Changes to AI/glitches
Gigantic map/suicidal difficulty
1. Thalans - The Thalans have a problem during/after the colony rush. I noticed that all their colonies have 0 military, 0 social, and 0 research. The Thalans are bankrupt and take a long time to pay off the debt, they like to build too many expensive factories during the colony rush. After the colony rush the Thalans are busy paying off the debt while other races are catching up, this is where they drop down. After they are finished paying off the debt after a little bit they need to pay off more debt again. It seems around 66% of the buildings on their planets are factories. A fix might be to give the Thalans a "One per planet" factory on the techtree (Torians' One per planet factory?) early on and move the manufacturing matrix factories techs back. A second suggestion might be to make the a new building with weaker stats than the Hyperion Matrix "One per planet". The AI should try to avoid building the Hyperion Matrix in their capital. The AI usually builds it in its capital and have 18-22 bil population with 20-30% approval rating. Would it be possible to add an exception line ("any planet except capital") to the building so the AI doesn't build it in its capital.
2. Altarians - In one of my games the Altarians had no attack ships/miltary for 2-3 years after the game started. They kept researching hulls, think they had huge hulls researched but still no weapons. Altarians like to research new hulls too much in my opinion. They had 30-40 planets. In the same game the Kyrnn kept researching factories they had 60-70+ planets with industrial sectors and had nothing to build. They have not yet research any weapons tech to build any attack ships. Same thing for the Korx in my game, but forgot what the Korx were doing/researching.
3. Terrans - Never play games with Terrans before. Their tech tree in my opinion isn't very good. Only one unique tech Innovation Complex. The rest of the techs are shared by other races, Terrans need a few more unique techs.
4. Arceans - I think this race is handicap/doesn't get the same bonuses as the other races. In all my games they are always rank #10, last in population, economy etc. Description saids they have a strong military but they don't. Other races can colonize around 50+ colonies they have around only 15. This is such a big difference. In the 2.03 update notes it saids they are more aggressive at colonizing. Is it the speed of their colony ships that is the problem?
5. I think the Arceans have always been affected by the "colonizing bug". The bug started to happened in my games a few days ago. The AI would stop launching colony ships from its planets, the starport would get filled up. Once in a while 20 turns? it would launch three? colony ships from its planets. Below are the races that are affected in my games, it's starting to be annoying. Drengin, after a while Kora, sometimes Yor, Korx. The Dregin have a serious problem than the other races, they stop laucnhing colony ships after they have 7-8 colonies. I turned cheat mode on just to see and it seems the colony ships do not get auto launch from their planets and do not go to their rally points properly. I stopped playing because of the above.
6. Torians - I did noticed some glitch, the colonies that the Torians colonize later they stop building any structures, not even a starport. They have 8 bil max population on these colonies and all tiles were empty except the Initial Colonies. Torians had around 20+ empty planets when they had 70+ total planets.
7. Iconians - "Barter Station" markets not being able to auto upgrade to "Merchant Emporium" is annoying when you have to go to every colony to remove the old market and build the new one.
8. Ability for AI to demolish population buildings and replace it with something else once the population on the planet reaches a certain point, 75%? Sometime the Torians or another race builds two population increasing buildings on the same planet. What a waste later on.
9. Initial colones no longer take 1 tile!
10. Military Star bases-modules added to military starbases to build ships
11. Less memory usage for GC2, was done to Sins hope it's possible on GC2.
12. Maintaince cost for ships lower by a lot, 35-50%
13. Cost of weapons, engines etc cost lower.
14. Rebel faction- at war at everyone, rebel ships can spawn anywhere where there is low approval rating.
15. Pirate ships- can spawn anywhere where there is low approval rating or near trade routes. Once you have the tech you can have diplomancy with the pirates.
16. New scripted AI for all factions. On planets with low population the AI would treat them as uncolonize, gives all those unused colony ships the AI has after the colony rush. Say a planet has low population, the AI would load colony chips with population from very high population planets to low pop planets.
17. New tech that gives players the ability to restore planet quality. Takes a long time to build and cannot be purchase.
18. Three? new techs that adds thrusters to starbases. 1-3 movement per turn.
19. Higher regen of anomalies, and depending on the bonus the anomaly give, it can take multiple turns to explore.