Usually about 1 hour in the pairs start to crash a SB chokepoint together. This rarely happened in the previous versions at any time of the game but can be fun when they occur. However, now they occur with supreme regularity on cruel or vicious (making vicious wholly impossible now). And depending on the map size and other 'barriers' (like pirate world, etc.) the triples can start to come around 90-120 minutes or so. It does vary some. The quad in my frustrating game was maybe 2 hours in. I thought I had a chance but that combo broke on of my chokepoints and they proceeded to rape and pillage my hearth worlds. What really ticked me off is I had never even seen the 4th player and he comes and crashes the party along with the other 3 (granted one of them only had maybe 300 ship points in the well). But all told it was my roughly 1200 ship points + maxed Orkulus and multiple repair bays vs a conservative estimate of 3000-3500 ship points including Ogrovs and Starfish.

I just played a locked teams game on cruel, medium large, 4 enemies. Was easy ... and boring. The map was favorable to me but the main thing is that at least one or two of the enemy AI will give up crashing you while they go after each other, while you are left with 1-2 to deal with yourself. I like to play on cruel since unfair is too easy and on cruel or vicious the enemy keeps replenishing and attacking until you take his worlds. But I really preferred unlocked teams for the variety. Well now that variety means they more or less all ally and hit you together. Sigh ...

With all do respect, an hour is more than long enough to get at least one ally yourself if you are aggressive with Diplomacy. The only advantage Cruel and Vicious AI have in diplomacy (I think) is that they max out their AI bonus much faster. As this means you may not be able to complete many missions, you'll need to research all the Diplomacy relations techs ASAP, quickly do as much damage to a common enemy as possible (and of course avoid hurting them at all cost), and perhaps even a bit of bribery to quickly get a cease fire so you can send envoys. Once you get a peace treaty you should be able to prevent that AI from getting a treaty with the rest, or at the very least ensure your envoys don't let their relations drop low enough to attack you.

Well honestly I didn't say if it was feasible or not. But I do know its quite possible to get a a cease fire in under an hour without too much investment. Obviously if you need to put every effort into survival even this is not possible, but in this case its really not the AI's diplomatic handicap that is causing you problems, its the economic one which is the main reason its a "cruel" AI anyways.

Alright case in point.

Just finished a medium large map with 4 cruel Ais (three Vasari and one Advent with me as Vasari). Weirdest map I ever saw as all the worlds within reach were volcano or asteroid. In fact I had 4 volcano, seven asteroids and my HW in my colony expansion rush.

Ran into the Advent on one side and a Vasari (orange) on the other. Ok fine. The Advent side has a clear chokepoint. Nothing close to a chokepoint exists on the Vasari border. All seems fine. Then about 50 minutes in a player (green) I haven't even seen since he is on other side of map and comes at me via a wormhole, is allied with the Vasari (orange) pounding on me and joins in on two different grav wells. Turns out he also allied with the last remaining Vasari (purple) who is pounding on the Advent on the opposite side. Orange has a cease fire with purple. So green and orange both are using their full fleets across three of my planets on orange's border.

The orange player has a clear chokepoint that I assault ... no go ... since green is backing him up. Through all of this the orange and green together are continually smashing several of my worlds over and over since no chokepoint exists for me. Finally I can use phase stabilizers, condense my fleet and jump to wherever they are incoming on a dime. Eventually purple and I independently bring down the Advent player (thankfully). Eventually I push green off some worlds near the Advent and then squish orange like a rotten grape once I have my max fleet. With his buddy orange dead I went through the aforementioned wormhole and beat green silly leaving me with a maxed purple which just took time to bring to bear (no kosturas used btw).

The point here is there was absolutely no way to prevent any of the enemy alliances. Orange had been hitting me from the get go so my own populace hated their guts. I sent envoys and researched the diplo buffs. No go. Green I hadn't even seen until he crashes the party. By then green and purple had almost a 20 / 20 relationship (with full pacts I presume). Advent fortunately while they disliked me were often busy with purple. Note I did every one of the orange missions in the beginning. Ironically he had a relation of 4.5 from his side but my people rapidly hated his guts.

I'd appreciate any insights of how to prevent the orange and green double team inside of an hour.

Any recommendations are welcome.