Were you looking at the graph of total accumulated or total available?
Both, in the total accumulated we were about even, meaning that he was colonizing and bringing in a comparable amount of resources to my empire, but in the total available he had wayyyy more than I did, coupled with a lack of planetary development or ship building means he isn't doing a thing other than colonizing.
Did you check that they had all three resources (cash, metal, crystal) in a recent game I played the AI had vast reserves of crystal (30000) but a metal income which wasnt enough to spend the crystal as fast as they gathered it so they built up enormous reserves of crystal. I dont think the AI is aware it can sell one resource, get cash, and buy another.
He had a ton of all three, and your right, the AI is almost completely oblivious of the black market for the most part, very little sold off, very little bought.
In many games, the A.I. comps (usually beyond the easiest levels) get "cheat" privileges from the game designers : such as free resources, free buildings, free military units.
I do not know in what precise measure that is the case with Sins.
Let's suppose, for example, that the comps get free ships at a regular interval. They would not, then, have to spend resources to obtain them, and that would affect the graphs.
A stable graph might not necessarily mean that the comps don't like spend : it might signify that they are regularly receiving pre-coded freebies -- they don't need to spend!
But if the AI is cheating, and getting freebies, then they aren't showing up on the graphs. Take for example the free ships, they would show up in the ship/fleet section of the graph, but unless the freebies aren't tracked in the graph, the aren't getting them because the total number of ships for these dead beat AI stay very low.
