In a long, weird and intensive "micromanagement" effort I just checked my "enemies" in a masochistic game.
a) any empire is at max 75% of my empire size

they planets have like NO research factilities
c) yet, any civ have about 10x more researched tech as I have
d) tech trade is disabled!
When I check the espionage stats, I have 1754 research produced every turn, the best are arceans with 4027.... tough they have just 1 research factility on each planet (I have like 3 on average). How is that possible???
Of course is the AI not cheating, it wont work, but there isfor sure 100% undocumented bonus at higher difficutly levels, or something like that would be impossible. You know what, Im using this super slow tech tree mod. It works perfectly for me, but the AI seems to completely ignore the tech costs, for any tech I invent, the AI civs invent like 10.
First I thought maybe they are just going 100% research and nothing for social/military production, but that way, they wouldnt have anything else. Though their planet structure is beyond any human understanding, they HAVE highly developed planets and zillions of super warships.
I also asked my self how it comes, the AI is beating my ships like 6:1 (for any ship I destroy, I lose 6), now I know why, my best weapon is laser v, I just couldnt go faster. And the Ai have black hole eruptor. ahaha.
I just have no idea what the hell is going on. On low diff levels the ai plays quite stupid, on high levels it seems the AI have its own rules. Right now Im quite p....