Migration

I was wondering what people strategy with migration is. I'm using balance mod btw... this may make a difference. I made this topic so that i stop posing this in the "research in expensive" topic.

I, for example, try to get as many different atmosphere types of races as possible to maximize population and facilities on my planets and minimize the amount of domed worlds.

I assume this is what most everyone else does?

Of course the AI not using troops, or other abilities, that is a separate problem.

My opinion is that most things, aside from strategy, that are troubling the AI are a result of this. Less facility space = less resources (including RP) = less ships = a more easily beaten AI. Of course if you can always out-produce and out-research then you will be able to easily defeat them.

I wanted to find out if this is true for sure so i've started playing games that disallow domed colonization and find that the AI can more easily match me. So i made this post wondering, have other people tried this and have had the same results? Also I woud like to see the difference between various mods and stock. My primary concern is RP and resource generation, if the AI close or near matchs you it shows that part of the theory. What the AI builds and what it choose to research can be a separate issue, but at least you will know that they can match your abilities if it makes smart choices. Different mods have different tweaks with this so the results should vary.

My personal results:
As a standard race without research bonuses i found that AIs with a number of planets close to me when I had reached 80k rp the next closest had between 60k and 70k and other's with around the same systems were not much lower, in the low 60s to 50s. They are lower probably due to the fact that I had huge planets devoted entirely to research.

Their resource generation varied, but i assume thats due to the random nature of planets. However the large empires were not much lower, some outproducing me due to the fact i devoted more space to specialist structures and research centers.

This was on default medium difficulty, which i assume gives no modifiers to the AI to artificially boost them. Also set on the largest galaxy size, high amount of AI and no neutrals.

If anyone else wants to give this a try or are interested post your results or ideas.

Supposidly in the next patch Aaron is adding the AI being able to manage population by atmosphere like this with some kind of function. IDK if its going to rely on the modders to implement, that remains to be seen.