I quit a game I was playing as the Usurpers. I was doing ok but not great. Bottled up at the edge of the map. Sharing a continent with the Consciousness as my ally, because I was too nice. Hive to the north, in my way and bothering me. Spartans to the west, not bothering me, but hostile and making that land mass impassable. Inability of the Usurpers to use Democracy and thereby get Efficiency, does hurt. Eventually I was happy with Fundamentalist Free Market Wealth, but the damage was done. I felt like I was in a stagnant, long game, where even if I was "winning" it wasn't by much and not very satisfying. So aside from my own stupidity, I guess the AI does fight well enough. Pointedly, I used a pile of ships under the new cheaper ship rules to capture lots of Yang's sea bases north of me... and promptly lost them all to skimship probe teams.
I played another, shorter game as the Caretakers, that I also quit. I started right next to the Usurpers. They got the better of me. I did not respond approriately to the close quarters as it's been a long time since I've had to fight that particular situation. Didn't colonize enough initially, went too vertical with my initial 3 cities. Rectified that, but my research seemed awfully slow and I didn't manage to get good weapons immediately. So I'm fighting an Impact enemy with loads of cheap rover artillery, with Lasers and no artillery. Got started very late on mindworm anything, sorta forgot that was my faction power, due to the initial stress of the close quarters battle. Kept trying to build a city closer to the Usurper border because there was a nutrient bonus and a monolith I wanted. That kept triggering big surges northwards that I probably wouldn't have had to fight otherwise. Went Fundamentalist, thinking that would help me, but it may have just hindered me due to slower research. Finally had stacks of 5-2-1 coming at me about to take my city for a 2nd time. Too many things wrong with that game. The -1 POLICE penalty does hurt, as it makes Free Market painful. Also having +1 PLANET makes me unwilling to throw it away on Free Market anyways.
Yeah, learning how to play my own mod is, uh, humbling.