Has the AI ever been good at fighting wars, even on Godlike? lol Actually, I take that back. They were probably better at the initial release of the game than they are now. At least then, they would destroy everything while diving straight for your worlds. Now, they just sort of...eh, sit there.

TC mentioned Gifted.

Back in OS/2 days, I fondly remember an epic battle on the largest universe at the time.  (100x100?)  Could I produce enough Excaliburs to stave off the hordes of slavering alien rape ships.  Slowly, slowly, I pushed them back and with a brilliant flanking maneuver took a border world.  FTW! 

Now they just kinda fly around and act like they're doing something.

There were four planets right together (north of Dratha, if you look at the Milky Way map).  Classes from 12 to 6 IIRC.  No developed defenses. And Altarians are not that good on the ground.

I didn't check the transport loadouts.

I stand corrected.  AI is set to Genius.  I cranked it up to Godlike a couple turns ago, but nothing godlike yet.

The Iridian has a naked transport with it's nose buried in a Yor world defended by 18 ships.  Which is stupid enough.  What's even more stupid is that the Yor won't yolo a tiny boat to kill it.  Perhaps since it's unarmed it isn't viewed as a threat.  Something wrong in SD Land.

Well I remember back in the day that there was a range that ai transports need for there to be a planet to invade, and that was 16. I remember two mods that changed that to 256. It does needs to be increased from 16. Someone needs to make the mod again.

I think MAINTENANCE cost for ships is causing the AI to huddle on its planets instead of attacking en masse , I dont know how to eliminate these costs to free up the AI to attack ..yet .. played a months long game ( OC ) and the Borg would not declare war for 70 moves into the game (and still did not ) ... thought it was odd at best

yes , I think the challenge to win is the thing we signed on for , not an easy ride , the heck with letting the human win , the computer should be out to annihilate whenever possible , I like trying to fend off massive assaults, cant recall the last time I lost , (not bragging ), I dont know how the recent versions play , but the AI seems to randomly put improvements with little thought and ignoring bonus squares or overemphasizing their importance, when I take a planet , I always wind up destroying improvements poorly selected and poorly placed. I do recall the AI played pretty darn well in GC2 and I may return to that to see if my memory is true or just nostalgic, If I could refrain from exploiting the AI on trades ... I just remembered the last time I lost .. GC2 hahaha

Personally I've never picked up a game where none thing was wrong with it. The only difference now is that it is easier to come up with updates. With galcivilization 2 getting those last two updates it is better than what it used to be. Galactic civilizations 2 used to put the wrong improvements on the wrong tiles. There were balance mods for 2 with people attempting to fix it's problems. I tried playing two it is hard with threes interface being light-years ahead of two.