I've a couple of comments.
I usually experience the same type of end game.
Weighting the option of building factories and especially power plants higher sounds like a good idea, but you also made me wonder whether automated workers know to railroad mines and lumbermills first? If it did, this would also help a bit of late game micromanagement for the human player.
And I agree it should try and found corps more actively. Especially if the AI gets an engineer, merchant or scientist it doesn't have much immediate use for, it should retreat that GP to the would-be wall street city (if not already built) and wait there til it can found a corp. If someone else gets to the relevant corps first, obviously it should do something else with them.
Anyway, a lot of the ideas regarding corps are pretty obvious and I won't insult you Better AI guys by going into all the basics like deciding which corps would be good etc.
Missing Industrial Revolution:
Whenever I hit railroads/factories, my empires production output proceeds to spike upwards sharply. The AI seems fails to pull this off -- at least, not nearly as fast (I'm currently working through a game, maybe the AI will start spiking before I finish it). This is about the only reason why I can compete in the modern era against the AIs huge cheaply upgraded army (that, and the fact that armor is off the upgrade path, so I can field more tanks than the AI).
I usually experience the same type of end game.
Weighting the option of building factories and especially power plants higher sounds like a good idea, but you also made me wonder whether automated workers know to railroad mines and lumbermills first? If it did, this would also help a bit of late game micromanagement for the human player.
And I agree it should try and found corps more actively. Especially if the AI gets an engineer, merchant or scientist it doesn't have much immediate use for, it should retreat that GP to the would-be wall street city (if not already built) and wait there til it can found a corp. If someone else gets to the relevant corps first, obviously it should do something else with them.
Anyway, a lot of the ideas regarding corps are pretty obvious and I won't insult you Better AI guys by going into all the basics like deciding which corps would be good etc.