I have not experience your direct problems in any of my games on Normal but I the AI do get bonuses to range and all sort of help on harder difficulties. These bonuses will diminish as the AI get smarter, I'm sure of that.

An AI that starts spamming ships are typically a military inclined race that focus allot in"Manufacturing" and "Military Manufacturing" in particular. You can often view that on the power graphs.

All in all it is not all too difficult to produce a colony ship per turn if you really try hard to do so, you just need to focus more on manufacturing on a couple of planets. If you really focus you can quite early get a planet that could in theory produce two colony ships per turn if you really wish., especially on you home world.

I can't really comment on your experience on range, but I never experienced the AI being capable to send ships further then their range on Normal difficulty so far. You might want to save your game and use the console and look at the AI and how they are doing and if their ships really are cheating.

I also hope AI tactical battle logic get a bit smarter in the future, especially how to build fleets and when the need to expand their logistical skill to keep up with an opponent or their fleets are just crushed over and over.

Look at the graph. You can generally get an idea what is happening. If it's the YOR it's because the AI was just taught how to use it's abilities. The devs are ware they are a bit OP right now. Iridium could be buying ships outright. On the graph you can see their military spending as well as their current income. They may have dropped a ton of credits. The AI also builds 1 shipyard per planet so they can genrally knock out ships fairly quickly. Save your game hit the tilda key and type fow. YOu now can watch the AI, this does flag you as a cheater so load back your previous game later. 

The only "cheat" right now is at higher difficulties it can see the map (maybe, I thought this was changed in a patch). This was actually for performance reasons. 

Other than that the higher difficulties gives the AI a handicap. Just like you would give yourself a handicap when you are playing your little siblings so they have a chance of winning...although I'm terribly competitive and take great pleasure in destroying my 8 year old niece in Disney Infinity. Sorry, Miranda is my girl and I'm not getting destroyed by an Elsa....umm excuse me Disney Infinity is serious business. Anyways, the higher difficulties is for players that want the challenge. 

Anyways, these handicaps do add up. Also, the AI is able to almost instantly modify is Govern queue for everyone of it's planets and can build whatever it wants almost on demand. The player can do this as well but can take it's a much bigger investment. So, if it's current state is war prep it's going to invest everything and will appear to be cheating. 

I see no way the ai doesn't cheat, even at a 'normal' game.

I like the big spread out maps, and while I could see every once in a while a race getting lucky and making it to a planet without searching much.. its like they bee line it to every one, while i have to stumble around and find mine with the fow. And while they are pumping out colony ships like crazy I am trying to make ships to defend AND a few colony ships for when I stumble across a planet. But somehow they STILL manage to pump out combat ships like mad. And when I make first contact and see what tech we can exchange.. wow, the ai sure has no problem shooting ahead with the tech either.

Mow speaking of diplo.. how can I be first to third in most categories but still get negative standing from other races because i am 'weak' or 'ripe to conquest' lol

And why does differing philosophies weigh so heavily against you. One of my games I was about 70/30 pragmatic/benevolent and one of the more peaceful races that I had establish trade with, and made several tech trades and treaties with in a matter of a few turns (because you get NO notification of when your treaty runs out.. god forbid you forget to look).. declares war on me.

Look.. I'm not saying I don't enjoy the game.. but this is still not very fleshed out at all and should probably still be in development like hearts of iron is (thankfully, now that i have played this some lol). I have played some games from the opt-in patches as well and it is not much different, as far as the ai/diplo goes anyways. Hoping they continue to fix things, because it is kinda cool.

Hmm an old post, on the off chance the OP is still reading, I'd love to look at your save game because I've not found any evidence of the so called "cheating" you are mentioning on normal difficulty. I've run lots of soaks and I investigate/test a lot (much more so than actually play the game).

When at war, the AI increase their military production and reduce research. The ships they churn out cost maintenance, which they respond to by increasing their economy (again this reduces their research). It is very detrimental to their progress technologically, infact having the AI at war permanently is a very valid strategy for beating them as long as you can keep the upper hand in battles won.

