I played against 2 unfair AIs two days ago, was TEC rebel, too.
I built 2 Akkans right off the bat, went to colonize the galaxy. By the time I met the first enemy resistance I was inhabitating more then 75% of the (1 star) system.
I did not research TAR (truce among rogues). This is not a problem with the research, but a problem with the AI being horribly slow with getting started earlygame. This persisted since the original sins as far as I know.
You can even pretty much ignore most planets close to your homeworld, rush for the key chokepoints, set up there and camp the AI in within his three or four planet starting area. The only AI that is a little resitant to this is the agressive one, since it expands quite fast and spams fleet a lot.