It's a matter of perception. Yes, the AI is better because it is more agressive, meaning that you will have a harder time winning because they always turn evil and declare war on your after a while for no good reason.
However, I always felt like it removed to the game because then diplomacy was going down the well big time. I never found a point in diplomacy in Ascendancy, except in the first few turns so you may build your empire. After that, you just build bigger and bigger ships, expand on your neighbors (very easily because the AI is so dumb), build some planet defense and do it again and again until you win.
I never entered a "big climatic battle" in Ascendancy ever. Perhaps it's only because the player, in that example, just waited way too long to attack. I usually can whipe out a system with only one ship, it only take a lot of time. I usually get very upset if I lose a single ship in mid game. It's always because of a stupid mistake of mine, never because of the AI intelligence.
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