Most of the players hate when the AI takes over.
I was thinking for  a possible solution:
#1
 When a player quits, the game is opened again in the lobby, so that a another human player can take the quitters place. The host could also add an AI player if there's no human players in the lobby.
#2
(this needs some work) There could be an option of destroying all of the quitters property, and continuing the game with only 3 players. This wouldnt work if the host kicked the player out.

Hope you get something out of this.

Settlers
Master of Orion
Gunstar Heroes
Dune II

Well you just have to live with it.

I'm more conserned about the timing. If you turn off "show computer development", the AI will move significally faster than it does when showing ai development. Why is that?
The best/worst I've seen it do is build on 4 plots, hunt the wampus while building, and finish the turn with a few pints in the pub.

Im not complaining or demanding anything, just curious

Lets start all over again.
Are you (really) visually handicapped, or is your computer having a problem?
If its about you, there's not much that anyone can do to help you expect yourself.
If its about your PC then you should check your graphics card and install the latest drivers.
if your computer was built before the WWII, or half of your screen is REALLY missing, then go buy some new equipment.

I support the current system where you can raise the bid as much as you want without having to buy the plot.
If players would be forced to do that in plot auctions, would it apply to goods auctions? You dont want player A to get any food, and he's short on cash. Player B has 3 surplus. Player C has sufficent units and is low on cash. You (player D) run the starting bid to 150$, so that A has no funds to buy any food. Why should you be "punished" (150/unit) because player A hasn't invested in food and you on the other hand have funds to buy him out?

all of above makes no sense, but I'm trying to say: If you dont have enough resources, improve your game or just blaim bad luck.
The current system allowing some players to raise the starting bid to thousands, means that no one will get the plot (in most cases). So whats the problem? You dont get the plot, but neither does the raiser.
I hate ragequitters and cheaters as much as the next guy, but you cant compare this to cheating or anything like it. It's just a part of the game.

you cant stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. maybe i should get my head out of my ass.

Im a noob so I agree with the first post. When the game is going bad for everyone the negative events may cause you to lose the game. Worst case scenario; everybody but you have -4 on food. you got 1 riverplot and you're leading. You get hit by a planetary pest and then you all can wait for a aid package.

my point; no matter how bad the scenario is, someone will be at 1st place.
my solution: No negative effects until the players total score has reached a certain level.

Hi, name's Yarr
I live in southern Finland. Im new to the game, infact i wasn't even born when the original game was published.
I got introduced to the game thru Finnish gaming magazine called Pelit (games). Downloaded mule 1.2.3 immediately and I gotta say, I'm glad I did.

...you try to convince your local mafia that you have absolutely no crystite
...you auto-open port 6260 whenever you're on a computer
...you spend your nights in the pub pondering what wampus really is
...you use more than 2 hours/day trying to figure out how wampus got its treasure
...you receive 3 food and 2 energy units for christmas

I think this would be a good idea. You mean that the AI should have something like 15-25 different strategies and a few difficulty levels (classic: easy,medium,hard) which leads the AI to be a bit different in every game.
Also it should be able to recognize different types of strategies.
 For example:
Players a,b,c and d are playing. A is the host. A decides to kick D out of the game because he has all the smithore and he knows that the prizes will be wrecked down if AI takes over. So, with the upgraded AI, the bot would recognize what D was aiming to and doesn't sell all of the smithore 50$/unit.
Or something like that... improvements would be nice.

Agree to all above, maybe this is about the artificial dumbness that I've been investing in.

#1  AI should be reconfigured. When a player a player quits and is replaced with an AI the game is ruined due to cheap electricity (the AI has a thing for that) and food.
#2 It's too easy to manipulate the AI. If it has a shortage on food at turn 4, and nobody sells, it goes crazy, building only food factories.
I know you all have heard all of this before, but what do I care?

I played in my first competitive game over the weekend, and because I was in first place on turn 1, I got shafted hard and spent most of the rest of the game in 4th place.  However, any time a plot was contested, I never got it.  I lost two to AI and one to the other human player who was in first.

So it does not appear to be fully functioning yet that the lowest place person who buzzes in gets the plot, unless somehow my buzz-ins weren't registered at all, though that seems unlikely, since my buzz-ins for non-contested plots worked fine.

Timing is still a crucial part in land grant. The AI is superb in this part of the game, there's no way to beat it, because the bot can select the plot on the very first frame,so you would have to be extremely lucky to get that plot.

I know Planet Mule isn't that big yet. I know it's free, and I most certainly know that there's been a billion posts like this before. But I gotta say, after waiting 2 hours for a game to open (one opened while I was taking a leak, and the game filled up pretty quickly, less than 1 min) I'm starting to get pissed off.

As I write this, there's 17 players online, 11 of them in a game and the rest in the lobby. Atleast 4 of these players (including me) are active.

The server hosting problem's getting out of hands. I know you people are looking for an answer to that aswell, but this really ruins it for the rest of us who are behind some WWII router and can't host our own games.
Is there any possibility that you could run x amount of games via the masterserver without somebody hosting them?
I know the MS has limited capacity and it's difficult, but we all want the player amounts to rise right?

Hope I'm not offending anyone.

You should also add mule.exe to your DEP expections list.

Control Panel/ System/ Advanced/ Performance Options / Data Execution Prevention
Select "Turn on Dep for all programs and service except those i select", and add mule. 

First, let me say it's been a pleasure playing this game. It's awesome.

Now for the issue; some background first.

I had to reformat my computer a few months back. i've been encountering problems with older software and games like CS, Neverwinter Nights, FF8 and now with M.U.L.E .
I tried to open a game and all i got was a black window.

After 5 really wild nights i figured out that I missed a DLL file  called  atioglxx.dll
That solved all my problems, hope it gives you some help too. I don't know how this will help people with nvidia etc, but it doesn't hurt to try.

Thank you.

Get the DLL file (in case you don't know what google is) from :
www.dll-files.com