So I wanted to provoke a dialogue among anyone who would pay attention on the forums on how we might be able to pool together to help keep the AI improvements coming post-Crusade. This interests me particularly as there are two reasons that I invested myself in the game from it initial release -- 1. The civ builder and the ability to easily create unique races and ships 2. The AI, and the data driven approach that SD wanted to take in improving it over time. Brad mentioned that he'll be moving on to Star Control when Crusade ships, and he has also mentioned in the past how it is often thankless task when it comes to AI improvements.
So, the questions are:
How can the community help make improvements to the AI less of a thankless task in the future?
What do the AI modders need (tools, etc.) from the devs in order to provide more access to AI modding?
What do we want to see in terms of AI behaviour going forward, and hence, what do we hope that Crusade will improve upon in terms of AI?
Crusade will undoubtedly revitalise the community somewhat, but I think how the community is cultivated around the game and the support that it recieves will ultimately decide how gracefully GalCiv 3 ages.