I played them out.  It doesn't take that long when it's a 2-race scenario in a tiny galaxy, and neither race is doing anything.

They're trying to sell you cheaper hyperdrive insurance.

22)  When playing campaign missions, the AI opponents accuse you of "making peace only to attack again", when you did no such thing.  I realize that this is an assumption built into the "permanent war" status, but it's inaccurate nonetheless.

There's always going to be winners and losers in the colony rush.

Any race which doesn't have an advantage (like the Thalan's inherent social/military bonus) that allows them to crank colony ships out faster or move colony ships faster than other races is going to get boxed in.  However, colony rushers get to pay through the nose for all their colonies which don't produce much tax to begin with.

However the reality is that the rushers are always ahead in the tech race because every colony produces research.  As soon as their economy recovers to the point where they can run the production slider at 100%, just that amount is enough to make things very grim for a smaller race.

In theory, a race with just six colonies could get started on Planetary Invasion real quickly and then gobble up bloated empires before they know what's happening.

Now for a human, it's simple to appreciate just how slim this particular window of opportunity is.  An early war to grab planets from your upstart neighbour is a great idea, but it can backfire if your enemy researches Planetary Invasion and Space Weapons and starts sending transports and fighters to claim back the worlds you've plundered.

The AI can't appreciate the potential rewards or risks in this strategy, so it usually does not have its pieces in position.  A small empire under control of the AI usually falls behind unless a mega event turns things around for them, or the human player intervenes (gifted ships, planets, techs) or they just get lucky and happen to grab some planets during a dogpile war.

I agree with you, but I'm not convinced that a given AI can always avoid being boxed in, unless there is a routine added for those big expanders to slow down and let their economies breathe, or there is a shocking abundance of habitable worlds,

Where I have found a particular AI personality to be lacking, I have tried using the generic or Terran personalities instead.  You can accomplish the same by clicking the Edit Race button and checking the Personality tab.  As well as altering base personalities, I tend to have a mixture of peaceful and militant races as well, so there is usually someone who has ships and wants to go to war with someone who doesn't.

I don't know if that will help, but it's something to try if you haven't done so already.

I finished testing the maklar mod.

It did help a lot. With the tech trees returned to the DL style all the stock races began expanding a lot better and built a military a lot better. However they still behaive strange (they never build a trade routes or try to trade techs with me for example). After al I decided to go back to the Dark Avatar. If the testing of it's AI will satisfy me I will not be playing ToA untill a proper patch is released (And I guess it won't happen any time soon) and will play DA instead

Try maklar mod anyway see how it changes things a lot.

24)  "Destroy Colony" should not render the planet uninhabitable.

I made a "strategic withdrawal" from a planet with a +700% production to prevent it from being taken by the Dread Lords, and was very unpleasantly surprised to discover that the planet was permanently dead.

Having read another thread on this topic, I know this is by design, to prevent repeated recolonization event farming, but it really seems like there's a better way:  Generate the colonization event code for all planets when the map is first created.  Then when the event occurs, adjust the planet's stats per the result, and zero out the event code so that recolonizations will never get an event.  Even in the biggest galaxy, it shouldn't add more than a few kB to the save file size, and as a side bonus, it foils attempts to savescum for good colonization events.

Opinion, not a bug. I happen to agree with your idea, but it belongs in another thread.

There is a problem with implementing 26 in that it is possible for the target ship to not be out of sensor range of another of the AI's ships, but there's no way to know that without iterating through every ship within 15 pc of the target ship.  If we are strict and say that each ship or fleet must use its own guidance systems and not rely on position reporting from other ships or fleets, then it's do-able, but you could argue that it would be easy to run rings around AI ships which would effectively be blind.

But I agree that if a ship you're pursuing jumps in a wormhole, there's no way you should set a course for the other side of the galaxy just to chase them.  By the time you get there, they could have jumped through another wormhole anyway.

Sensor coverage isn't a guaranteed thing for a human player right now, a ship moving into the same square as a sensor boat or starbase with good sensor coverage can nullify the benefit of those sensors, at least until you click the ship/base again afterwards.  Then there's the bug where the sensor coverage stays even when the ship providing it has been destroyed.  If you're going to give the AI a sensor map it has to not be prone to those sorts of problems.

I would suggest that the AI keep a list of enemy sensor contacts.  In other words, where and when a given ship or fleet was last seen, and how fast it is capable of moving.  If a contact is confirmed visible, then an intercepting ship or fleet moves to a likely interception point (in other words it doesn't simply blow all its moves trying to get as close as possible, it attempts to veer into the path the enemy fleet is travelling, if intel level 2 has been reached).  If a contact is not confirmed, then any fleets searching for the enemy do not simply proceed to the last known co-ordinates but patrol between there and any likely target, bearing in mind how far the ship or fleet may have been able to travel since contact was lost.  When an enemy contact is capable of moving faster than the current ship, do not attempt to re-acquire the contact if it could already be beyond the range of moves+sensors.  It's better to stand ground and wait to see if it turns around.

28)  The map editor does not properly color resource icons when zoomed out.

30) Stars should be unfogged on the main map from the beginning.