I have the beta and the AI most certainly does still do a massive land grab as early as possible. That was supposed to changed to where they wouldn't do that. Every habitable planet in the galaxy - of any size - is colonized within the first 40-50 turns.
That's annoying all by itself. Let me tell you what I find more annoying. That massive landgrab is done exclusively in my direction.
I got tired of being crowded early on and being forced into a land grab as aggressive as the AI, so I started a game with only half the opponents (four), on a gigantic galaxy, with plenty of habitable planets and kept reloading until it put me on the opposite side of the galaxy from everyone else. I had a nice big cluster of stars all to myself.
I kept an eye on the influence spheres on the mini map. Within the first 10 turns, the colony rush was on and I kept seeing new little globes of influence near the other races. The thing is, those little globes of new influence kept coming toward me. I watched all four opponents grab a planet that HAD to be on the edge of their range, then doing the same thing a few turns later.
One colony at a time, the little globes creeped closer and closer to me. One colony to extend their range, then on to a planet on the new extreme edge of range. Lather, rinse, repeat. They ignored star systems close to them. They ignored star systems in the opposite direction. They ignored star systems close to the other races. They were making a DIRECT beeline for Earth - all four of them - one colony at a time.
Once they got within their range of my little cluster, a MASSIVE armada of colony ships - dozens of them - spread out and grabbed everything I hadn't grabbed already. No more one planet every few turns, they were grabbing EVERYTHING - all at once. The Arceans very nearly got Mars. It was only once that settled down that they started colonizing the systems closer to themselves. ONLY THEN, NOT BEFORE.
I'm going to start over and try to recreate that galaxy, where I'm on the opposite side from everyone else, then I'm going to unfog the map. I want to see what they're doing. I'll bet you they had a whole armada of colonizers parked at extreme range, just waiting for a new colony to extend their range toward me.