R

Oh, I think you may have to use the command local, to assume control of that race to look at the planet details.  I havent done it, but know its certainly possible if you want to check.

The devs "have a goal" to eliminate no-FOW for the AI, but IMO they have by far bigger fish to fry.  Try Normal, if the AI's no-FOW advantage for the first 40 turns is killing you.  Or if you want to mod the difficulty levels yourself, they are in the "Galactic Civilizations III/data/Game/GalCiv3AIDefs.xml" file.  FOW isnt in there, I believe its hard coded, above normal difficulty.  Hence, if you want to give the AI bonuses, but no FOW, you will have to mod the normal difficulty object, copying over bonuses from higher levels.

So, no fow its only above normal difficulty? If that is true I will mode normal to be harder without having to rush to every planet I found at the start..

It sometimes feels like the AI is cheating with ship production to me, as well. I decided to do an experiment lately and I used the modcredits cheat to give myself tons of credits so I could Rush Colony Ship production at the start of a game. I went around colonizing the hell out of tons of planets, but lo and behold, several civs somehow have even MORE planets colonized. I cheated like crazy to get those planets, how does an AI produce all those colony ships on Normal difficulty? They also had tons of military ships, as most AI civs somehow do.

Another issue I have is how AI's try to take things from you purely because they can through "Diplomacy" and I use the term loosely. It never, ever has anything to do with the AI actually needing anything, it's all about the AI taking as much from the player as they can to make the game harder for them. For example, they always, ALWAYS ask for a percentage of what you have. If I had 10 Darkmatter, they'd ask for 2-5 Darkmatter, if I had 100 Darkmatter, they'd ask for 20-30 Darkmatter. If I had 1000 credits, they'd ask for 150 credits, if I had 10,000 credits, they'd ask for 1000 credits. I often feel entirely justified in cheating when I choose to do it, because the AI seems to be doing it and it feels the AI is not acting like a "Galactic Civilization" but a programmed AI trying to defeat the player. Even your allies are trying to make things harder for you because they're an AI programmed to make the player lose, and everyone is always asking the player to go to war with other civs for no real reason purely to make you be at war with as many civs as possible. It's artificial difficulty. The AI isn't playing to win, they're playing to make you lose.

Not sure about you, but I do act like the Civilization of Technological, Mental and Spiritual Enlightenment I am playing as.

No. Why would you think I'd do that? I tend to stay neutral for as long as possible, and rarely declare war on anyone unless someone like the Snathi or the Drengin or the Daleks or Space Orks are on a total warpath across the whole Galaxy, at which point rally as many races together as a sort of resistance force. The pseudo role-playing is part of the fun for me. Even the race traits I chose reflect my civilization on more than a gameplay level(that is, I don't choose them just because they will make things easier and make me stronger), for example, my civilization has rank2 Gentle because they don't want to hurt innocents during planetary invasion.

I also choose my ideology traits and select the outcomes to ideological events(like colonizing worlds) in a way that makes sense for my civ, usually it's Banevolent choices, but sometimes Pragmatic, even if the one I choose grants the least reward. If I wasn't focusing on Benevolent and Pragmatic, I'd get the Awe Ideology tree to represent how scary the advanced looking technology my civ has is, but the opportunity just does not occur for me to get Malevolent Ideology points because most of the things I'd have to do to get them while colonizing worlds early game just don't make sense for my civilization. I think the one I did choose was a precursor world which let me choose how to use the precursor technology I found on that world, and I chose to enhance my weaponry.

You're not even making sense any more. Looks like you're back peddling from an argument, and even tried to twist what I said in the second from last post you made. What does what you just said have to do with the post above it? Your posts are are just coming off as exceedingly antagonistic.

Yes-Men and Fanboys are agents of stagnation and self-destruction. If there is a problem you should tell those concerned(in this case Stardock) about it, not pretend everything is perfect.