Ok, first I should descirbe my playing style a bit I think. I play Gigantic or Huge maps with Tough AI and started enabling the AI uses more CPU for complex algorithms or whatever its called. I generally build a tiny ship to put in the otbit of each planet, and that jacks up my military rating so the AIs don't think that I'm an easy target for them right off the bat. After that I don't build military ships until I hit the medium sized hulls and larger, I spend most of my time managing trade routes and my planets. When an AI, generally the Arceans, Torians, Drengin or Korx make war on me, I design a warship class specifically to comabat them, buy a few and tell most of my other planets to begin building the ships. My ships, while they don't ever match the AI's in number, are almost always superior to anything the AI throws at me. Generally the original Mk I design of my ship stays superior to the AI's Mk II, III, or IV designs, though I think that's probably pretty typical, the AI isn't much of a genious at designing ships. I push the AI back, destroying numerous ships in the process and take a few planets from them.
Since in the first half of the game I try to stay peaceful, focusing mostly on trade, diplomacy and researching powerful techs I eventually feel sorry for the AI and offer a peace treaty, which they will now refuse. Before 1.2 after this kind of war the AI would accept, though it would sometimes require a 5000 bc payment for all the damage I caused them, or sometimes returning one or two planets I didn't really want but invaded to keep the AI from using to build ships. On rare occaisons, when fighting much larger empires that were superior to me and on the brink of destroying me, I would invade the race's homeworld and then give it back to them in exchange for peace.
After 1.2 the AI won't accept offerings of peace anymore, even though countless numbers of their newer, but inferior ships die at the hands of my older, but superior and much larger ships and they have lost several planets and are losing the war. Whats the deal here? Doesn't the AI take into account the quality of enemy ships, or does it go by the number of ships? Doesn't it matter that they are losing, not gaining, planets? Why won't they accept my offering of peace and what does it take after 1.2 to convince the AI to accept peace treaties? The Arceans and Torians are really bad.