Yes. Certain races seem to almost always do better than others. It may have to do with map settings though. It is very tough to balance them all, on all map sizes, all difficulties, so I do see it as a difficult task. Having the AIs play without a human is a tool Stardock uses and more of it could be done to insure better balance.

th torians have a great population bonus... and that really adds up.... the Thalans are one of the major obstacles as well, considering their production

Wow. There have been so many threads on this subject. I think it is pretty much down to random luck, game settings, your style of play etc........

Every player seems to have different strong/weak races.

Hum, maybe you randomized the intelligence? This seems to put some different intelligent races in the galaxy. Some wery stoupid and some very bright.

For my part, i would say that the Drengin seems to be a minor race in the easy and normal difficulty level, but when you get to painfull and higher, they kick your butt big time! The Yor are even worse! The arceans don't seem to be doing anything but sitting around with huge fleets and the Torians are the first to be destroyed! I've never seen the Torians survive with higher difficulty levels. Strange, with their population bonus, especially now with the 1.11 patch it should give then an advantage.

The knor are getting tought too. Altarians are mighty and the humans are the weakest race most of the time. They still manage to survive among huge empires, but they stays the weakest all the time.

It's a matter of luck, sometimes they end up screwed by a poor starting position.

For my part, i would say that the Drengin seems to be a minor race in the easy and normal difficulty level, but when you get to painfull and higher, they kick your butt big time! The Yor are even worse! The arceans don't seem to be doing anything but sitting around with huge fleets and the Torians are the first to be destroyed! I've never seen the Torians survive with higher difficulty levels.

But yeah, the human empire always seem to be very passive, stuck in some remote order and don't really do much, though they do surivive at least for a while.

I played mostly at tough, and 1 level at painful , 1 at maschoistic, The Drengin are okay, they hold their own , nothing more. Typically they get involved in some stupid war with another AI, that goes nowhere...

In my games (tough) the Drengin usually conquer the galaxy... They engage in a war and WIN IT. Then repeat with another AI.

I think there is something to the idea that sometimes a particular AI doesn't initiate properly.

Tough / intelligent doesn't get even economic bonuses, just the full AI. Just because a race is passive though, doesn't mean its broken, it is actually a built in feature. The developers have said that each game the civs will have their aggression randomly determined. It could have been a combination of getting a bum start in the colonization phase and a low aggression factor for that game. Supposedly it's there so that you never know exactly what to expect from the AI's, making them less predictable. I've had the Terrans after my head in the first year once even though I was a good race, which definately took me by surprise. I think my jaw actually hit the floor when I got the war declaration out of the blue when I was making plans to ally with them.

I also find that in the higher difficulties, the Drengin and really most military minded races do better. I guess with incredible economies (and any unmentioned bonuses on the really high levels) to support their military, it becomes a much more powerful strategy. In my last game the Drengin declared war on 4 civs, one right after another, and wasn't too far from winning them. Their ships were very powerful, and they used missiles and armor when everyone but me used mass drivers and armor. They had gotten almost all the soldiering techs and the first to get orbital fleet defense so conquering them was a long and painful process. I couldn't have done it at that point without the Arceans tossing countless waves of ships at them divert their attention and weakening their defenses. Sometimes I followed Arcean Troops for invasions if I knew would fail even with a mass driver attack so that I didn't have to kill off so many of my people. The Drath and the Iconians were of minimal use in that conflict, but I guess every bit did help.