Yeah, my guess would be the ai getting cash infusions, and apparently desperately needing them. Currently playing as the Iridium on an insane map with all the current stock races, gifted difficulty, tech brokering enabled but normal tech trading off.. I ran in to the Krynn around turn 70. They had 14 planets to my 10, and about 40 ships to my 15, mostly scout and cheep military ships, so I was thinking I was still somewhat competitive with them. I was short on cash so I tried to trade with them but they were in debt over 1100. I was thinking to myself, well, looks like they over expanded, I guess they won't be too much of a threat. No, at turn 77 they offered me at trade deal, and they somehow had almost 12k in the bank!

There are several posts about this on the steam forums. It seams the A.I. is getting cash infusions, either on a regular basis or when it gets low. Some people mark it up to trade. However, while I haven't tested it myself, apparently if you set up a game with a single AI (no one to trade with) and keep an eye on the AI, level of cash, it occasionally gets large cash injections from nowhere. Unless Stardock can give a better explanation, I'm guessing now that the AI is cheating beyond it's normal bonuses. I have to say I am rather disappointed.

I've seen some AIs get wonders incredibly early, like the first 10 turns - wonders that require research and special materials.  Seems kinda ridiculous.  I hate when AIs have to cheat to compete.  But hey, at least they go for the wonders, that's good.

I used to say that the AI doesn't get any bonuses on normal.

But when I started working on Crusade's AI, I saw that it was, indeed, getting cash infusions which I've been eliminating as I find them.

However, what I can say is that if anything, Crusade's AI gets a lot less than the base game.  The idea of the AI cheating makes me, as an AI developer, a bit ill.  

The only reason I wrote the original GalCiv for OS/2 back in 1993 was because I wanted a non-cheating AI.  So when I find this stuff, it bugs me a lot.

Now, at higher levels, sure. Fine. As long as it's documented.  

So then you ask yourself, how is the AI affording more colony ships? The answer: Colony ships are way WAY cheaper than they are in the base game.  I am pretty sure I've found the last of the little money helpers in here.  I don't think they were even trying to cheat when they wrote it.  What it appears to be is that whoever wrote it was giving the AI enough money to buy the colony ship and then subtracting it later.  So it wasn't meant as a cheat.  However, at some point, to fix some multiplayer issue, the myTreasury -= rushCost stopped working because you have to send that as a message.  Thus, it got to keep the money.

None of this is new to Crusade, just that Colony Ships are cheaper so the effect is more pronounced.  We're going to have a small update early in the week to deal with it along with some other issues we've found.

There are a LOT of moving parts in a game like this.  As some of you have no doubt noticed, Crusade is more than an expansion, it's practically a sequel.

The Terran Resistance AI in my last game, on Normal, turn ~150 or so, suddenly had a massive spike of about 100,000. The end game economy breakdown was dwarfed by the spike.