The Acutians are renowned for being earlygame powerhouses, and it's been true every game of theirs I've watched. When I ran an Observer game, they got up to a Fear Empire, but were eventually crushed by the other races.
At first I thought this was just bad luck or mismanagement by them that allowed them to be overcome, but in my most recent game I saw something interesting: when they mismanaged their big fleet by throwing it piecemeal at a superior force, it never came back. Sure, they would build ships, but they'd stop when they got "big enough", which was significantly weaker than "big enough" was considered to be in the early game (despite, I'm sure, better tech).
This behavior is a lot like the Burlusts, who I spent a lot of time trying to manage: their fleet seems to cap itself at a very small size. Part of the problem with the Burlusts is that they'll send ships off to raid much more frequently than any other race, but the Acutians don't have that problem and yet still can't field as large a fleet as the warlords can now.
Has anyone else seen this? The Acutians decide later in the game that they don't need fleets as powerful as they used to field, even though they used to field stronger ones with weaker technology?
