I recently played a game on "challenging" with three other races: the Arceans, Terrans and Yor with a large galaxy and medium research level. Anyway, I was testing a custom race I had made and I noticed that as soon as I met the Arceans (around turn 6) they had six planets under their control!
They dominated the map soon so that half the galaxy was under their control. They even took colony ships across my territory and colonized on the other side. The Terrans only got the chance to colonize their starting system before they were surrounded. They also had a crazy amount of technology and were the top player in every category!
Everything about them seemed fishy, their colony ships were far, far faster than mine from the start (mine had two impulse engines attached) and they were able to produce ships at an obscene rate.
The Arceans had almost 5,000bc in their treasury, 87% approval rating, at least 500 million people on each colony. I don't see how it possible to do this and I am very perplexed. I decide to spend money on espionage just to see what was going on. They didn't have any precursor mines, just a 100% manufacturing bonus on their home world.
Needless to say that with relations to the Arceans rapidly cooling, I quit the game with no hope of winning.
Has anyone else seen this kind of AI-super-colony-economic-military-resource-technology- influence-rush?