I've only just started playing ES2, but I'm kind of concerned that I must be doing something wrong, based on what I can see of my AI opponents. My first game was as UE, standard speed and standard sized map, normal difficulty, and I gave up about 80 turns in when I had half the score of my AI neighbor who decided to start invading with fleets well beyond my ability to defend against. So I'm now in my second game, playing as Sophons on a large map, endless speed, still normal difficulty, but I'm seeing signs that some AI opponents are building up beyond what I handle again, and I have no clue what I've done wrong.

There's a pirate lair that just spawned in a chokepoint seperating two parts of my empire, and my main fleet was there to try to push out the pirates, when a lesser fleet from Omega just showed up and evicted us from the system. Now I can't even move between systems in my own space safely, because his lesser fleet (he is at war with Urlov, so his main fleets are away) is just camping on a pirate den on the one unoccupied system in my space.

My complaints aside, I'll try to figure out a way to deal with his rude invasion of my space, but is this normal for some of the AI to jump majorly ahead like this? I'm just playing on normal difficulty, and I'm not new to 4x games, so I kinda thought that the situation would be reversed (my score skyrocketing), but clearly I need to either adjust my expectations or my play, cause something isn't matching.

As another point, both of the two high scoring AI (Gamma and Omega) have also both already had announcements pop up that they are close to winning a domination victory. Both before turn 100 (on Endless speed, so a max 600 turn game).

Well you chose a bad time to pick up ES2, considering all the bugs devs been adding recently. You aren't doing bad. Not stellar, but you are on par with the rest of factions, which is good for a second game. Both Riftborn are so ahead because they are bugged with persistant singularities, and Cravers are just being Cravers. If they don't destroy everything, in another 80 turns they will be far behind sitting on eaten systems.

But to be more precise in my answer, every faction has its own assymetric gameplay, that can or cannot maintain high score. That is why it's only a vague indication of factions true strength.

In this case though, I'd suggest to roll back to 1.5.28 patch or disable Riftborn AI from game setup. They aren't unbeatable, but thanks to said bug you are essentially playing against overbuffed opponent.

lol, I saw the post about them releasing the final patch, and everything went on sale, so I thought it was the best time to jump in finally. I'll stick around though, even with this wierdness I'm still having a lot of fun. I feel like I could go up against most of the other AI, and a few even keep sending me friendly messages (still unlocking alliances though, that's next on the research list), so fingers crossed I can pull something out of this game before they get their domination victories. Good to know that it's just the riftborn being OP, I'll have to try them out in another game before they get nerfed then. Thanks for the response, it helps to know I'm not just completely awful at the game.

Riftborn have arguably the strongest population in the game(+5 IDS(Industry, Dust and Science)). I’d put Cravers at the top but only on undepleted worlds. After that their productivity falls off drastically. But getting back to Riftborn, their population has the best buff despite the fact they must be built via production queue as opposed to growing naturally via Food. Since they’re constructed, they require no food upkeep and have a unique perk in that they can colonize multiple outposts at once without it hindering their core worlds(aka they’re a wide empire faction and if they assimilate Pulsos with Thinkers and Tinkers I... watch out since their outposts become colonies in no time). They also benefit from being able to colonize Sterile worlds from the start(the very worlds that have high Industry, Dust and Science output) without having to worry about Happiness issues due to their Biophobic trait. Meaning once they get their systems populated, they quickly snowball into a monster and I’m not even noting their Gameplay Affinity in Singularities that buff their output even more. The only way to combat Riftborn is to find them early and hopefully KO them before they can become a real problem.