So I was playing a bit with harder difficulty after normal and the AI can finally muster a decent force on this level.
Looking at their income, money and metal wise they do not seem to be getting a big third leg so that is good.

What I do notice is that research wise there seem to be some odd jumps for large empires.
Does the AI get research advantage on hard?

I would recommend to have:
- Normal difficulty: AI does not get any advantage
- Hard: some advantage to the AI maybe at the beginning, but not research wise
- Everything above Hard can get clear bonuses

Why?
1. Research is already a derived resource (even more so as metal). The more planet and thus money a race has, the more research it will produce, so by giving it a leg up in money leads to better research results in two ways (via population and faster building).
2. The enemy does rarely have a problem with keeping up tech wise as research is pretty straight forward, and the way ships are designed also keeps the possible variations narrow. Thus it does not need help in this.

The AI starts with 500 extra science on normal, but that's it. Any odd jumps you are seeing are likely the result of captured ships or some other way of gaining tech.

Hard and Brutal give the AI enormous bonuses to resource production and make researching techs/constructing ships cheaper as well.

If you're interested in changing bonuses yourself, you can look in /Lua state/Setup/new_galaxy.lua

TheDeadlyShoe wrote:The AI starts with 500 extra science on normal, but that's it. Any odd jumps you are seeing are likely the result of captured ships or some other way of gaining tech.

Hard and Brutal give the AI enormous bonuses to resource production and make researching techs/constructing ships cheaper as well.

If you're interested in changing bonuses yourself, you can look in /Lua state/Setup/new_galaxy.lua

Hey, thanks for the tip, this is just what I need.

Will delete the tech discount from hard and we are good to go
Can I give the AI starting resource bonus by adding the below parameter?
empire.extra_mineral OR
empire.extra_money or something similar?

I would just like to give the AI a nice edge in the beginning so they do not get bogged down by Marauders and pirates so easily but level the playing field afterwards

If we are already on the subject of modding, can I add diplomacy modifiers to the game for example, in cases where two empires own planets within the same system? That would really keep things moving in the late game