Me and my 2 friends just stocked up on beer and munchies getting ready for a long weekend of Sins. I have played since January in the beta. Of my friends, one never played the game and the other played a few game the day before to get familiar with the game.

First game: 3v3 locked team Hard AI. Too easy, we beat them fairly fast and it was no trouble.

Second game, we figured 'what the heck'. 3v7 locked hard team in a Huge map. We won in 8 hours. My two friends were on a star system and i was on another. They had some trouble holding on and it was basically a stalemate on their side until i cleaned up my star system and came to their help. By then the game pretty much was won and went into mopping up status (btw we should be declared winner if we own 3/4 of the map to avoid those boring end game).

So we won at the HARDEST setting we could make with 1 veteran and 2 noobs? What is the point of playing now? My friends are just going to get better at the game if we play more. But since it's not even a challenge now, it will just be a cakewalk in later games. There is NO FUN in playing if you cannot lose!

We really really want to enjoy the game but cannot play with the current AI. Why can't we have a cheating AI? There is NOTHING WRONG with an AI that cheat. As long as we know what are the bonuses it's getting. Just like in Civ 4 the ONLY game we still play because it's still can be a challenge(team play vs AI on Emperor level)

I propose a Higher difficulty level for the AI with a sliding scale from 10-50% bonus in ship cost/fleet capacity/number of capital ship/fleet maintenance. That should make it a little bit more challenging and allow us to play the game. As it is, it's just no fun.

I dont' see why we cannot have a cheating AI for us gaming grognards. I understand, that you take pride on a good non-cheating AI. But the bottom line should be to make a fun game for us players. And it's not fun if we cannot lose.

So my main complain it the AI. But since we are at it. I would love to see an option to be declared winner if we own 3/4 of the map, as well as a way to speed up the game and/or more 4x stuff to do. As it is, we had too much time while playing. I mean we had time to alt tab to winamp and pick songs to listen, do beer run, sit around in the tech tree learning the game, browsing the web, and one even took a 30 mins nap without needing to pause the game!

Great game though. I just want to be able to enjoy it aka be challenged by it.