I just wanted to make an appreciated thread to say how pleased I am with the recent work on the AI.
1.01 has fixed the expanding issues we saw in 1.0, they are expanding at a similar rate to me playing on Tough (Rush building colony ships I was).
On a large map, the main 3-4 AI opponents all have similar size empires to me, it's fantastic.
They no longer send dozens of lone ships at you - they always seem to keep them in decent size fleets.
I've just had the Thalan declare war - what's the first thing I see coming at my border? 3 fleets filled with 7 ships each. Awesome!
My fleets are also made up of 7 ships - a pretty even match.
Also no more lone troop transports, they get escorted nicely too.
The last straw and what made me post this, was the fact that those 3 fleets consisted of MY designs from a previous game when I played as the Thalan!
They were improvements over the stock ships, but I was shocked to see the AI making use of that fact.
Sure there are still minor niggles, but overall I'm extremely impressed and look forward to more AI improvements to come 