Can you check to see if the inactive AIs have a colony square on their worlds?

I had one round in the campaign where my enemy never did anything, and when I took their homeworld, they had a full build queue, but no initial colony, therefore no production or research (or food, for that matter).

I never hit CTRL-N, L or anything else and the AI still sometimes acts like a smacktard. I'm talking about painful or
higher difficulty - so thats not the only issue.

I'm playing a game on Normal difficulty, Medium galaxy, 5 random races. Four are progressing normally, one has not done a thing off -world. They partially developed their two planets and that's it. I have no idea why they were (they surrendered when I conquered the small world) so passive.

Unfortunately, it seems your solution isn't working for me, Skyjack. Every game I try to play now has dead AI, no matter how often I regenerate the map, or start entirely new games,

@Reveilled: i think i know where all the AI production has gone... they're more than 500 BC in debt, so they've cut off their military/social/research spending.

i bet if you look at the graphs of production or research or whatever, you'll see them rise for a while, then suddenly crash... or do they glide down? i wonder if the AI's try for a soft landing when they run out of bank?

i face the same problem in my games, don't you?

there comes a point when you can't run a negative balance anymore, and you have to build some econ buildings, set up trade routes, and swich to rebublic, before things get ugly.

if you misjudge the switch-over from "maximum burn" to "sustainable growth", research tax-enhancing techs too slowly, and don't start building the revenue improving stuff until it's too late...

... well, then it's too late, because now you've got expenses so high they eat all your income, and leave nothing for production of ships for further expansion or defense, nothing for building the stock exchanges that could help the situation, and nothing for researching republic or other revenue enhancing techs.

the only hope seems to be to grow a bigger tax base, and maybe tearing down some buildings to reduce expenses?

slow and painful. i pitty the AI that mis-times the transition and suffers the fate. it's like some sad beetle that's fallen into a jar, and can't climb the sides...

i bet if you look at the graphs of production or research or whatever, you'll see them rise for a while, then suddenly crash... or do they glide down? i wonder if the AI's try for a soft landing when they run out of bank?

No, I've used cheats to watch that they do at the outset of the game, and what they do is move the colony ship to the nearest planet (usually the one in their system if they aren't the Thalians), send the survey ship to get anomalies, and that's it. They don't buy ships, social projects, or anything, just flat nothing for forever.

However, even dead AIs seem to occasionally buy things (the Torians seem to buy a scout ship even when dead), so that indicates they have the money to purchase things, just that by and large they don't.

I just got the game last night and I am having this problem. Is there any way to fix the issue?