I'm not quite sure what you mean by "off-kilter". The way the game has apparently been abandoned while still having a number of bugs is highly disappointing, but I found the AI personalities that aren't bugged to be a significant improvement over those in DA.

In ToA it's much more of a hit-or-miss; while in DA or DL just about any race could emerge victorious once in a while, in ToA some races are nearly always sitting ducks while others always tend to take the first spot.

I would agree with qrtxian though that the non-broken races in ToA put up much more of a fight than the ones from DA or DL ever did.

I must say I love  the new tech trees. Unique buildings for each race are great.  And the fact you can trade ur unique techs is even more awesome.

But the buggy AI is awful I installed the patch to fix the AI, but that does not seem to work.  I am facing Altarians who built nothing but troop transports.  I'm playing on Tough and its a cakewalk.

irrevenant I installed and ran one of these mods, it did no good.  In fact it broke Altraians for me the first game I played after I installed it.  They used to use combat ships but not anymore.

I am not interested in the cause of the malfunction, only that it exists.  I have been a supporter of Stardock for MANY MANY years, as my member Number would indicate, and between this and the state of Elemental I do not feel good at all.

And as far as DA goes, I did not play it much as well.  I really did not enjoy the way the buildings worked for all races back then,  I am extremely happy about the unique tech trees because it makes the game a lot more sane.  I did not like spamming one type of building on a planet and making mega production or mega research planets.  Now you have a nice mix of buildings on your planets and it works very well, this I am very happy with.  I especially love "one per planet" limitations.

Thnx Marvin. I'll definitely give it more of a try. Just that my current game seems to be a wash.  I was great friends with Altarians, too.  Given their shortcomings I thought I can have them be my trade partner.... Then it turned out that I got one too many planets colonized or some nonsense and everyone and their mother declared war on me.  This should be a cause of concern usually, but the AI was pathetic, only Torians could mount an effective attack... for a while anyway.

When I do play again, I may even play with Thalans in the game, now that I started to play with surrenders disabled... The whole surrender thing just made the game unbelievably dumb.  I got tired of everyone surrendering to Thalanas.

I must say my current game went much much better.  I actually surrendered. It was my fault I lost, I provoked the Korath too early into a war and my network of military starbases could not cope with their 500 missile power fleets.  I took chunk of his territory and I thought I was ok since I saw no transports, then I realized too late he doesnt use transports D:...

Anyway it was very good game.  Next time I'll be more aggressive early. I realized building a network of starbases is not so good since even they can fall.  Maybe I;ll still use em but I'll picket each one.  Since I play Yor with isolationist trait, it only makes sense to get mil starbases with -2 speed for total of -3 speed in my culture.

How did the Korath get 500-power fleets "early" in the game?

I meant I provoked them before I was ready, not early in the game, but too early for me.  Since I spent so long buildign up my network of starbases to slow anything going through my culture to a crawl, I was unable to get enough ships for war.  And I provoked him into attacking me just as I was starting to roll them out. 

I started my experience with Galactic Civilizations II from Steam Ultimate version and I cannot complain. I have not noticed the flaws mentioned above.

I had encountered a bug in one of my early games.

I was not aware of it. I just thought I was a noob. Ai started to invade me with fleets of around 500 attack and maximum logistics. My Drengins countered them with Attack 200 but much more hp, but I was loosing ships faster that I could build them.

Then I noticed something weird. The newly colonized Arcean planet produced 130 research flasks. That made me thinking.

I checked their stats. Thay got sick bonuses to some of the abilities. Economy around 800% and Industry with Research around 500-700% (I don't remember the rest).

They got Nightmare Missiles at the time I just finished Harpoons III,

They were three races (Yor, Arcean and Thalan I think - not so sure now) allied together (all had that weird boosted stats). They wiped out the rest, so I was their only target.

I had to start over but now in every game I check my enemies statc from time to time.

It has not happened again for now.

The AI on one of my games(almost all of them actually) built and saved ships over the core ships that had anywhere from 5000 to 10000+ attack(!), i researched the proper millitary techs and suddenly i could build one ship and some transports and win the game......im going to disable the Telenanth Mega Event and the minor version.

/derp

lag double post.....

Oh! Thank you for the information. I now remember that there was an event like this (... we must stop them or they will eventually become too powerful ... - or something like that).

So the reason I have not ancoutered it any more is that I switched events and mega events off (as well as technological and ascension victories)

Because Ascension and Technological victories are too abstract and unlogical for me, they also shorten the game.

I also switched off: surrenders (It gives too big advantage for high influence races - In one of my games Thalans made 5 other AIs surrender without starting wars with them), tech trading and tech stealing (It prevents me from powergaming and keeps the races different).