If you really want to check to be sure, set up a game with another person and have them quit as soon as the game starts...let the game run for 5-10 minutes, then quit and check the end game stats...compare the AI's income to its expenses, and that should give you a pretty good idea of what difficulty it is...

Unfair and higher AI's also occasionally get free techs even if they don't have the lab requirements....if you notice this behavior with an AI replacement, then the AI is almost certainly at least unfair...I find it unlikely though that the AI is anything over hard...I'm almost certain it was confirmed in Diplomacy that AI replacements were normal, so unless Rebellion changed that it should be random normal...

I always laugh when my HW happens to be Seleucus...

Yes, this is what i observed, too. Hence, my question. A newer player dropped and then his AI was actually quite tough. It was early in the game, and it had only 3 planets but was churning out ships at a very fast rate. A strategy by a team could be to "drop" so that the OP'd AI took over.

Could one of the great modders out there use his kit of diagnostic tools and answer this question for us?

Kitkunis always makes me giggle.

-Huzzah!

It doesn't depend on human player.

AI still has insane income after a noob left.

I could have sworn it was confirmed in Trinity that the replacement AIs were normal (tried looking for the thread, haven't found it), which leads me to believe that this was a Rebellion change...

I play AIs regularly and sometimes when I don't want to deal with super weapons 10 min in the game I stack 6-7 hard AIs allied against me. And I haven't been out spammed by so much as I remember from that game. Once I kill one of Ais fleet it stays put for few minutes before he is ready to attack again....

In that game well I was killing it on and on and on. It was like endless conveyor belt.....    

If the human player drops while in any kind of good economic situation, the AI would have a massive advantage.  Even normal AI's make very good use of their available resources (not so great tactical choices, but they're great at making the ships).  The only thing they're bad at is making that economy in the first place.  If a human drops and has a good Eco going, the AI will have a field day.  If you try to engage in a straight up spam war, there's an even chance you'll lose since the AI still has the same build rate as the human player it replaced.  

What i'm trying to say (in my typical roundabout fashion), is that an AI standing in for a human player will probably get a far stronger economy than an AI ever would normally achieve, thus fighting a normal AI would theoretically be as tough as your familiar unfair or terror AI would be.

And if it's a hard AI that replaced the human, all the frigates in existence won't help you.  You'd be far better off going defensive and using typical anti-ai tactics than continuing to use the multiplayer tactics we're so used to.

true, but in a straight up spam war, as he implied he attempted, an Ai with a 1.5x advantage would own you.

he said he engaged in a spam war, not a defensive wall.

Indeed, defensive tactics are far better against the ai than spam. 

My apologies, I did not read that post.

However, what would happen when the player in the eco spot minidumps and all their resources are given over to the AI, while it would be better long term to have a human doing it, short-term the AI will make a massive fleet really quick and swarm the nearest enemy.  If the game is teetering on the edge, the AI's additional forces will crush the opposition and make all the feed in the world meaningless.  This is especially true since the ai will likely attack somewhere else than the current frontline, causing the enemy to have to split his fleet, and that would mean there's only one titan and two battles.  Not a good fight to be in.

I'm just saying that a hard Ai uinder the right conditions could easily be as effective as a human, if not more so, since the two things the AI does badly (tactics and building an economy), are meaningless since the ai will immediatley make a huge fleet with the eco player's stuff and proceed to attack an enemy that is geared up for defending against a human, not an AI.