Did you try to look up your issue with ENFER?

With all due respect to the devs, why would I be doing their job for them? Besides, I have connection problems to the given link on Chrome and Firefox and by the time I manage to figure out ENFER, I'd have completed another playthrough. What I can do is give as much information about the circumstances where this issue happened. Apart from what was already mentioned, this seems to happen more on sectoral than spiral galaxy maps.  

Colonization planet without having to research tech, and access to T1 Strategics. Looks to me like  there's a strategic purpose. They don't have to work on colonization tech development and they get resource income.

Did you look to see if the planets in-between were colonization by them, or had some resource value that would make them desirable? Because it looks like something the AI would do, because there -is- a reason to do it.

Whether or not it would cause a war with a player isn't something they're concerned about, because it's AI. They're just there to drive gameplay, and in this instance the AI expantion instigated a war over stragegic positions that you wanted, which is good. AI shouldn't be static until you want to deal with them, there should be costs to letting them run wild.

NagohShan wrote:

Colonization planet without having to research tech, and access to T1 Strategics. Looks to me like  there's a strategic purpose. They don't have to work on colonization tech development and they get resource income.

Did you look to see if the planets in-between were colonization by them, or had some resource value that would make them desirable? Because it looks like something the AI would do, because there -is- a reason to do it.

Whether or not it would cause a war with a player isn't something they're concerned about, because it's AI. They're just there to drive gameplay, and in this instance the AI expantion instigated a war over stragegic positions that you wanted, which is good. AI shouldn't be static until you want to deal with them, there should be costs to letting them run wild.

No, they do have to work for the colonization techs because like I said, the "hardship" law allows you to colonize any non-gas planets but there's a FIDSI penalty if you don't have the appropriate tech. It may not seem like a lot, but on harder difficulties, it's serious enough for you to fall badly behind. And even if you do colonize the planets, there are a ton of other techs you need to compensate for things like low agri or production output.

Such AI expansion rarely happens on spiral galaxy maps and much more on sectoral maps. So I don't think the AI has any rational reason to do so. Ask yourself this: Why would the AI spread itself thin all over the galaxy with colonies cut off from its home system and that are much harder to defend? If the same strategic resource appeared in a system next to the AI's home system and also next to the player's, the AI should logically prioritize colonizing the nearer system. If it's unable to do so, the only explanation I can think of is that resource distribution is way too assymetric on sectoral maps, forcing the AI to grab any system with the resource no matter how far and irrational it may be. And that's assuming the AI actually prioritizes grabbing strategic resources, rather than simply colonizing for the sake of cutting off the player, which still deesn't make sense because this would force the game to go only the war route from the very start. There's a HUGE difference between a smart dynamic AI and an irrational dynamic AI.

idlih10 wrote:

No, they do have to work for the colonization techs because like I said, the "hardship" law allows you to colonize any non-gas planets but there's a FIDSI penalty if you don't have the appropriate tech. It may not seem like a lot, but on harder difficulties, it's serious enough for you to fall badly behind. And even if you do colonize the planets, there are a ton of other techs you need to compensate for things like low agri or production output.

Such AI expansion rarely happens on spiral galaxy maps and much more on sectoral maps. So I don't think the AI has any rational reason to do so. Ask yourself this: Why would the AI spread itself thin all over the galaxy with colonies cut off from its home system and that are much harder to defend? If the same strategic resource appeared in a system next to the AI's home system and also next to the player's, the AI should logically prioritize colonizing the nearer system. If it's unable to do so, the only explanation I can think of is that resource distribution is way too assymetric on sectoral maps, forcing the AI to grab any system with the resource no matter how far and irrational it may be. And that's assuming the AI actually prioritizes grabbing strategic resources, rather than simply colonizing for the sake of cutting off the player, which still deesn't make sense because this would force the game to go only the war route from the very start. There's a HUGE difference between a smart dynamic AI and an irrational dynamic AI.

You are horatio, not them according to what you said in the OP. They don't have the Hardship law, so they must colonize their initial planet type or unlock a tech. So if they find a planet that is immediately colonizable, then they will most likely do it (Given resources are available to do so), because they can with no effective science cost. The colonized systems most likely had a planet type that matched their initial unlocked type whereas the others didn't.

Again, the AI cares about how much an action costs in resources, it can't think about how you might respond. For my observations, AI will quick expand as much as possible, if something is available, it will try to take it. If two things are available, it will attempt to take the one with the highest output first, then the other one soon after. 

idlih10 wrote:

No, you misunderstood my point that yes they do not need the colonization techs to colonize non-gas planets with the law BUT the FIDSI penalty of doing so seems to be significant from my repeated Horatio playthroughs. And to remove this penalty for the respective planet types, you must research the respective colonization techs. And you also don't seem to get the point that there's no reason for the AI to grab planets with resources so close to your home system unless the map's resource distribution is highly assymetric (or unbalanced). On a "balanced" resource distribution map, the AI should logically go for closer planets with the right resources because they can be colonized much faster. An AI that does not follow this principle is highly irrational.

First thing: Do you thing every faction has the hardship law? Because you keep talking about the law as if everyone starts with it, and can colonize any planet immediately.

Second thing: Even on a balanced distribution, they can only colonize close to their home system, if those systems have planets that match their starting planet type, otherwise they'll pick planets further away that are immediately accessible. 

NagohShan, you clearly fail to understand my point although I've repeatedly explained it. This was never about other factions not starting with the law but about AI behavior. Your assertion is based on the assumption that AI factions do not start close to colonizable systems and must therefore expand much further from their home systems. This implies that planet type distribution, like resource distribution, is way too asymmetric. If it happened on a small map, I might understand. This is a medium disc map with each faction starting in different sectors. So either planet distribution is way too assymetric or the AI is irrationally colonizing faraway planet types even if other colonizable ones are nearby. Whether it's resource or planet distribution, the issue is the same.