In game recently I let the game run on soak for about 100 turns. I was way ahead of the AI and bored with the game when I went to soak and the AI continued to colony rush until they had nearly 200 planets. I restarted from auto save and found that the Ai is apparently not bound to the turn button.

They were continuing to colonize but were making only 1-2 improvements and just leaving the planet unattended. No projects, no festivals no nothing. They had also stopped researching anything even though they had huge research production.

I guess they are coded to just do attrition. They were building lots of capital ships and were doing their little AI dance from rally point to rally point. I had given them such a huge lead, they could have easily wiped out the other AI, but it seemed they had no interest in doing that.

Sometimes, when the AI doesn't build it's because it's attempting to specialize the planet for buildings it hasn't researched yet. It saves the space instead. So when it's trying to specialize a planet for wealth, but hasn't developed any wealth buildings, it will just leave them empty and do a project while it waits.

This is largely why I unlock markets, farms and entertainment from the start. Well, that, and the fact it's a bit ridiculous to have a space-faring civilization who have yet to master commerce, agriculture and entertainment.

I think I'll do that too, though I certainly don't think that as soon as you can build a warp-drive you've automatically mastered the tech and ability to feed billions, trade with galactic-level resources rather than money, and make civilisation-level holodecks

Am i the only lunatic that actually puts weapons and defenses on transports ships ?

As i keep seeing that suggestion and i just don't get it. All my transport fleets don't need any protection from different types of ships as they're tuff as hell on their own.

well I think that festivities should be postponed until you, either use up all your tiles, and can't. Terriform no more, or you can't afford to build up no more. Specialization is good when you have tech. If you need planet, and if you have tech then specialize else generalize, and plan to research tech. If you have tech, and planet if best for this upgrade current buildings for specialization.

now as far as Invasion I think randomly invading a planet your at war with is a bad idea. Remember it is easier to defend planets when they are close together. If the planet is the planet is the closest with who you ate war build invasion fleet. If two, or more is equal distance then which one is better. If both ate same quality only then random. Maybe the only exception to this is when you are fighting multiples, but one is stronger than other. Beside this being more sound strategically. This makes more sense influence wise. Not random targets. A Ai value system giving different values based on what resources the planet haves class type what kind of buildings it has how well you need it and any other thing I didn't think of.