Note: this may belong better in AARs, but since this relates to the modding projects I've been doing, I thought I'd post it here.

So I ran another AI vs. AI test game ("playing" as a minor race) the other day, studying some of the AIs that have been having problems, and a few I don't play against that much. The AIs were the Terrans, Krynn, Arceans, Torians, Korx, Drath, Thalan, Iconians - an even mixture of AIs set to personalities 8 and 11 - and Korath using their original AI, which I've been trying to get to work.

Rapidly, the Krynn, Torians, and Terrans emerged as the game leaders. The Drath somehow got started in a cluster with just one habitable planet outside their home system, leaving them in last. The Thalan and Korath had to share another tiny cluster and wound up with 9 planets between them. The Korx died early on. The Arceans did well in the colonization game, but their lack of speed crippled them in a war against the Krynn (who had the fastest ships in the game) and they surrendered soon after the end of the Korx. And the Iconians colonized a gigantic number of planets, but failed to research any weapons techs at all, even when the Drath began invading their planets.

So who ultimately won?

The Iconians.

Yes, the Iconians were able to use their incredible research abilities to push through a tech victory without ever building one warship, though they bought a few from the Terrans and Krynn. I was very pleased to see this happen, as it was definitely a focused strategy on the Iconians' part - I'm not certain whether they deliberately ignored the military techs (though that's actually a possibility, given how things worked out), but either way, they definitely were planning a research victory for some time. I've always optimized my Iconians for research strategies, as it's one of the things their tech tree is good at, but this is the first time I've really seen the AI pursue it. They may also have paid off the Krynn to attack the Drath - somebody did, and it certainly wasn't the Drath themselves - and if so, that would be pretty good as well, as it's what I would have done in their place.

All in all, definitely not something I've ever seen from the AI before, and very interesting.