I have played a lot with this game now, and I think I can say that some of the factions -or at least the way the AI plays them- are not well balanced. Let me give you a rundown on how games usually pan out:



- Cravers always go to war early, and are brutally beaten into extinction or are pushed back into a little corner of the galaxy where they spend the rest of the game in irrelevance.



- Automatons spread like fire across the map and dominate completely by the 100 turn mark.



- Sowers are either destroyed very early or if not then they become second strongest right behind the automatons.



- Hissho usually share the fate of the Cravers unless they manage to make it into a strong alliance and stay in it.



As far as I can tell:



- Cravers are not strong enough compared to other factions for the Eternal War role they should be playing. I can't remember a game where they ever came out on top.



- Automatons are a bit too strong overall.



- Sower AI needs to be changed to handle early game a little better.



- Hissho AI needs to be changed to not kamikaze into early game like it's a Craver.

That's more AI balance then anything.



The Cravers and Hissho in multiplayer are some of the strongest, and with the patch that reduced the defence of outposts that are not inside of your borders, they are more effective then ever.



The sowers however do have problems, even when controlled by a player.



And the automatons have an affinity that allows you to stack industry, so getting many planets and building from them is very easy.

In MP factions are not balanced either. It's better to balance for MP and later just improve AI to fit how "real" players would play.

My comments are single player observations vs the AIs mentioned.



Well, starting next to cravers sucks because you have to fight right out of the gate. This can affect your expansion plans and wreck your economy in the early game.



Automatons are a tough opponent if they get that early lead. They always seem to be able to diplo win on me when I get rolling with a more peaceful race I am playing with.



Hissho are the only ones I tend to have a problem with in combat if they managed to start next to someone weak and racked up the combat bonuses and systems before. Can do anything about them.



Sowers do tend to underperform, I agree there.



Pilgrims seem a bit weak as do Sophons.

Wow I guess a lot has changed since I last played. I've had cravers mainly cold war to mid-ish game until they have the biggest sized empire with a lot of tech from fighting pirates or other players and destroying late. I heard hissho was buffed but I haven't tried them since beta :P. Sowers are so hard T_T I tried them and I have no idea what I'm doing XD mainly I'm mass expanding to all planets and converting industry to dust and science to not go bankrupt and research all planet colonization techs, but I have at most half pop of the planet while red approval not sure if I'm playing wrong or sowers are a very high difficulty race. Otherwise, I like the challenges of other races