Perhaps the AI isn't building these as they don't seem under any threat as such? Maybe I should declare war to prompt them into building more better ships?

Perhaps I'm playing with too low races, I like living room so I usually go on 2nd largest map with around 30 AI races (15 godlike/15 incredible)

It usually takes me until turn 120 to catch up technologically but I save the 'No One will declare war for 50 turns' ideology point to use when things are hotting up and give me the 50 turns to change to researching ship hulls. By Turn 130 I have the best fleet by far and seem to steamroller any AI fleet in my path. I have AI surrendering turned OFF. Perhaps if it was ON this would make wars end quicker & AI grow quicker? Currently havnt observed any AI fully conquering another. 

But I don't like it when the AI surrenders to me so I turn it off.

Playing with anomalies on Normal so I save up the Artifacts for quicker research.

Playing with almost everything else on Abundant.

Any thoughts ? Am I researching the ship hulls to fast for the AI? I usually get Mother Hive and Hyperion Matrix then rush my Hulls.

I have some personal Huge hull ships I like to build (Battlestars)... and Ive been loving to see one of my Battlestars be blown up - but it hasn't happened yet...

I just need a bit of a challenge from the AI.

I guess I'll play on a smaller map so I meet the AI sooner, seems to be on godlike the AI are very strong before turn 100, but after turn 120 or so just seem to stagnate.

I like big maps and big empires though !

I find the challenge on Gifted or one higher usually enough. I play with 28-30 majors, abundant minors and insane spiral maps but rare habitable planets. Also check out the full conversion mod <GST> ...Galactic Star Trek mod. It has some major tweeks to the races and they build very good fleets and are a challenge on gifted. 

Give it a whirl. 

Quoting cajee,

reply 4

had a quick read through. Ideology project produces Ideology points? niiiiiice

Will your mod get the AI to build better fleets ?

AI Tweaks has some intresting adjustments to the AI. The OP of the mod probably doesn't actualy do the mod any justice, but I am bad at write ups

As Larsenex said, GST contains some intresting AI. If you feel upto it, since it is a total conversion (or will be) and not to everyones taste, have a bash at it on Godlike. I would be intrested to see if you actualy win a game   (Playing the Borg does not count)

Edit:

On a side note, You will get less wars with Vanilla factions & any Custom faction created with the ingame faction editor. There is a trigger built into the FactionDefs.xml that allows you to set "hated factions" for a race, it makes a large impact on galactic war. Vanilla only use this for 2 of its races and you can not set it via the ingame editor.

Well the Ai building ships is based on it's blueprints. You could add others in. Try your best ship designs.

Frankly, just do yourself a favor and use the mod. The AI is just built highly inefficient. The mod remedies some of that, to the point where I can't catch up with a genius AI before turn 100 unless they have fewer planets.

ok so I downloaded 'AI TWEAKS' and 'PLANETARY DIVERSITY' which looked like a cool mod too, I enabled mods ingame, restarted and put mods in My Games/GalCiv3/Mods folder

Is that all I have to do to enable them?

Anywhere to check they are active? 

GUYS THANK YOU SO MUCH

IM TURN 56 AND THE DRENGIN ALREADY HAVE LARGE HULLS

Race scores;

Iconians 1205

Drengin 945

Thalan 738

Arcean 638

Terrans 657

Me 127

Just what I want - a good challenge, this is on Godlike skill level ... so I've got my pragmatic 'No war for 50 turns' saved up.. when they become hostile I'll use it and hopefully around turn 120 we will have a nice big game on!

Quoting cajee,

reply 15

GUYS THANK YOU SO MUCH

 

IM TURN 56 AND THE DRENGIN ALREADY HAVE LARGE HULLS

 

Race scores;

Iconians 1205

Drengin 945

Thalan 738

Arcean 638

Terrans 657

Me 127

 



 

Just what I want - a good challenge, this is on Godlike skill level ... so I've got my pragmatic 'No war for 50 turns' saved up.. when they become hostile I'll use it and hopefully around turn 120 we will have a nice big game on!

Nice to see your enjoying it!

So I had to use my 'No war for 50 turns' early.

I'm up to turn 85, and the Godlike AI are miles in front, the Incredible AI still about same level as me. Snathi have a Vengeance class Huge ship with Plasma pods

This is definitely a bit more of a challenge! haha. I went Benevolent route this time and really missing those Industrial bonus that the Malevolent tree gives!

I found a Gaian planet though which was like class 47! Taking ages to fully upgrade it but it's going to be an absolute beast. I rushed Bio Replication and Lossless Farms.

Guna move over to Industry now. Forgot how gimped Benevolent races are in terms of production compared to Malevolent. 

Got 15 more turns until the Snathi declare war.

Should be interesting 

I usually play as Thalan to be honest... Can't beat those Hives!

I havn't even tried the Yor tech tree yet - synthetic just doesn't appeal to me hehe

My phone playing tricks in me wrong spot for the post. About tge thalan. The thalan get hives plus power plants. Basically two power plants to make up for population penalties. The yor on the other hand. Gets a weaker power plant. I mean -15 percent bonuse weaker to add insult to injury it is a population not manufacturing improvement because it is used to increase overall population. Because it is our power plant we can build only one of them. There are no other pop improvements our adjancencies are useless. Ok if you guys get a second powerplant to make up for our population problems. Why didn't we get that for our population problems and why is our power plant worse than everyone else.