First I am fairly new, and am working my way up the AI difficulties, right now I am on Normal so my request may be in the harder difficulties.
I had a large empire with 1 war ship, and I was attacked by someone. I designed some new ships based on what my enemy had and ordered my ship yards to build them.
I do not know how long it took for me to win, but I did not get a UP vote between the start and end of the war.
What I want is for the computer to look at their perspective opponents manufacturing capacity, and possibly the technology differance before starting a war, as that would have saved my opponents life.
One other thing I have noticed is that the computer seems to no build reasonable manufacturing planets so all their ships take forever to build.