Check the time, it's only been three nine hours.

So, I've played a lot more of the test. I'll put up a more detailed report later on, but a quick survey of the situation:

The year is now 2232. The Arceans are gone, crushed by the Drath and Torians (they surrendered to the latter). Two main wars are raging - the Drengin vs. the Torians and a ton of minor races, and a quasi-alliance (no formal one yet - in fact the only races with Alliances are the bad guys) of the Drath, Altarians, and Terrans vs. the Yor. The Korx have stayed mostly out of it, but are currently beating up the Scottlingas. The Yor war was going in the "allies'" favor, but the Yor might turn things around now that they've got Black Hole Guns. The Drengin have overrun several of the Torian border colonies, but the Torians have much better weapons techs and look to have stopped the onslaught for now.

Since I had cheats on, I decided to trigger a mega event about half a year ago to see how the AIs would take it: it was the galactic plague. Most of the major races responded pretty fast, as did some of the minors, though the minors that didn't react immediately are still affected (and aren't even researching the cure). The Terrans and Drath don't have the cure yet either.

Other observations:

• I may have gone overboard trying to cure the Drengin's failure to research their manufacturing techs, as they are now obsessed with them to the detriment of almost everything else. So far, this hasn't hurt them too much, but only because they did well at the start.
• Ion Cannons (Drengin unique mass drivers) are truly horrible. I don't know what the exact problem is yet, but the Drengin have never gotten beyond Ion Cannons III while everyone else has third-tier weapons at the least. I'm fairly certain that this is going to come back to bite them hard.
• As mentioned, weapons are at a much higher level overall when compared to a normal game. Defenses are almost nonexistent. This may or may not have something to do with the absence of a human player. Weapons types are split almost evenly between missiles and mass drivers with no beams to speak of.
• The Drengin have been unusually diplomatically active. Among other things, they apparently traded Plague Cure to the Korx and have exchanged both treaties with the Yor - one way I see the game ending is a Drengin-Yor-possibly Korx alliance mopping up the good guys, who have, again, failed to research any yellow techs.
• The Korx look like the sleeping giant of the game - largest planet count, huge economy, but they haven't done much.
• The Arceans truly stunk. I'm going to have to check them out pretty thoroughly, as this is all too typical of some of their recent performances.
• Attention to hull techs was pretty good, but attention to extreme colonization techs wasn't: the only races to actively pursue it were the Torians, Yor, and Korx, although some of the others are getting into the act now - too bad most extreme worlds are taken.
• Overall, despite some flaws, AI behavior is vastly improved over my last test (which featured an unmodded game).

It hasn't been abandoned - I will finish it eventually, since I have all the notes for the game saved on my computer. I just don't have much interest in it right now.

Hey keep up the good work!  I haven't played GC2 for years but your mod made me reinstall it again.

Ah, you're right I had it confused with Tolmekian's.