Which version to buy for best AI?

I myself, found DA to have very competent AI, although I didn't quite play DA as long as I have played ToA, and went straight to DA, skipping DL altogether.

   1. I don't remember the AI expansion problem ever existing in DA, and believe that was introduced into ToA.
   2. Brad stated there was a serious logic problem he discovered with AI's not building social improvements, it was posted back in Apr 2008 and I am not sure if it was meant for DA or ToA (it does exist in ToA, but only for certain civs).
   3. AI's were more balanced due to the fact that everyone used pretty much the exact same tech tree's in DA.

   4. As far as ToA is concerned, I have 'somewhat' hurdled ToA's problems by NOT USING the AI civ's personalities and setting them ALL to 'Generic' during game setup. This allows Evil civ's to expand normally, although certain civ's expand way way better than others (for some reason), and it's apparently due to some reason I am unaware of. I am still doing testing to see if setting them to Generic gets rid of the problems of certain civ's not building planetary improvements. Civ's that do not are Iconians, Torians, and a few others. Both problems have been acknowledged by Stardock, and although 2.02 does not fix these (they exist in all patches), they have said they will address bugs present in the game (although this gaurentees nothing, but Stardock tends to do what it says it will).

THESE LARGER BUGS I MENTIONED ABOVE - only show themselves when playing on the larger/largest of maps.

    5. ToA has a much expanded tech tree, options, much better graphics... so on and so on. I almost didn't reconize the game from DL and DA there is so much more available.

Even though I have DA and ToA (I don't think you can get ToA w/o getting DA), I would never go back... Too much 'new' stuff that I would miss. But that is my suggestion, set all civ's to 'Generic' personality if playing larger maps, and you won't notice those bugs (civ's will expand, and they will probably all build social improvements<--not 100% sure yet though).

Thank you for your answer. I think you collected the relevant point very clearly.

I see your point regarding the greatly expanded content to be found in ToA... That is why the AI problems caused such a dilemma for me, but if setting their personality to Generic mostly solves the problem, probably purchasing ToA is the better solution in this case. Especially because I plan to play mostly large maps, with a great variety in civilizations

I have one concern left, though - how much Generic a Generic civ will be? I mean - can a Generic AI utilize the civ-specific tech tree, civ bonuses, and set its strategy according to them? Or will they lose "only" the personality (if yes - what exactly does belong to personality, how much noticeable is the change)? So, what exactly will be lost with the process?

Nevertheless, I think I will go with ToA, and hope that Stardock will fix the problem.

So far the only thing of notice seems to be that the Korath won't use spore ships when set to Generic; they'll use transports instead.

I'm not sure where galacticdoom said that, but I'm fairly positive it was his experience; I haven't tried it myself because I'm still in love with DA.

There was a conversation about it over in this thread I had with Tolmekian (on page 2):
https://forums.galciv2.com/333777/page/2

but here was the jist of it:

No answer to the above question yet. I do remember seeing some info about that somewhere, but can't remember where or what it said.

- Civ's still stay evil, good, neutral... generic won't change that.
- Civ's attitudes appear to stay the same also... it doesn't seem to do much to tell you the truth other than make them all play a bit more normal.. like they did in DA. Only thing I noticed was that Korath use Transports instead of Spore ships (like SS said). Of course I remember Korath always using Spore Ships in DA, but don't think I remember Korath ever using Spore Ships in ToA with their own personality or on generic.
- It's been verified (in my current game, as well as what others have said) that Torians and Iconians do indeed build social improvements on all planets when set to Generic, and they actually build them quite well, they seemed to use special tiles pretty darn good (except for farm tiles and culture tiles, which really dont matter too much).

So really as Tolmekin said, you just need to set Drengin, Korath, Yor, Iconians, and Torians to Generic, and the rest can stay how they are.

Setting Korath and Drengin on generic makes them both some tough civ's.. they really set out to be conquerers. Korath are especially nasty. In my current game, Thalans, Korath, and Drengin are all very powerful... But Korath fleets are flying around already with weapons in the hundreds, while I'm still at fleets with 80attack at most.

Thank you both for your help. I do not really understand how bugs of this scale may be possible in a game of this quality, but with these workarounds I think we can live with them temporarily

This is somewhat of a mystery even for me.

Patch after patch is released, hundreds of hundreds of issues is improved/resolved.

But certain game-breaking issues remains (witch would not be diffitult fo fix) whitout anyone from stardock even caring to comment. If you can live with game-breaking bugs like  this - fine. I Can´t.

Issues like some A.I:s just not caring to expand, research cost suddenly multiplies itself with 3,17 for certain techs, or situations when suddenly ALL A.I-players start to build influence-starbases near my home planet (while not building any supporting modules ever, just more and more of bases ) until there is almost  30 of them - all just having the base module built - it´s just horrible and demostrates how AWFUL the A.I actually sometimes is.

Or when the Corath clan (witch is heading for a victory) suddenly think that a fair deal is to trade the Research treaty - for a Research treaty + 19 planets (including 3 invaded homeworlds + 2 economical and 1 industrial capital + 2 super-plants). That´s quite a nice trade! After all this time the game has been released, The Terran "super diplomat ability" sometimes seems awfully powerful, don´t you agree? 

Iconians think that they wan´t to aid me in my war against somebody somewere by providing me some of their "finest starships". Theese ships turns out to be 2 constructors + 1 colony ship. The colony-ship actually was part of colony-ship convoy consisting of 3 colony ships all heading for a planet to be colonized. Guess who got the planet

I agree that DA has the best A.I. But the gamebreakring issues exist even there. That´s why I still rather play Civilization IV than this game. 

It was commented on back when it first came up during 2.0's development, and Cari looked into it and said that she thought she'd solved it then (basically, the AIs were being excessively afraid of culture flipping to the point that they would not even colonize planets with any culture hanging over them). However it seems the issue went deeper than what she had found.