Svinlesha

I'm not sure I understand. What good are fast ships, if they're too weak to actually do damage to opponent fleets?

Yeah, I wish it was possible to build cheaper, previously researched improvements first, even if you have already researched more advanced improvements. I doesn't make sense to me that just because I've figured out how to build Research Centers that I suddenly forget how to build Xeno Labs, for example. And this problem makes progress through the research tree all that more complicated.

0110100 : Something else I’ve noticed, as a beginner, in a couple of my games – one on challenging, one on tough. I’ve seen the research rate of an opponent AI sudden jump through the roof. For example, in my latest game I was playing a custom race with 15% research bonus plus technologist political affiliation (for a starting tech rate bonus of 35%, I think). During the entire build-up phase of the game I remained comfortably in the lead, tech-wise.