I was playing a conquest game on tough today, and I must say this is one of a few occasions an AI has surprised me with its intelligence.
I had one fleet in my solar system which I was using to stop his troop transports (they were escorted too by the way!) and he wasn't getting anywhere. So the sneaky devil made two fleets...
And attacked from opposite directions simultaneously! I could only stop one and the other fleet trashed my starbases before I caught up with it.
I was so happy that the AI thought something like that up that it almost cancelled out my feeling of stupidity for having been beaten by the AI like that.
Love the game!