Quote Originally Posted by frogbeastegg
While browsing that confusing mess of an official forum, I found one great little bit on how to get the best challenge out of the AI, according to the one who programmed it.



Apparantly (according to another bit I couldn't find again) the number of planets is very important; more planets = more challenge. But for some reason I don't get this doesn't automatically mean the biggest map sizes are good for the AI.
In my (limited) experience you can easily outperform the AI if you have lots of habitable planets, since this makes colony spamming more profitable.
I think the AI also isn't that focused on the speed of its vessels, making large galaxies better for humans.