ai are not aggressive enough

Well...as you suggested...one solution might be to play against human opponents in online multiplayer.  Some of the benefits of online multiplayer are:

• You can have more challenging, interesting, exciting, and intense games (where you might actually lose).
• You can get to enjoy having real human teammates, coordinating a game strategy, and the camraderie that comes with that.
• Over time you'll get to know people and make online Sins friends.
• If you really get to know people you might even be able to play the game while chatting with them using voice comm.

also, im assuming you set the AI behaviour to random right? sometimes it pays to decide what behaviour you want.

for instance, early game you could set the AI to reseracher or economist, then late game you can change it to defender (if you like to break defenses) or aggressor (if you want to wipe out his fleets against your defenses and starbases). i do this alot, makes it alot more fun because i found, like you, they wont attack so much if you leave it on random, and when they do attack its early game with like 30 LF... which sucks.

so yeah, i personally set all AI to researcher... or, if they are on teams, 1 econ and 1 researcher, then late game swap to either defender and aggressor or both aggressor or whatever, depending how i feel etc, try it out

The AI seems to have a poor understanding of a combined allied fleet. This leads them to park huge forces outside your territory, because individually each player doesn't stand much of a chance.

How hard of an ai are you playing? and how many?

dunno how you dont find them aggressive.. i had a hard time trying to expand because 2 comps would attack and then i'd have to move my fleet to defend.. And while I did that a 3rd computer would attack.

build more fleets

lol.. meh.. i found a way to stop their little attack/run.. I just chased them back a few jumps, hurt their systems and jumped to the other areas being attacked and did the same.. While they slowly rebuilt i was back in their face finishing what i started..

Dislike the fact how the computers can quit even tho they still own half the planets in the system.. oh well. Still fun to play.. just wish there was more to offer online.

I agree, the AI does not pose a great threat, it does not coordenate attacks and at later stages it is almost boring to clean its fleets and planets up, it simply never surprises me. The most fun I have in late-games is gaining more experience for my fleets, but even that is getting old, eventually.

My way of circumventing that problem is by playing multi-star maps, so once I clean one system, I encounter a much more serious threat on the new one, since the AI is already very established there and my fleets have no proper and immediate support (moving between stars takes alot of time). Since repairs take time, my fleets get beaten up, while the AI builds fresh fleets and attack me, wearing me down. Many times I clean one system, move to the next one, and even get pushed back with almost 50% of my main attack fleet destroyed, which can force me to think and spice things up. The obvious drawback of that? Multi-star maps are HUGE and take A-L-O-T of time and patience.

I wish there was more challenge in the mid-late stages of the game without resorting to tricks in order to milk more fun out of the game.

i have them all set to aggressive, none of them are on random, all of them are on same team and locked there, fleets are on as big as they can go, im currently playing a game against nine very hard ai, all of them allied, i grabbed a planet and built a ton of defenses on it and now none of them approach it ever, ill post a screenshot for you to see

the multistar approach dosent seem to work too well, once you find yourself a planet inside the new system you can just park there, build up a defense fleet and spam factorys, put a culture/meteor base there and nothing will kill it, not that they would ever jump to the grav well anyways

i agree fully that the ai should have a better understanding of combined fleets, that would definatly go a very long way in making them work better

green was the only one that tryed to attack me in several hours of play, and they lost terribly... and never attacked again... i dont have a good screenshot, but both the planets next to this one have 2-3 full scale fleets in them

i can understand at some point the ai may be programmed to wait for you to make the first move, which is fine i guess, but it makes for extremely boring gameplay.

i was going to use these screenshots to make an action report, about a valiant defense against overwhelming odds, i guess ill have to postpone that for another patch

just for the record, this "feat" was accomplished without even a 9% upkeep

I haven't been playing against locked teams, but I 've seen some fairly agressive ai attacks (mixed hard and mormal ai)

in my rescent single star huge game. After i managed to wipe out one faction early on with a starbase rush as vasari, I had to defend off the combined fleets of four other factions at similar time intervals, however fully upgraded starbases wiped them out and now im in the process of mopping up with kostura cannons

wow... decoy, are you using a graphics mod? because i run Sins on top graphics but never see explosions like that