Or you have functionally the same car each year with different upgrades, hence Plymouth, Dodge, Chrysler models with interchangeable everything.
One of my clients bought a Ford pickup, then replaced stuff with all the aftermarket Lincoln parts (who knew there were Lincoln pickup trucks!) and now he drives a Lincoln!
Actually, on that note, I am hard pressed to think of any RTS game where I've seen a computer player populate more than one island, or build a second base.
Empire Earth (not sure which version, if not the original). The AI was told to understand that space empire will have two starting islands, and you are to conquer the foreign island, and they'd invade and build up (with local production), if you locked yourself in a small corner defensively.
My first encounter with "stupid AI" was Dune 2, where you could work out which direction the attacks were coming from (usually, a straight line from their production facility to your most valuable structure), and build a "catcher's glove" of turrets or strong tanks and wipe out everything coming at you with minimal (or sometimes no) losses.
Age of empires. The AI would build multiple home bases (town centers), so is smart for that, based on your measure, but dumber than a 2 year old in so many other ways.
They'd build walls up to (but around) trees. When the trees were cut down, it would never extend walls to protect the exposed areas. So workers, sent along with the military could take out a superior force.
Also, they won't attack a wall when there is another way in. So if you make a maze of walls, with a clear (but winding) path through, and no buildings in range to attack, they'd *always* take the long and winding path. And you can pick them off with strategically placed defenses. Few to no losses, even against massive attack forces.
so it goes nuclear when it gets shot down over their base". It's the unconventional that AIs never seem to achieve.
Reminds me of your complaints about Dune. The Harkonnen couldn't use nukes effectively. If it got to that point of the game, put a few structures away from the base, in a protective ring. The nukes will fall on them, and they'll never push to try to get a nuke to hit the make core of the base. So put all your important buildings packed tight in the corner, and unimportant ones scattered around. The AI will never do max damage with a nuke. Once you figure that out, the AI will spend more resources bombing than they kill with them.
Incidentally, I thought this feeble exploit attempt was called "pharming" just so the author could feel justified in calling the next and bigger one "pharmageddon".
I'm personally glad for all these fishing attacks and exploits relying on a human element. With the lack of other predation lately, they're sorely needed to cull the human genome. Presumably enough idiots will lose enough on this that it allows for a mild selection for those with more sense.
An Ada exception is when a routine gets in trouble and says 'Beam me up, Scotty'.