Have you thought about bringing back Pirate and Harpy raids again?
I think they were removed duirng AI optimisation and assume they dint make their way back into the game to booster the performance of the AI
There should be ways to reintroduce these elements without killing of the AI empires
:
Pirate Raids
Generated every 40-50 turns next to systems with the top 5% highest coin production in the game on an unclaimed system OR pirate system.
e.g: If there are 100 colonised worlds, there would be 5 raids assembling next to the top 4 systems and then launch the raid after 3-4 turns
If there are only 20 claimed systems altogether in the galaxy, that would only result in a single pirate raid
Attack Strenght:
1. 100 divided proportionally among the targets relative to each other. e.g: if the top systme has x2 the income as the second system it will face twice the attack strenght
2. Base attack strenght to be devided is generated from total military stength and tech across all empires in the galaxy. The more combat ships are in a galaxy the more pirate ships and the more empires have researched a ship component the higher the chance it will be used agaisn them (no tech is used though that has not been researched already by at least one empire)
Effect:
1. Remove x2 the Coin of the entire system (income not profit) from the empires budget which has the largest income in the system
2. Destroy 66% of all
markets and 50% of all pops on each planet
3. If there are no pirate or unclaimed systems in range - the pirate raid will not trigger (range should increase over time though)
Harpy Raids
Every 30-40 turns, attack the system with the highest metal production in range of each Hyperspace Anomaly from the HA
Attack Strenght:
1. The higher the metal production the higher the Harpy assault force strength. e.g: 20-40 prodcution: 4 smal harpies, 41-60: 8 small harpies; 61-80: 8 small harpies and one large
Effect:
1. Remove x2 the Metal of the entire system (production not profit so producing ships in the systme does not decrease the loss) from the empires budget which has the largest metal production in the system
2. Destroy 66% of all
mines and 50% of all pops on each planet
3. If a Hyperspace Anomaly has been claimed by an empire, it does not generate raids anymore
The idea would be to:
1. Strike a blow at the most prosperous empires only leaving AI empires that are having a hard time or just not doing very well alone or attacking them with only a small force which they should be able to fight off
2. The more powerfull and larger the player gets the more rapidly these attackes will scale up: the player will be attacked from numerous directions and powerfull forces untill they pacify all the unclaimed systems and defeat Hyperspace anomalies
3. Both pirates and Harpies would represent the two sides of the same coin: harass empires that are very good at generating coin and/or metal
4. In case of hapries it would now make a lot of sense to bribe them with Metal for tech - what they cannot take by force you can use to get tech out of them
5. If a target has been hit, the planet is not lost and outside of coin or metal, no production is directly crippled. Thus even if an empire cannot react or does not defeat the inciming force they are not dealt a crippling loss but they should less likely be the target of the next raid. A large empire should be able to ignore 1-2 of these raids (only slowing down their progress) but 3-4 of them might even cripple a huge empire if not allocating resources to defense
6. There are no safe sapces anymore in the galaxy: Every unlcaimed system and HA is a ticking bomb that can go off far away from where the current conquest is taking place and thus it would make sense to build PD, starbase and defense fleets in "safe" regions of space - stemarolling the AI would be much less possible
