AI research vs Player research

In the campaign, why does AI get to start with previous techs (so it seems) and the player has to start from the beginning. Also does it seem to anyone else that the AI, in the whole game, researches techs a lot faster than the player can research them.

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Reply #1 Top

Many AIs begin with more techs than a human player can as a new race.  You can play a race and start with them, too.  I agree that AIs seem to have many more techs when I meet them than sometimes seems possible, though.  Since I play on Suicidal, I have always thought the reason was that they have those huge bonuses and shift about their first few turns of research on a set plan. 

Reply #2 Top

I think there are two issues at play here.

(1) The AIs at the higher difficulty levels can rush buy ships/buildings and so keep their research values at high levels.  This, in turn, leads to an advantage in researching discoveries faster than the player.

(2) I play with tech trading/stealing turned off but before I did this it appeared that they were forming coalitions in their research endeavors and thereby exacerbating this advantage. 

I play at suicidal/obscene levels and this is how I handled this.  I chose the technologist profile (+20% tech, +1 sensors) with a +30 tech for an ability.  As I said before, turn off tech trading and tech stealing.  It is important to note that I play Gigantic maps with rare stars/planets/colonizable planets mostly.  In a map with more planets the Federalist profile works better (with the econ bonus).

IMHO