My first Slowest tech game: AI broken?

Which races? The Altarians and Drengin usually stay right up there with me in research on Tough, despite all my NLCs. The others are much slower though. I usually play "slow" tech.

How much of a speed boost did you get passing by all those starbases?

Some possibilities:

The AI focuses on colonization above all else. They won't do more than token research until all the planets are occupied. You're playing on a gigantic map there with just two opponents, so the colonization phase is going to be *long*. By the looks of it, you prioritized planet development over colonization, so your research was up and running way before theirs.

You have your spending set at 100% research in the screenshot. So not only are your planets better developed, but you're using pretty much the whole research capacity. AND you have an extremely hefty research bonus ability.

I would also hazzard a guess that the AI was at war with each other, so will have been concentrating on military spending.

Basically, the map and number of opponents were all set up for this. Try either more opponents or less habitable planets so that the AI colony rush ends sooner and they develop their planets before you have too much of a lead on them.

There were three more races near the start of the game, but they were wiped out. Colonization had been done for SEVEN YEARS by the time I took that screenshot. Yes, the AI was paying a lot of attention to war, but I've seen them do research while at war before. They don't just stick one-damage one-armor components the whole ten years, especially the Arceans. Yes, I did have a major research bonus ability, but I always do, and this doesn't usually happen. Further, I went way longer than usual before developing. I was afraid that I'd be way behind until I actually looked at the graphs (though that was several years before the screenshot). At any rate, they got up and running before me. And they had multiple research and economy resources, which I didn't.

My best guess is that it was some sort of freak occurence. I was just curious as to whether that was actually happening by design.

Noumenon: A ship near the bases gets +32 movement, while an enemy gets -16. I've yet to see whether I can reduce them to zero movement, but I doubt it, too cheesy. You can get some good military bonuses from a base network like that too, but they're actually much too expensive to be useful for anything but idle amusement. I put 128 constructors into that, and it was basically defenseless.

My apologies, that didn't look like a completely colonized map. Yeah I'd go with freak occurence too, then. I've never noticed this problem and I usually play on slowest.

That said, it's difficult to judge the scales but it looks from the screenshot as if the Arceans have a research production of 1500 or more. Pitiful compared to yours, but not unusually low (is it?). I don't think I've ever seen any AI anywhere close to your figure below masochistic.

I don't think I've ever seen any AI anywhere close to your figure below masochistic.

Hee hee, yeah. I like to keep an edge.   

In my current game, I've got one planet with over 3000 research (and climbing). It's a class 29 that's near a sector edge, so it can take quite a few more starbases than the usual four, plus it's got Hyper Computers on another planet and the Omega Research and Tech Capital for itself. And I just went to war with the Terrans over two research resources...

All hail the dark, relentless and ever-hungering--um, I mean, the gray, wandering, and vaguely satisfied forces of Neutral!

Edit: For the record, the game I posted shots of at the start of the thread was abundant/uncommon/rare habitable/planets/stars with tight clusters. Lots of worlds to use, but lots of empty space to trawl for resources.