Alien Personalities...What are they?

Smok-n-joe - the personalities are half-dependent an what they are set to at the establishment of the game and half on what their position is. Something to really blow your mind is that they also seem (in my case , at least) to change with difficulty, although I think you should lay off Masochistic for a while.

As a general rule though, Drengins are warlike and demand tribute from all around them, Torians have a good economy and slightly flawed war views, Yor get pissed off at you easily and sit at mid-level military might, Arceans are slow-but-steady growth and are quite temperamental, often perceiving you as a threat sooner than other races, and Altarians go for huge growth and SEEM friendly but often stab you in the back.

Not exactly the most helpful, precise or even correct guide, but its a rough idea of how they are going to kill you.

Happy Hunting!

~SDC~

If each AI is unique, and I think it is, It would be neat to have guidelines on how to interact with each. Then you could vary your game according to what AI is strongest in a particular game. Anyone?

I think you're supposed to work out that bit out yourself, that's why it's called a strategy game .

I just suck up to the sstrongest and when they begin to lose I kill them LOL

Personality? There are definite strategy differences, but I find they behave politically very alike (given their alignment and current game position). So my preferred tactic: bribe the strongest military AI to attack the next strongest. (You can't pay em enough to attack someone stronger than they, but to attack a weaker is doable.) - One to two trade goods usually does it. Just get in before the strongest declares war on YOU.

~SDC~

I know that Frogboy has commented that the Arceans have a starbase focused AI.

In my current 1.04 game the Arceans are building a lot of influence starbases. They are in a terrible position though so I don't think it will matter in the end game (famous last words!). They are also the most active race when it comes to gifting starships to assist somebody in a war against whoever is strongest.

Bribing races to fight each other is extremely useful, not only does it keep their fleet strength down (thus it becomes easier to avoid tribute demands) but it also tends to prevent any trade routes from being established except for with the neutral Humans

In response to the first post: try to hit the Torians hard as early as possible. They are not that good at escorting transports, constructors etc so you can really prey on their navy. You don't necessarily need to take any planets, just smash their navy and make them beg for peace. They never seem to recover from a defeat like that (probably because they end up paying tribute to everybody).

My point is they (the programmers) spent lots of time coding the AIs and I like to play againtst the weaknesses...not for advantage as much as to see how they react..
Even with high spying you don't find out much background on the AIs (just stats from what I have seen) It would be cool if the reports gave more political, social, historical things from the back story that you could use. The other thing that spying should give you is more of those AI traits I mentioned in the original post. All its done ror me so far is keep those bad random race events away.

I know this, they all like credits, find a way to pay them before the war starts and war is less likely. Once in a war its a loosing proposition (to pay then I mean).