As mentioned in the
Annex thread, the AI, even on Mega, generally produces swarms of weak early game units, rather rarely creating later game units, and when they do, they're generally much later than the human player. This doesn't make sense, since the AI is supposed to have more resources than us at those difficulty levels, so can afford to make these expensive units as well.
This becomes an issue in mods where the jump from early game to late game units becomes large. For example, if the early game primary attackers are rather weak and cheap, while several late game units become so strong that they are almost impervious to the early game units, the AI would be at a distinct disadvantage. Not to mention sending hords of weaker units means more kills for our stronger units, which levels them up and makes them even more overpowered against the AI. For the most part, most mods don't have such a huge difference in the stats of their units, but still offer a noticeable difference.
Ideally, in fact, an AI with a 2x multiplier should be able to always beat a human player in a game of flat out attacks. If the human is to defeat an enemy that outnumbers it 2:1, they should need more advanced tactics than just build all the best units. However, as it is, if you simply happen to be a smarter producer, it can count for a lot more than the extra numbers.
Compiling all the resources together, for the cost of one battlemachine (counting the cost of the technician), you can build 3 guards, but the battle machine is vastly superior in strength, health, and defense, so will defeat those three guards in regular combat. Not to mention it is far more effective against buildings, can attack air, and has a secondary ranged attack it can use while safely away from opponents.
This occurrence seems inconsistent around techtrees though, since an AI with tech will produce more battlemachines than an AI with annex would produce harriers, though they're still the same principal: late game units that make a huge difference.
I'm not saying that late game units aren't built, just that they're built far later and in far smaller quantities than a human player would if they had the resources the AI did (
y humans no get resource multiplier???), and that the AI should be tweaked to improve on this.
