I am in the middle of a game against the AI on normal setting 1v1, TEC vTEC. When about to take a planet suddenly three capital ships appear from nowhere. For them to reach the planet they would have had to pass through my lines, which they did not and the nearest rival home planet was three neutral planets away?
On another planet I had a large fleet that wasted any capital ships with a small supporting fleet that threatened the planet, yet when the planet was threatened, this time with a weaker fleet and same level capital ship, The capital ship maintains its integrity for ages, because it is convenient for the AI.
My own faction was the only one with culture that was spreading rapidly, yet within seconds the rival faction suddenly has culture strong enough to start pushing my own culture back at a rate of knots.
The tighter balance in Rebellion means cruder cheating. Is it worth playing the AI any longer with such obvious cheating? This is not a strategy game, but a scissors, rock and paper game, if you like, where the scissors can cut the rock. I was playing as TEC loyalist and I suspect that, because I began to play aggressively in the middle game, the game took punitive measures ie, it cheated on a large scale to prolong the game and because it considered my behavior to be illegitimate. I wanted to destroy the rival's Novalith Canon and, though I had planetary shields in place they were not upgraded due to lack of resources, so I had to be aggressive and take the opportunity to attack its weakly defended planet with the Novalith while, at the same time, also attacking another planet that was weakly defended in the opposite direction where the rival threatened to expand. After all, the rival had eight planets to my four. If want to exploit a situation or take an opportunity I am not allowed to because of the game's tight remit. Perhaps, if I had held back and played defensively by fortifying my position and upgrading where necessary, such cheats may not have occurred. Can't Rebellion have a more liberal view of what it means to be strategic?
