Well, yes, as I said it's a hypothetical.

In other words it's something YOU have to think about.  I structure my games so I never have to worry about issues like this (I try to get into a winning position long before that happens).  

My philosophy is that the best strategy is to win the game before the AI can actually hurt you.  And fights are a lot easier to win WHEN YOU CAN STAB THE OTHER PERSON IN THE BACK.  And if you can't do that, bribe the AI to attack each other.  THEN STAB THEM IN THE BACK.  

The trick is to win without direct confrontation.  All those bonuses the AI gets in God-Like DON'T MATTER if the AI is focusing it ON THE WRONG THINGS.  

Violence is the first and last resort of the stupid.  (I think that's a Foundation Series quote)

The problem is that in fleet combat with maxed out fleets it doesn't matter if you have 10 fleets vs 1.  ONLY ONE OF THEM CAN ATTACK AT A SINGLE TIME.  Regardless of the final outcome, even the winner will come out heavily damaged.  

Put it this way: if the human catches the AI off guard and has superiority at the beginning of the war, the AI is dead anyways regardless of how you program it.  

My strategy is designed for the AI to mass its ships BEFORE declaring war and to use those ships in the most effective method possible.  In other words, if the AI did it right, you WON'T HAVE local fleet superiority in the first place because you'll  start the war outnumbered 3 to 1 or 4 to 1.  

In that case, as long as the AI sends its fleets at you in maxed out balls, you won't stand a chance unless you think of something really creative.  This is a MUCH BETTER STRATEGY than what the AI is currently doing, which is sending thousands of small fleets piecemeal that get wiped out by your one LARGE fleet.  If the AI took those thousands of small fleets and made a couple of MAXED OUT FLEETS the human is doomed if it remains a war of attrition.  

No, I understand what you want your AI to do. That's not my issue with it. My issue is that you have completely screwed the pooch on setting out the logic required to do what you want it to do. You keep mentioning MAXED OUT FLEETS, but your AI would never build a maxed out fleet. You have included a cast-iron rule to prevent it doing so. Your AI will never gain local superiority in your space, because you have given it a cast-iron rule to ignore everything aside from the planet it has headed to.

The intention behind your AI is fine. Your attempt to achieve that behaviour from simple rules is a complete failure.

If things get tough, run way as quickly as possible and hope for the best.  Dead people can't fight back.  

Never get in a fair fight.  The best fights are always the ones where you have an overwhelming advantage or the element of surprise.  

Obviously we have differing philosophies towards war.  

Otherwise and error in your post, the way you play will dictate "maxed out fleets" as it all has to do w/ bonuses you get from resources or ideology choices throughout the game, even if you hit the end of the tech tree.  Therefore one player may have 1000 points to build huge ship while another player may have 1200 points.  Plus maxed out fleets could be heavy laser weapons or missile weapons or the third, plus do they have defenses and if so what are they focused on, do they have fleet modifiers or no.  There are so many possible options that "maxed out fleet" may not be strong at all, especially to someone who counters it correctly.  

Either way "maxed out fleets" aren't as deadly as you make it up to be, and it's done that way on purpose, once again you make the game what you want it to be

Having the ships appear from no where, No that AI is not better than we have now.  

Having the AI build up ships like that over time then put them into a fleet is the AI we have now...

Nope, seeing the AI put together fleets just fine in my games, then again I play with 70+ AI players so I only start with 10 or so colonies.  Then it takes a while to get to age of war and get planetary invasion.  It's all how you lay out your game...  Maybe it's like that with large AI empires with only 8 or so on an insane map but, I never play that way.  I get a challenge and may loose some games, you like a cake walk where you can colony rush your way to victory.

In a word, no.

You have spectacularly failed to produce rules for a working AI. It is more dependent on bonuses than the existing AI; it is less competent tactically than the existing AI; and it is more predictable than the existing AI. It is an awesomely poor idea. It is so bad, that for centuries to come it will be legendary amongst AIs for its immense rubbishness. It's really that bad. It is mechanically broken, conceptually lazy, logically inconsistent, astoundingly unconvincing, and totally predictable. It is inferior to the existing AI in almost every single important metric, and the existing AI is pretty bad. I strongly advise you to just drop it and move on rather than starting extra threads to draw more attention to what a stupid idea it is.

Marigoldran, it's becoming increasingly clear that you simply don't have much experience in fighting a war in this game. I wouldn't be remotely surprised if you've never actually tried. Oh, you've gamed your way into an early transport fleet, then moved them all to defenceless worlds and invaded them, but you've never continued playing long enough to see the AI actually using fleets. You've declared victory by turn 100 and stopped playing, at about the point where the AI has maybe 50 ships. This leaves you singularly unqualified to pass judgement over how the AI operates in a war.

I suspect many people reading this are somewhat nonplussed by your apparent belief that 5 fleets represents a major invasion, tbh, since I usually have more than that hanging around on the quiet stretches of my border by the time the AI has finished colonizing; there's never a point where the appearance of 5 fleets on my border couldn't be matched by an equal-or-greater force within 2-3 turns. It's not exactly hard when most industry worlds can generate enough production for a fully-equipped huge ship every turn.

You also seem to be labouring under some fairly massive mis-conceptions about how warfare works. For example, a fleet is not a concentration of units. A fleet is ONE unit. A tactical combat is what happens when one unit attacks one other unit. A battle is what happens when many units gather and fight multiple tactical combats until one side or the other is dead. If doomstacks were in this game (and, in fact, they are, it's just the AI doesn't use them), then they would be made up of stacks of fleets, not stacks of individual ships. Ships are really just equipment slots for a fleet. An actual concentration of force is where multiple fleets are gathered and work together to achieve an objective, which is exactly not what your AI has been ordered to do. You are, in fact, sending units at the player one at a time. Those units are full-logistic fleets, but if my units are also full-logistics fleets then you are still just sending lots of scattered individual units at me, to be annihilated by my own. This is incredibly basic stuff that you don't seem to have figure out yet.

What did curk do? The kobiashi Maroo or whatever its called. Gotta take one for the team I guess and slow your enemy down. Was a valid strategy in the art of war as well, and you can get some diplomacy aid/ rush buy and buy ships. All would not be lost...apart from the battle fodder that got destroyed and some theoretical starbases. (starbases come in handy for times like this.)

If you believe the JJ Abrams lore, all you have to do is sneak onto the enemy ships, all 5 fleet megadeath stacks, and swap a few circuits, and then when the battle happens the next day, bite into an apple and order to fire all the weapons and watch the Carnage. Thanks JJ, and can we get a few more lights shining into the camera for the next scene. LOL.