Hi,
I'm probably not the only one experiencing a totally unbalanced game. I am playing Ithkul with research maxed out and ground forces as bad as possible because I don't use them to conquer planets, I prefer to wipe them out and start with a clean slate to build from scratch. Each of my planets with 5 regions or more build fighting ships, the ones with 4 regions build either colony ships or ground forces for defence. 3 an 2 region planets don't build anything except fighter, missile and beam bases and planetary shield. After that I leave them idle to generate AU's.
I currently control 671 Planets, half of which produce super dreadnaughts, I have over 650k+ research points and I am at tech level 33. One of the computer empires has 5 planets left is tech level 31 and is only just being to fall back to two levels behind me. This empire had a max of 75 planets when I had about 200. All the computer opposition produce ships which I can't see before at least 2 rounds of missiles hit me and the first set of fighters, even on intercept, and the majority are 4 tech levels behind. They attack with 10 armadas every go, the majority of which I manage to destroy. The biggest problem is that computer player has a huge advantage in combat because they can release missiles, fighters etc and retreat before they are even visible. This shouldn't be possible with my superior tech level. Why can't I see their ships untill they're almost on me? Another problem is I manage to produce four or five armadas each go and have been hammering these empires, but they still produce more and seems like better ships than me and I have 550 planets more than the strongest of them. I let the ships be designed by the AI, so they should be the best possible at the time of design. There is no way I can constantly redesign/update my ships apart from when the next ship level, ie Titan is reached, because with 671 planets, it would take too long apart from being mind-numbingly boring. Why can't I just put, for example, LR Attack in to the production queue and change the design at the shipyard, making the old designs obsolete and leaving only one current design for each type?
Why don't recce ships built by the AI have any weapons? Why does it take soooo long to produce mobilization centers and why can't I choose the planet it is going to be built on?
And finally why can't the player contol their fighters? I would like to be able to use them for defence, but as soon as they detect an enemy ship they auto deploy from the carrier and attack straight away.
Thanks for your input

Fixed with Tropical patch

The problems of research levels still occurs. With over 400 planets, and my nearest rival having less than 50, there are still 5 or 6 computer players with up to 7 levels higher than me.
They also produce 4 or 5 32 ship armadas each turn which should not be possible with less than 50 planets. I'm lucky If I raise 2 32 ship armadas every 3 turns. Every fight I destroy 5 or 6 armadas and loose 1. You're probably thinking, "why is he still playing this awful game?" I must be a glutton for punishment. The game is still very interesting to play despite these problems, it just gets very frustrating when pc players with 7 planets left builds more ships and have a higher tech level. I still destroy them in the end.