[Quote] from The Seer in the post,"The Drengins are not expanding" by JubJub 15" : " I noticed that during the game setup, if you start the inteligence to "fool" select your oponents, then set inteligence to though and then switch on another oponent "his" inteligence is still set to fool.

That was with an older version tho.

Just something you may want to try out. " [End Quote]

I tried this out in a non Metaverse game setup. It apperars to have this exploit. This issue is some thing for Stardock to examine. If you set the difficulty to "Cakewalk" ; disable 8 opponents; switch difficulty back up again; enable the 8 opponents again; now you can start at higher difficulty/intelligence with one opponent while the other 8 opponents are at "Fool/Cakewalk" intelligence/difficulty.

I've also had this happen to me in a game where I swear that I had all the nine opponents set at tough/intelligent,without randomize intelligence. After I had met 4 of them their civilizations were very small and primitive compared to mine. I checked their intelligence in foreign policy window \ data tab \ misc. They were all at "Fool".
One annoying part of this exploit is that it cannot be checked on until we meet the other civilizations. But this is also the propper way to have a general game so that you do not know who and where your opponents are.

Also, do a search with the word "expanding". There are other comments about this issue.
If this is already being addressed then thankyou for your time.

-Wade