AI not building large fleets

I've faced fairly substantial fleets on the map I'm playing on from the AI, though I'm also playing on a Random Huge (Multi) map. Encountered a Vasari fleet with like eight capital ships in it, plus numerous light carriers and other ship types. It could be the map size restricting them, with the AI unable to get the resources to research higher level supply caps and the like for you.

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

I doubt it's map size, they each had 3 planets and 3 asteroids. This was after a couple of hours or so, and they still only had a couple of caps and a few (30ish) frigates.

I didn't have any more territory than any of the AI until I stamped one out, yet still managed to build a vastly bigger fleet.

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.

You more or less have to play against the AI on unfair or higher to get any real challenge out of them.  Normal difficulty actually gives the AI penalites AFAIK, you need to play on at least Hard before they are even at 100%.  Beyond that they get to cheat.

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

Wish the AI in general had a better late game. Like on unfair the beginning is really hard, since they are cheating and you have to play fair, but once that expansion stage is over you pretty much can't lose.

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.

Do you know which AI type it is (Aggressor/Fortifier, etc)?  

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.

No, sorry, it's on random. It did cross my mind that they could all be researcher or something, but it still seems excessively low to me.

The AI's a lot better on hard aggressor when I tried, fleet sizes were similar to mine. Although it still couldn't cope with being vespa'd to death.

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.

On vicious i've seen the ai get 2000 fleet supply in about 2 hours.....