the gap in the wall is /exactly/ what i am referring to. 100% of the time I try to leave a single warp gate open for the AI to attack from. This single warp gate is either stocked to the brim with turrets in greater numbers than the raid coming through, or blockaded by the best my fleet has to offer. this 'gap' in my warp-gate defense leaves the AI with but a single ingress point. And by Jove it takes the bait every single time.
In this case, it is not "taking the bait." It is rule-bound to do so. That's an example of where it is a scenario builder, and is more tower-defense than RTS. There is almost zero intelligence in where it chooses to attack, it's more about the scenario than being your opponent. The gap in the wall thing comes in more with the tactical AI, where the actual units moving around in emergent/flocking ways don't fall into traps terribly often.
It's all semantics, when you really get down to it -- I want the tactical AI to be wicked smart and as good as possible, because that's what's interesting. By the same token, I want the grand-strategic AI to be pretty rules-bound because that's what makes for a non-stressful game. But, not so rules-bound that it becomes predictable -- except in the cases where the player is allowed to affect predictability, namely warp gates. The thing about warp gates is that you always have to keep expanding, or you nearly always do, so that gap in the wall is always getting widened.
Ah, well -- I should be coding bugfixes; I'm going to go do that now.
On the bright side, I will actually have a chance to play a singleplayer campaign sometime this week - So i will certainly be pushing myself this time around. No more wimpy little 7.0 and random moderate..
Cool. Have fun!
