Quote Originally Posted by andrewt View Post
That's always been the problem with CA's games. There's really steep diminishing returns when it comes to economic buildings. The early buildings are just way better than the later ones. The "upgrades" are more expensive yet add less.
This is most likely intentional: otherwise, you'd have the problem that the leading faction's lead would snowball exponentially and they'd be untouchable -- unless every other faction allied together against them and coordinated to take them down. Not likely, with this AI.