Is Single Player still unchallenging? (Haven't played since 1.02 patch)

Why don't you update and find out for yourself? Seems counter-productive to ask for someone else's opinion on a matter in wich personal taste would seem to cloud any deduction?

the Monk

How about trying it online?

I'm not into multiplayer. I do admit that the phrasing of my question is a bit provocative. But I thought someone else might be able to weigh in on the claim that patch enhances the single player game. I can say that in my experience that the 1.02 patch which was supposed to offer a much improved AI difficulty seemingly did not.
With 1.02 I once again spent many hours leading up to another anticlimactic folding of the enemy without any intelligent strategy with many unexploited opportunities it had for colonization. Many people expressed the same experience I had. I'm not interested in doing that again if it hasn't changed. I understood it was not an easy fix if not impossible.

The single-player is definitely more challenging now than it was originally (particularly on the higher settings). The AI will even gang up on you as a common enemy if you are the strongest player within the game.

Give it a try.

In a 'fair' fight (as in, a 1-1 fight without a half-dozen opponents trying to gangbeat you), no. It's not terribly challenging if you're a competent player who's trying to win. It's about as predictable as it ever was.

Improvements have been made but if you were trouncing it before, that's not likely to change.

Thanks. I'm happy to play several allied AI opponents at once to get that challenge. After the 1.02 patch under those same conditions and on max difficulty it just wasn't cutting it. AI wasn't colonizing like they should or attacking me through any back doors.
I'm glad to hear it may have gotten better since then single player wise.

AI will always be unimaginative. I suggest giving online multiplayer a try. Who knows, you might like it and make some friends.

Short answer: no the AI is still dumb.

Longer answer: It still runs if you outnumber it, meaning you can take all it's planets with minimal losses. It still sits inside your turret farms when it attacks you, meaning it takes a huge enemy fleet to beat static defenses so you don't really need to defend much at all. It still builds stupid easy to counter ship combinations (like mass cobalts for example) and does not change it's fleet to counter your own.

Yeah it's a bit better then it was before, but overall it's not very challenging unless you stack the odds heavily against yourself and then it's more tedious then hard. IMO anyway.

Actually, from the 1.02 patch it has changed much, they have also added a new harder (cheating) difficulty.

I recommend you give it a go.

I was playing 1v1v1 FFA with 2 of my friends and one bugged out. His fleet was turned over to the AI.

My friend and I ignored the AI and were blasting each other and out of nowhere, a deathfleet of AI ships that both me and my friend together couldnt match started attacking MY planets.

I had to send in one of my fleets in a last bid attempt to take over his homeworld and end the game.

If you are ever playing with an AI, NEVER ignore it.

You might want to realize that, in the end, it is an AI. It cannot think like a human, weigh all of the possibilities like a human, execute creative strategies like a human, or really see the large scope of the galactic battle.

The AI is created to react to triggers and act upon certain situations (ie, the most common one, "If the enemy fleet is going to beat mine in combat, run away, unless it's the home planet").

Wanting an AI that can beat you if you are a skilled player is a bit much to ask. Could you imagine the number of scenarios that arise in a single game? How many times you decided to pull back, attack a certain planet, make a bold move, save your resources, etc? There is no way Stardock has the resources to create such an omnipotent, human-like AI that can make all of those decisions. I am very pleased with what they have done, as it still gives me quite a challenge sometimes. There aren't many games where the company can create a fair, difficult AI without allowing it to cheat. If you are good at this game then DUH, you won't lose to the computer.