Very aggressive/hostile AI

[Bansheedragon]

I have started 6 or 7 games since the big update recently, and have found the AI to be very aggressive or hostile, far more so than before.

When I play I never have all races activated, I usually just have 4 or 5 AI opponents, as I feel that is optimal for me.
Any more would make the galaxy too crowded giving me too little time or opportunity to expand and prepare for potential hostilities with other races.
Any fewer would make it feel too sparsely populated and little to no challenge, which is not fun either.

In every single game, even on the easiest difficulty, the AI races start making all sorts of demands of me around 15-20 turns after I meet them.
And I usually meet the first race already after around 10-15 turns, in previous versions of the game I could go upwards of 25 turns before meeting any other races.

They demand I give them star systems, tribute, tech, etc.
I'm not talking about 1 or 2 races, but almost all of them and they do it every few turns, if its not one making demands, its another one.

In one game I had 1 race make 3 demands in the span of 10 turns, leaving me with the impression that they made new demands just because I refused the previous one as if it was trying to force me to give into their demands.
After I refused the 3rd time they declared war, and started attacking a planet I has just colonized before I had the time to even build a barracks, much less a planetary defense.
They quickly destroyed the colony and 3 turns after destroying it, the AI had colonized it while attacking the next system.

If I were to give in to all these demands it would be game over for me before i reached turn 50 as I would not have an economy to sustain me and probably just end up with just my homeworld in the end, so I usually refuse their demands.
I usually refuse their demands out of principle,

This of course results in a deterioration of relations, which eventually leads them to declare war on me.

Not only that but they all seem to start very close to my home system, I tend to meet the first race after 6-7 turns, and they usually colonize in such a way that they literally surround me.
And this usually happens very fast as well, by the time I have managed to survey 2 systems the AI can have colonized 3.
And quite often at least one of those systems was one I had planned on colonizing, but the AI did so before my colonizer could even reach the system.

This happens very early in the game, and at this point I rarely have logistics beyond lvl 3 which makes it difficult at best for me to expand, as they usually get angry when I colonize too close to them.
Researching higher logistics is not a viable option, because this takes time, and by the time I have the next lvl, the AI empires have usually expanded to compensate.

When they eventually do turn hostile they usually do so 2-3 of them within 5 turns of each other and start attacking me in multiple locations at once.
With the way the game economy is right now I simply cannot afford to build enough defenses to defend all my colonies against these attacks at such an early stage.

Now I know this is part of the game design, and I'm not asking to have it removed or changed to make everything very easy.
But I'm thinking that maybe its needs a minor adjustment, at least on the easiest difficulties, because I cant even play on the easiest difficulty without this happening every game I play.

I dont mind at all that the harder difficulties have very tough and demanding AI, as it offers good challenge for those that want that.
But I think at least on the 1 or 2 easiest modes that the AI should be more mellow for those who want to play more for the story or cant or dont want to deal with the tougher AI.

I would like to hear what others have to say about this as well, as it could help me better determine if the problem is with how I play or if its something in the design of the game.

- Qty of Stars: very high(hugest setting)
- Scenario: Normal
- Missions on
- Custom race Humans
- Game difficulty setting: Very Easy or Easy
- Number of AI players: 4-5

[Zaimat]

We are very interested in hearing what you all think about the game difficulty since the update. Thank you Bansheedragon for starting this discussion and your detailed post.

When joining this discussion it would also be helpful to know the setting for games such as:
- Qty of Stars: low/average/fair/high etc
- Scenario: Normal or Classic
- Missions? / Tutorials?
- Custom race or standard template?
- Game difficulty setting