Duno they tend to attack me...

What you are saying is absolutely wrong. True during your games, that I am sure of, but this isn't a general attitude the AI has.

In all games I played, I was the player with the highest population, the most number of colonies, and had an economic rating superior to 100 (and usually as well, a tech rating well close to 100). And I was close to be the most productive.

And the computer-played races did threaten me a lot, request money and techs for me in exchange for them not to eradicate me. The only ones that did not threaten were those already busy in other wars or most of all, with no neighborhood with me or close-aligned with me, or those really not powerful enough.

Remember other things are factors to their agressivity:

¤ the potential threat you are to THEIR power (that is, do you have cultural influence on their worlds, common frontiers with them, are you already in a war (and so an easy prey), do you counterbalance an opponent they have in common with you...)... if you do not have cultural influence on their territory, they really tend to forget you, they have some other business

¤ the alignment you are leaning to...

¤ and so on


Having no military ship IS a great agressivity factor regarding the AIs, they do not leave me at peace for so long... in 4 games they always declared war on me because of that, and 2 to 3 AIs together most of the time. I always wondered why they were still sending ships after me while seeing their fleets being turned to pieces one by one, but well, as long as do not have enough ships, you do not have respect from them...

Side note: When an AI says "your 'potential' military power is just as it is, potential" it means that you do have absolutely no military power and they are laughing at it. It is some Yor Collective joke I believe

I still wonder how you escaped being declared war upon.

OUCH !

Silly me, forgot one thing : Diplomacy. The main thing that counts is your Diplomacy score. I almost say, unfortunately, because it must be the thing you put on in order to control the AI agressiveness. Isn't it ?

Then are you saying it is too easy not to be attacked when having no military ship and a good Diplomacy value ? To easy to control the AI this way ? Because this is a very different idea than the one I understood first when I read your posts.

Concerning the passivity of the AIs : yes I had a great diplomatic ability, but still... Plus it's not only passivity towards the human player : in one of my first games (AIs on intelligent too) I made quite a few mistakes in the early game which resulted in slow development ; as a result I could not tackle the leading AIs, but I just took over the weakest ones, one after the other, with the big boys basically watching on until I became too strong for them. One of the things which could be done to improve this is to increase the diplomatic penalties for being overly aggressive (in Alpha Centauri or CivIII / IV, you think twice before you declare one on a weak neighbour, because he usually has a few friends who won't forget or forgive easily). The economy problem is no doubt more complicated, though it seems that bumping up the priority of income producing buildings might be a start.