Absolutely Sick of the AI (inverted comas)

That's not a mistake, though.  That's intentional.

They extort you because they believe you're too weak to defend yourself against them if they should attack.  The problem isn't so much the AI behavior, as it is the use of generic text.  Telling me I rock when just a few turns ago they wanted money in exchange for not eating my flesh just doesn't fly.  But just pretend they still hate you and are only saying it to kiss your butt.

Ok that seems reasonable - not one of my biggest gripes anyway.

Wish someone could explain / correct the 1st one - that really is the big party killer for me

Hear from you/someone else soon

I've been playing DL since it first came out but only upgraded to ToA/DA a month ago.  I think the ToA AI is broken. 

Recently I've been playing ToA with medium maps on "painful" with 5 civs.  In each of my last three games, between 1-3 of the other civs have not build a single warship.  Then some other warmongering AI declares war on one of the defenseless AIs and a slaughter ensues...

... until I intervene.  I have discovered that I can trade my ships to the defenseless AI for virtally all of their money, techs and, in some cases, all of their planets too!

This has created a very bizarre (and, frankly, unfun) dynamic in my last few games where, say, the Torians haven't built a single ship and the Terrans (with the highest military rating) declare war on them.  My (custom) empire (with the second highest military rating) offers some of my ships to the Torians who give me all of their planets.  Terran-Torian War over in one turn.  I win.  Then the Terrans declare on the Krynn (who also haven't built a single ship).  Out of the goodness of my heart, I offer the Krynn some of my ships in exchange for all of their planets and they agree.  Terran-Krynn War over in one turn.  I win.  Now I control about 60% of the galaxy and I haven't even fired a shot or built a single influence starbase.  Game over -- I can play like crap the rest of the game and there is really no way for me to loose.

My last three ToA games have been variants of the above.  It is hard for me to conclude that the AI is working properly.

Resilient, arent' they?

The point with war is that when you find an objective, you attack until you reach it -- why should AI react differently?

I'd even say they're pretty good at it since they DO sustain that overwhelming productivity ratio as much as their algorithm decide to.

I haven't read Sun-Tzu yet but I'd think when you loose that many fleets you would try softer targets after a time or at least a bit while you attack the big target.

Couldn't 'they' write in some code like (I'm no comp. programmer ) If military rating drops by certain % over short temporal scale - uncouple current target? I don't know

I realise it's proabably a difficult algorithm to program but crikey its like they have a Fleet gathering point on your starbases every game... haven't seen much different any time I've played.

Sorry could you clarify your last sentence about productivity algorithms?

Not sure of your what your refering to - that the manitain their productivity at high levels when they are at war and still loosing?

Hear from you soon

They're caught in a loop of continual outputs until they simply destroy that specific starbase, if you fall back in research too fast then they'll send even more with better weapons.

That requires plenty of Production.

I have to agree that it's a major weakness on the AI's part to go after fortified starbases unless they have masses and masses of suicide ships to do it.  Starbases don't have the offensive punch of fleets, but they can be made quite defensible against low-end weapons.

The AI is not definitely very strong what comes to military strategy, but the deal making is by far its biggest shortcoming (this is on TA v2.02 and masochistic/obscene). They sell their planets for tech, ships etc. You don't actually need to colony rush much, just buy the damn planets from the AI. They can sell an undeveloped class26 planet for some lowly tech in early game. That just blows. I guess it's easier to give the AI a 400% bonus to production than to fix the trading algorithms etc. but that really sucks as you can't really afford to NOT to take advantage of this because of the obscene bonuses of the AI. Otherwise you'll be outcolonized and fast.

I have created a post explaining the phenomenom described here. Please check it out if interested.

https://forums.galciv2.com/360797

Hell, at times the AI just seems oblivious to anything you are doing.

Because the AI did such a lousy job of R&D I play most of my games with everyone maxed out from the start.  Otherwise I tend to end up miles ahead unless I slow myself down so I just cut to the chase to see what the AI will do in a balanced game.

I go to war with the Torians and I am playing as the Terrans.  They started it by attacking a starbase with a group of ships that was not strong enough to wipe it out.  They are rated the strongest faction in the game, I am like 4th because I build no Defenders at all.

I had a few fleets in the area that jump across the border to respond.  I encounter nothing but defenders (a huge downer in its own right that should be corrected) sitting on planets waiting to be wiped out.  It is a pain, as everything is fully updated, but accomplished in a turn or two.  I invade 4 or 5 planets with the transports I had kept ready and start building up for a real invasion.  I send my new transports to my old staging point on their border.  A big mistake.

I had advanced a ways away from there.  My combat fleets were at the front.  They sent a powerful fleet of major warships around my flank, though another species territory and they appear back at the starbase, which happens to be right next to the 25-35 double troop transports I have assembled for an invasion.  They attack the starbase.  I try to run my ships away.  I run right into another major fleet.  I made a mistake and am being punished for it.  They are all within a weeks travel from the enemy ships.  They should be wiped out during the enemy turn.

So far all is well and good.  But then they simply fly right by my transports and head back towards home.  Those ships were totally unarmed and had minimal defenses.  It would have been a slaughter and would have set me back a few months to a year in launching an attack.

Whatever happened it was bad.  Either the AI did not see my ships because they didn't put sensors on their ships, or they saw them and did nothing about it.

Well at least they're doing something right.  My only guess about the not shooting your transports into so much space dust is that with your starbase destroyed they got sucked into a 'go to rally point' command.