The AI factions are complete push overs (asides from pirates). At first I thought it was just my superior battle strategy, but after a few games of of domination I went to checking the end stats with more scrutiny. Beside the AI's lack of aggressiveness/proper fleets balance/tendency to attack a whole fleet with a lone capital ship that all lead to me getting an early pop./fleet advantage, I seem to have the most resources and money at all times throughout the game. I also have the biggest fleet.

The AIs never seem to horde, not that I do, but at times I need nothing to buy. It appears the often have these times, but instead all available money seems to be spent on bounties. Not that bounties shouldn't be used, it seems the AI is overly anxious to use it.

In my last game (medium size/hard AI) I started one asteroid away from another faction. Following a scout back to the planet, my meager fleet (2 frigs and my kol) attack the newly built frig and then bombed the planet. Sometime between the two I received a 500 (credits? what do you call the money?) bounty. His capital ship returned with another frig in toe. After destroying both ships and one more built frig, my bounty was over 1000. Post game I find (to my expectations) that instead of trying to crank out more 4 more frigs all money was spent on my bounty.

While, perhaps this makes some sense (AI realizing his eventual demise wanted to spite me), throughout the game the bounties spent was constant and ever increasing, which always leads me to an easy win.