I truely think the computer is cheating or can speand even if at -500 bc

There is simply not enough information to answer your question. How many planets does the computer have? How much money did it have in it's treasury? Did it sell or trade tech to get more money? Did it trade for the ships from another race? There are lots of possibilities here. It is a natural recation to be suspicious, but there are also explanations that do not require the computer to "cheat".

I sorry i was not clear, they did it in the FIRST 4 turns of the game with 5 planet total in 1 star system.

Ok, that does sound intersting.

Next question, what was the game level? On Maso, comps get serious production and cash bonuses making that possible.

I have seen that myself: The Comp seems to get free Constructors at the gamestart on the higher levels. However, I haven't seen that on normal yet.

I am relatively certain that it does not get any further "presents" later in the game.

Doesn't sound like cheating. Using purchase button
Constructor = 389bc + 25 bc for 200 months, Colony ship = 123bc + 11bc for 88 months from Mitrosoft.

The AI might need to get some extra bc's from selling stuff or could go into debt. They could easily have 3 of each by turn 4.

RA

Turn 1. AI settles second planet with its colony ship, rush builds another from Mitrosoft.
Threaten minor into giving them all their money.
Turn 2. Start a constructor. 1st Colony ship is built normally without rushing (100% military, 100%spending, military prod bonuses).
Threaten minor into giving them all their money.
Turn 3. Build 1 colony ship (may not be necessary to rush if planet settled was high PQ) and rush buy 1 constructor. Threaten minor into giving them all their money.
Turn 4. Rush build 2 constructors. Threaten minor into giving them all their money.
No need to cheat, just exploit minors if needs be.

Threaten minor into giving them all their money

Does this work, I have never tried it?

yes it works, but not on maso. On maso, you can do it on minors that come later in the game, not carinoids and other starting minors. Though the Alexians used to sometimes give some money.
Of course, 'threatening' requires muscle, but you can usually make deals that look like'give me 100bc, I'll give you 99' (usually over several turns in order to get it accepted) if you have a good diplomacy skill. Which is of course easily abused.

OK so the computer may not have been cheating there, but I had a game where a minor built Diplomatic Interpreters and Gravity accelerators on the same turn and they only had 1 planet and no cash - explain that! (this was prior to version 1.2)

Well, I could find of one way to have this behavior:
previous turn, no more cash. Current turn: at the beginning of the turn, a TG is completed. On the same planet, I set another TG to build it. My treasury has gone back to the yellow (spending less than income and difference greater that the negative treasury). ANd I rush build the next TG. Result: turn before, no cash, current turn, 2 TG build on same planet and no cash.

But I am not sure if this is the way the minor has build it.

[Message Edited]

PP

Yes that would do it, as I was building both of them at the time, this rather annoyed me (polite understatement (:( )

We have seen these kind of discussions from the early days of this forum when GalCiv was released. I think that most of us fall into a certain style of play, and don't realize the other possible approaches that can be taken. When the computer A.I. takes one of these actions it seems like it is pulling a rabbit out of a hat, when in reality there is a perfectly normal explanation for what it did. We just don't see the trick. Once explained it all makes sense and we can't believe how we fell for it.

Frogboy has stated all along that the game does not "cheat". This means that it has to play by all the same rules as we do, the only difference being that at the highest levels it does get some production and other bonuses, but all the basic rules still apply. That is, it has to build things, pay for them, have a working economy, when you destroy an enemy's resouce starbase it has a real impact on the A.I. race, etc.