So, I played my first game with all 3 AI on Unfair. Have to say it is a different experience. First thing I notice is that you have to expand slowly, let the other AI's kill each other. Another tactic is Garrison, Garrison, Garrison. I had to make sure to sacrifice some asteroids to garrison instead of Planetary Labs and build factories on them. Having several Planets or Asteroids with Garrison troops near each other really saved my bacon.
I also did a lot of 10X speed ups at first waiting for things to build or money to collect. You do have to build a lot of small ships at first because the AI loves to get on the Asteroids that are opposite orbits with 144 Colbalt's and attack you. Having Garrisons to protect you help in this situation. In the late game, I would take those Asteroids, build Garrisons on them, max out the tactical slots on it and let my garrisons harass the enemy.
I did set up the AI as Defense, Research and Economic first so I wouldn't die. Late game, they stopped building ships which I thought was weird, when I went to attack their home worlds late game, they basically had no ships defending it. I do hope the AI in the finish game will be harder than this.
The other thing I noticed in late game was after taking about 3/4 of the map, it stated I had the limit to build any more structures or ships. I hope this is only in the Tech Preview and not in the actual game, with the 64bit game, I hope to have very large fleets and I tend to advance slowly, after upgrading my planet.
I can't wait for more CAPS and StarBase's. They will make the game play more fun. Was playing Armada 3 in SINS 1 as Federation. The Romulan player near me attacked one of my planets early games as I was still trying to expand. I had a big enough fleet to take him back to his home planet but since he had a Starbase, I couldn't finish him off. I just took all the planets next to him and put StarBase's on them, keeping him locked on his Home Planet. I like being able to do these kinds of strategy.
Overall playing Unfair is better. I think I might make them aggressive next time so that they don't stop making ships. Also, the higher-level AI you play against, the more you will find exotics in both systems and on the market. When the AI is easy, you don't even get the exotic market yet.