while distributing 50-50 among research and social production. Millitary spending at this point is useless since you are buying the ships immediatly and building up your infrastructure is more important.
Having done so, go about a few turns and buying colony ships. This will give you about 5 colony ships in the first 7 turns. If you are lucky, and stumble upon profitable anomalies, you can send out as much as 3 extra ships. If you are supremely lucky, there also happens to be a minor race in the neighborhood.
If you have progressed a few turns, and are starting to run out of money, you should by now have researched a few techs. Go to the minor races, and talk to them. Persuade them to buy your tech, and since you hopefully have a diplomacy bonus, you should get big buck$ from it. The higher your diplomacy, the more money you can get for tech trades, or any trade at that.
More money means you can buy more colony ships, which means more planets. By now you have colonized some planets and are out of money, and AI ships start appearing. Let them colonize your 'mars', a level4 planet has no value and in many cases they just flip to your side in mid game.
A warning about Loaning!
Beware of loaning! Do it only after the utmost consideration, especially in early or embryo stage, because if you over do it (say, 2 or 3 times) you can be sure financial death awaits you. Against the lower AIs it might not have been a big deal, but the higher levels sure aren't so forgiving! The constructor rush.
All the way up to here you should have busily explored, or in the strategy I lined out, you already know where the fat resources are. You also, by massive social spending, should now have a planet with a couple of factories on it. Crank up millitary spending and rush to make some constructors, aim at making a constructor within 4 turns, and send them to nearby resources. Don't bother in the slightest with far away resources, you can be dead sure the AI or the Minors will long since your ship reaches the spot will have snatched it away. In fact, if minors get it, so much the better - it simply means they are keeping it warm for you while you are busy elsewhere
Such nice people, these minors.
All the different resources are very important, except possibly influence, unless of course an already powerful alien has control over it, or if you are aiming for a cultural victory. If you discover an AI beat you to a resource, quite likely because if they don't have many planets they adapt by controlling all resources, don't despair, but plot to take them down.
If you are confronted with that alien sitting unjustly on that precious economic resource, and it is still early game, there is plenty of hope yet. You should have researched lasers by now. Research a lot more so you have a bit of advantage over the others. Build a simple attack vessel, and simply seize control over that resource. Naturally they declare war on you, but that isn't a big deal yet. Wait a few turns, trade all the tech you have with all the minors for money, and you should easily have a 5000 credit surplus.
Now, because of your superior diplomacy (it really is a big help if you built the Diplomatic Translators achievement first, not too hard, and doesn't cost much, in fact you can often buy it outright), offer them your tech and money, and they are easily blinded by your majesty and accept peace.
Effectively this means you just bought their resources for a couple of 1000's. In any case, don't make the fatal mistake of waiting it out, because the AI is very clever to quickly upgrade their mining bases with weapons, and in the early and midgame your ships are no match for starbase defences. If you decide to take down an armed starbase, its going to be a very costly and lengthy affair since you most assuredly need a fleet of ships with your latest tech.
What next?
So you have colonized a majority of star systems compared to the others. Now it comes all down to your skill in micromananging them and by deploying clever layouts. For example, if you have this planet with that hammer 700% production bonus, hesitate not to designate that world as your production capital and throw it full with factories. This is a huge help, because having such a world and place enables you not only to produce capital ships at a moment's notice, but also to grab that galactic achievement within a mere couple of weeks.
So specialization is the key. Another very important aspect is to place those xeno farms on your planet, 1 on each at the very least, and those with farm bonuses are excellent places to put those economic structures like trade centers and stock exchanges, they bring in a lot of revenue, and this brings me to why morale is so important.
If you have a bunch of planets with farms, you can have a very large population base. If in addition you have well developed morale skills, you can consistently charge them with sky high tax rates and they still are happy. Having this constant flow of a lot of money enables you to put your industrial pedal to the metal, and set your industrial spending way above 65%.
I often have it so that after midgame, I can at the very least run my empire at constant 90% output, and still earn cash.
