The trick with AI War is to play it on the lower difficulties. The scale goes from 1-10 for a reason. The game and FAQs tell you that 7 is normal difficulty, but that's only because Chris Park make a pact with Satan, who feeds off the suffering of new players getting utterly violated by the AI and grows ever stronger. When you play on 7, you're actually hastening the coming of the apocalypse.
So don't play on difficulty 7.
5 is a good difficulty. If you play the game on difficulty 5, you'll get to fly around the galaxy and see neat things, and have cool battles with tons and tons of ships. The final battle against the enemy home station in AI war is one of the coolest things in any game, ever, with thousands of your ships battering against the command station's shields, and a single barrage of its cannons wiping out dozens of your own frigates. Totally worth the cost of admission, and you're cheating yourself if you don't see it.