Is the AI updated to recognize and utilize the new options?

I've played a few games with "frequent" extreme planets, and the AI never seems to research the extreme technologies. I started at normal difficulty/intelligence, and I've increased a few levels, still with no results.

In my current game, I'm three years into a large universe on "tough" difficulty. I own around 90% of the planets because I'm the only one who researched any of the extreme techs.

As a result, I'm #1 in all categories despite significant underutilization of my worlds - most planets are less than half full, and only at 11 or 14 max population. I simply don't need to, because I have ~280 planets plus another 20+ colony ships still on the way while the other races combined have fewer than 30 planets (and losing, thanks to influence).

I'm nearly out of stuff to research - I researched the full missle path in four weeks (I do have very fast research) and the missle defense path in only three.

What gives? Am I missing something (or is the AI)?

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Given the amount of planets you have, I take it you have abundant habitables? I'm guessing that the AI shoves extreme colonization down the priority chain if there are a lot of normal habitable planets. In my games, I have planets set to common and habitables set to uncommon. At those settings extreme planets account for at least half of all planets, and easily 80% of the planets that don't come with the major and minor races. I find that the AI researches Extreme Colonization pretty well in those games. Not much choice, really.

280 planets in a large galaxy. Wow. I'm playing a gigantic galaxy and the major races have maybe 50-60 planets between the lot of them - me included. I guess the AI is comfortable with 30 planets and stops "worrying" about colonization.

Unfortunately, it seems the AI doesn't quite know how to deal with uncommon habitables. I set the difficulty up to Crippling for the first time and it's still looking to be a pushover.

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I've been playing large galaxies lately and I've been trying games with various extreme planet settings. It's a very nice setting they added. I think what's going is that with frequent extreme planets, the AI is not able to grab as many planets out of the gate. So, they have less research horsepower and it takes them a lot longer to get to the extreme colonization techs. I think you would need to raise the difficulty level to compensate since I believe one of the things higher difficulty levels provide is additional research bonuses for the AI. Otherwise you would need to run with lower extreme planet counts to make the AI more competetive research wise.

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