And do surprise attacks and other, more complex, strategies with reactivity. Unless "totally flawless AI" includes this, in which case they'd probably end up brokering peace agreements instead of fighting.
Though better AI would be good, I agree that directly controlling AI should have definite advantages. However, being able to issue basic orders would be pretty good as well as getting guys to follow you without killing you in the process.

better AI for everything takes priority, my suggestion is just a simple thing to make things better without changing things. better AI takes a crapton of work. new mechanics like I described, requires little by comparison. I'd actually like both, I'm just being realistic, which are we more likely to get first?

Also a suggestion unrelated to economy or wildlife, Truely pinned turrets.

USE LUA TO FORCE X,Y AND ROTATION! this means that when you face left or right you don't wiggle and slowly break terrain or go all sideways like with the current turrets.

Also, similar lua in dreadnoughts so that it has to stay within X angle range, and if it goes out of it, it falls over and say, EXPLODES... this way we don't try scaling walls with a dreadnought (been there did it, up a 90 degree smooth wall for 300+ pixels... then I fell on my own guys... and couldn't get back up... )thats a bug thats easily fixed.

anyway....

Dreadnoughts scaling walls isn't due to AimRange, it's due to crabs having a looser constraint to "stay upright" than AHumans; they can swing *almost* through a 90 to the left or right, but never tip all the way over past that.

i know, and I think the looser constraint needs to change.. harder to tip, but once tipped results in death, so taht the wall-scaling doesn't happen, and a missile that doesn't kill it but tips it, will still kill it. Also I was primarily talking about pinned turrets, dreadnaughts where an afterthought. Pinned turrets, when they turn left and right, tend to wiggle, and dig up terrain, and slowly move from flip-flopping around. pinning them, and staying upright with lua, would stop that. That's all I was saying.