Contact - early or late

[Starhawk]

Depends on my mood with games like the one I am basing my From the Beginning story off of I like meeting folks early as it gave me a war that lasted over 20 years game time and that kept me on my toes and helped me build up a war plan for other races I may encounter later on.

Late game encounters can be fun because you both have sprawling empires (or you do and they don't and it's just a matter of steam rolling them) which can come in quite handy at times when it comes to sheer entertainment quality.

[Atrocities]

What I did for the STM was set it up so that there were more neutral empires per game. The way the technology is set up the AI on low AI Bonus stays pretty evenly matched with me throughout the game.

The thing that kills the AI is when we start making resource mining bases and monolith facilities. Once those start coming on line, even in stock, the game is pretty much over.