The AI starts to look beyond its borders.
If you have expanded correctly and sufficiently in the colonisation phase, you will have cornered some aliens, and high-level aliens don't like to be cornered. As a result they grow sour with you, and eventually they will declare war. Having the insight to predict when the AI will declare war is important. To do so, keep constant tabs on your diplomatic relations with the other races, often also looking at the rundown of positive and negative factors. As research progresses and the aliens start building their fleets, keep a close eye on what offensive weapons they pick and where they concentrated their defenses.
Trade is important. It keeps them happy,and you get some cash. But no matter how much you trade, if your millitary rating falls below theirs, they will declare war. If you notice everyone starts to grow weary of you, and you are not quite ready yet to pump out that defensive force, the only option you have is stalling. Keep them happy, pay tribute, give them tech, whatever it takes to smoothen your relationship.
Now the millitary rating is the primary statistic the AI uses to determine if it should go to war with you. Your millitary rating is defined as follows, the combined Hitpoints / 10 + Attack Points + Defense Points of your entire combat capable fleet. The total figure Att+Def+Hp of all the races combined, devided by the number of races, gives the average of this figure. Your Millitary rating is just the percentage of your figure to that average, 100 meaning exactly the average.
If your rating should fall below half of the others, you are seriously risking war.
Midgame
You are now at the stage where everything seems to be going according to plan. You control on average the most planets, have some mining starbaces, and are catching up in the technology gap, and planets are fully developed and upgrading. This is usually the time when some aliens decide you've been around long enough and finally declare war. I've run some tests, and it became apparant that beside the usual preventible wars by giving stuff away, there are also resolute wars. I've tried giving them everything, with relations in the neutral zone, yet they still declare war the next round.
By now you should know their millitary strengths and weaknesses, and obsessively focus on their weak spots. If you have only beam weapons, focus your millitary research on shields and mass drivers, etc.
There is however no single-way-fits-all approach, since the attack strategies and layout of weapons are as diverse as the races themselves. The drening seem to pack their ships chockful of beam weapons and no defences and creating a frightning attack potential. The Korx on the other hand seem to go for the balanced approach. Just watch what they are doing and adapt.
If they do attack, your fleet should be capable. Maximize military spending and turn out those defenders (all weapons no engines). Take your main fleet in enemy territory and seize their outlying planets. The AI still has a tendency to leave their own space wholly undefended, so grabbing their planets shouldn't be hard at all. Once you grabbed a few, sue for peace. Take advantage of the time by upping your defences, preparing the next invasion, and repeat, this should work well.
Another strategy I've found very helpful and quite amusing is this. If your opponent has few planets, but a massive millitary, make a few transports and some solid attack ships and equip them with fast engines. Send them in the middle of enemy territory, which is of course undefended, and attack and grab their planets. By carefully planning, saving and reloading and a bit of luck, you can take out an enemy race within 1 single turn despite their huge millitary.
In this fashion, they diminsh and wither, and you gain their planets and strengths, and at a certain point there isn't really any doubt who is going to win anymore.
Putting it all together.
Play clever, plan ahead, anticipate AI movements and don't let them catch you with your pants down. Keep your millitary at a competative level, not best, but competative, while focussing heavily on research. Once you are so much ahead of them researchwise, you can produce invinsible ships.
In the early game up to the midgame, minors play a very important part. They have plenty of cash, and little tech. You can give them tech at a pricelevel 3 times higher compared to the usual big races. Whenever you're short of cash, go to them. If, at some point, the alien races decide to elimate the minors, act first. Lign up some transports to their planets. Let the aliens do the dirty work by clearing their planet of ships, so you can take them at your leasure (after, of course, getting them to give you one big check for the last time).
Don't get down or panicky in the early game. The AI has a killer economy and you quickly fall behind, so rely on superior numbers: starbase control and number of planets, so you can catch up and surpass later. This is why diplomacy bonuses are so important; the ability to keep the AI happy until you are ready for them.
If some of you will find some points in here to be useful, my mission is complete
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