[PvK]

Even the Proportions 2.x AI can at least deploy ships of multiple sizes, and usually do a reasonable job of designing them and so on. The Xi Chung is the AI I tweaked the most in Proportions 2.x. The AI's Oleg made for 2.x are also good (search for "Oleg's AI pack adds three new empires (Size: 1.6 MB)." on my Proportions web page, and JLS also did a good job tweaking the Abbidon (and maybe some others). However, because they don't cheat, and I think also because Proportions requires more thinking and provides more opportunities to do creative and tricky things (as well as some more opportunities to get messed up, etc.), the AI will always be weaker than an experienced human player, and a human will need to limit himself and/or give the AI some kind of advantages in order to have a challenging game.

If I had the time and this was the project I was most interested in, then I would spend the time to mod a decent AI and make some interesting AI cheat options. I know it can be done.

The best way I found was to start a game with the AI race I was tweaking, and watch what it did each turn, then make adjustments to the research, build, design and strategy files to make the AI do things, re-load with the AI and make sure they did them, then look for more things to tweak, etc. I actually found it very fun to do (it's like playing the game using the AI files as your UI) and rewarding once it was done, but it also took forever and showed many weaknesses and frustrating issues with the AI. For that much time investment, I have other projects I'd rather devote the time to.

PvK