The fleets are pretty big on Unfair, I haven't played Hard lately but maybe you're ready for the next step?

Hrm, by the time a couple of hours has passed for me, on normal through to unfai, I'm usually facing large fleets. Though I only play multi maps, if its got less than four systems and four hundred planets, I'm just not interested.

Heck, in beta 3, there was one point where i was gangf****d by two large fleets coming at me from two allied AI's, pincered me, maw'd through my light craft and just murdered my titan with its full cap escorts.

Many times, against just normals, throughout the beta, I'd get a few hours in, things are going well, then i have to park my fleet while I start churning out starbases to stop the novalith spamming.

Yeah... On Normal mode I just steamroll over AIs, then in unfair or higher I get my ass handed to me lol

First time I saw a Titan get destroyed by nothing but frigates

Had quite a funny thing in Deplomacy - the enemy had only one planet and i had a full fleet and about 20 planets. I then put the AI to Vicious and he started spamming fleets half the size of mine. It would be nice if the AI became smarter, rathen than just burrowed under ressources.

I've noticed generally in the betas and in release that the only AIs that actually build a good fleet are the Aggressors. The Fortifiers do some fleet work, and the Economists and Researchers are rofl-stomped as they have only a 200-400 supply fleet late game.

Duh, I mistyped that, you're right. I should proofread my posts.

Fortifier is the best AI to play against, in my experience. They build massive fleets mid-to-late game, but give you time to get started in the beginning, even on Unfair, because they are spending money building up defenses. They do a decent amount of research; all of it if they have enough resources. I like that they actually spend time fortifying their planets and building starbases, unlike the others who only doso if they have disposable income. I hate playing against aggressive or researchers, who leave their planets undefended and easy pickens. They are the closest to a well-rounded AI as you'll be able to play against, because you can only fortify so much; after that they sink money into other stuff rather than being single-minded.