AI Stupidity problem on my map.

Are those the only colonizable planets, without research?

Yes.

I see in other games that computers colonize 'hostile' and 'tropical' all the time. On THIS map, they just don't touch them.

leuthesius, have you tried the map with only the initial planet, and no extra planet owned at the start?

harpo

Harpo--yes.

I had only the initial "random home world" at the beginning. 2-3 hours in, I had 8-15 planets and they were running only on their home world. 
Giving them the second world was an attempt to give them more space for their orbitals. Next thing I'm going to try is making all homeworlds terran or desert. 

@ Xathos,  No. Not too much 'crap.'

The entire premise of the map is that there are essentially 17 factions.
8 neutral planet clusters/factions (who are holding the super planets and the super planet middle fingers), 8 playable factions, and then pirates.

Each player zone has a random start world, one ice, one volcanic, a forest, a terran, and a military planet at each end. Seven worlds to start.
Each independent zone has a relic world, and 3 random moons. There are one way wormholes that go directly to the player homeworlds on either side. Sounds cheap, but considering you have to plow through 16+ Capital ships, and anywhere between 2 and 4 starbases along with all of the associated defenses and screening elements. It is intended to not be easy to take those worlds, where there is guaranteed to be at least one artifact in that area--but there are dickmoves in there too. It may not be worth it to go lose half of your fleet to get to it.

16 Military (8 Moon/8 Huge)
8 City 
8 Terran
8 Random Home
8 Forest
8 Volcanic
8 Ice
8 Relic
24 Random Moons
1 Gas 'Super' Giant  
1 Ship Graveyard
1 Ancient Citadel
40 Deep Space Dwarfs
8 Asteroid Space Junk Random
1 Pirate 

I realize I can't make the AI be smart enough to use the obvious here, but you would think that it would be smart enough to at least colonize the closest worlds--I mean its smart enough to clear all of the neutrals out. I've even seen them sending attack fleets to take out the independently colonized worlds!

Is that part of the problem? Do they see the neutrals as a serious threat or something? 

leuthesius, how about spawning  a couple of the labs on the homeworld?

harpo

That's just it--they do that themselves. And then ignore planetary research. I've sent out hundreds of scouts to verify it.
I always see two civ/empire/harmony labs. 

next suggestion, change the starting world to a homeworld type.

hope this works!

harpo

Did that. Changed all home worlds to Desert Home.
They still only colonized the random terran worlds I threw around. One AI went half way across the map to colonize a terran world and completely ignored the City, military, volcanic, and ice worlds that were right freaking there. 

next suggestion, again

add some asteroids off the homeworld as deadends

hope this one helps

harpo

You didn't accidentally give the AI TWO capital planets (IsHomePlanet) did you?

No, only one planet for each AI was set up as home. The other was just set up as 'owned.'

I'll try the asteroids next. I'll move the homeworld behind the military world and an asteroid off of it for deadend.

Ok. Changed the startup layout.

Asteroid --> Homeworld --> Military Planet  -->Deep Space +-->Volcanic +-->Ice +-->terran

All of the AI's still ignore volcanic and ice. 

Perhaps because it essentially costs them resources (with the necessary research) they colonize as many non Volcanic\Ice planets as possible first?

Have you tried giving them all Ice and Volcanic planets and seeing what happens?

Originally, the only no research worlds were the homeworlds. They never colonized any other planets. Just sat with one and beat on each other with light frigates. At one point, I tossed a couple of Marzas into a battle between three factions, each throwing 50+ frigates into the mix.

It was sad. 

I've gone so far as to switch the AI to unfair.

Still won't colonize.