I've just finished a 100 planet, 1 star game vs. 1 hard AI. I'm blue, the AI is green.
I've managed to conquer about three fourth of the system before I've encountered the AI. Even though the AI built some nice fleets, it was unable to resist my assaults, since it just hadn't the resource base I did.

I'm wondering why the AI stopped colonizing after about one hour. (There were still empty planets next to it.

)
The AI really need to be more aggressive in colonizing. It perhaps should build a second Kol early on in large maps to colonize much faster.
To me it looked like the AI just stopped colonizing, after it's scouts have detected me.
I wonder if this happened to anybody else?
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The AI even managed to surprise me with a decent fleet, attacking me at two planets at the same time.

The AI really should do some scouting before attacking with its fleet...

Well, it still managed to build a good fleet consisting of 4 capital ships...

... it was just too late to do anything with it.

The battle was quite spectacular...

... although the frame rate was way down.

I didn't lose a single ship in this battle...