So having played about 20 hours of GalCiv so far and gotten into a few Gigantic maps full of Gifted AI and it's been an experience. I am by no means good at strategy, though I do enjoy playing them.
With that, I have a question.
How does the AI determine power with which it bases all it's major decisions on whether to attack off of? I have had a hostile alien empire with very little other than a massive amount of mining starbases decide I was for the chopping block and declare war despite the fact I had more of a military at the time and it only had a few ships with very basic weapons tech.
Is the calculator taking things like colonies, starbases OTHER than military and ships without weapons into account when deciding if it's civilisation is stronger than your own?