Tzukasa7

You also need to take into consideration your level of miniaturization. As you raise your miniaturization the size is going to change. I belive what your doing there is having no miniaturization skill and your messing around with default skins which were probably made with miniaturization inculded on it to give you a boost at the very start. This is also the reason why you cant really make anything better than the default stuff until you reasearch the miniaturization stuff.

The AI isn't stupid. Your playing the dread lords (as stated in previous post AI is much improved in expansions) and on top of that your playing the second campain mission. Of course the AI is gonna be easy on the SECOND mission the advanced algorithms that tough AI normally has doesn't apply in this case because its a scriped campain mission and not a sand box game. Go to new game not story campain and generate a random huge galaxy with tough AI setting and you will see that i