could you add a new racial trait "computer player"? Then you could add in the technologies you need to make the computer "smart" without changing the components used by all.
Now I'm not suggesting that any components be added to this tech tree that would give an unfair advantage to the computer (and so it wouldn't matter if a human player actually chose this racial trait), but you could do things like a customized sized colony component (with larger volume and subsequently higher price) to "force/coherce" the computer into being smarter. I don't know if this would be worthwhile for just the colonization problem, but it seems to me that there were a number of other AI intelligence issues that may be solved this way.
Timstone: Oh yeah, well "sj" you too!
[ July 28, 2003, 17:59: Message edited by: jimbob ]