Bug report; balance issue

from Stardock Forums
First of all, balance issue. I have just nearly won the game in very strange fashion. I concentrated on getting inventions with survey ships, so I got technologically much ahead - I just used survey ships - I had 5 of them - to research anything with more than 3 weeks to research.

Then, I simply changed one of the expensive inventions (Star creation, I suppose) for all planets from all civilizations, thus exterminating them. I suppose the planet value in diplomacy should be much higher - it is quite rudiculous to exchange one invention for all the planets the civilization have (including class 30 ones :) ). Anyway, I think survey ship should help to shorten research a bit, not to give the whole invention planned for 512 weeks.

And, as for bug report. I just left Drengin (I believe. maybe it was Yor :) ) with one planet, just checking. Without any specific reason, I crashed to desktop when clicking End turn. When I tried to restore autosave game, all the planets and stars and everything is gone (probably terrible space catastrophe ;) ).

Is it of any interest for you?
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Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
I just won the game using the same approach. It seems like there are two issues here:

1) The research bonus for exploring anomalies should probably be changed to gain you x number of weeks (maybe 10?) of research, rather than the whole item at once.

2) The AI should be much smarter about trading planets. It probably shouldn't be willing to trade anything other than a really minor colony (perhaps less than 5% of the empire's total population) for a research item. It shouldn't be willing to trade larger systems unless it is in a hopeless war it can't possibly win, and it should probably never be willing to trade its home system under any circumstances.

One of the better AIs I've played against was in Alpha Centauri. I was always impressed by the way the AI, when it was severely outmatched in a hopeless war and down to its last few colonies, would offer to give me all its money, tech, and "never bother you again". After accepting such an offer, the AI player would continue in the game, but would never declare war on me, always responded favorably to me diplomatic proposals, and always supported me in the UN - unless and until my faction's power declined severely for some reason. That seemed to me to be a very realistic and human-like survival strategy.