If you can beat the Cruel AI, then you're probably ready to advance to playing against human opponents. At this point you probably understand all of the game mechanics and have a knowledge of all the races, tech trees, ships, and counters. You'll get thumped for your first fifty games or so, but gaining experience against people is the only way to improve. What you'll discover is that the AI has a very limited strategic and tactical ability regardless of what difficulty setting it's at.
As you play against people, you'll become an increasingly large pain-in-the-ass and eventually you'll be able to hold your own and even beat other players. You'll also get to experience what it's like to play in a large team game (5 on 5) where additional team strategy elements come into play. Sins online multiplayer is a lot of fun, so I hope that you can get into it. If you start now you'll probably be a pro-level player by the time Rebellion comes out.
