But you're right I got up to the AI homeworld, the AI destroyed my spire knowledge upped the AI progress to 340(only 20 planets) with a core raid engine and somehow sent 1500 ships every 3 minutes with only 4 AI planets. Made me think the AI was cheat spawning.
Haha, well, remember that the AI's main production facilities are actually in a different galaxy, so even if it's down to just 1 homeworld it can send a basically infinite amount at you. The only limiting factor is how much it thinks it's "worth it" to crush you.
But for some reason the raid engine was at the other AI world where I had no ships.
Yea, a raid engine triggers if you're active on any adjacent planet, too.
Anyway, in general your "killing stroke" against an AI homeworld needs to be fast enough that it doesn't have time to react. Remember the end of Ender's Game? And for that matter, it could get dicey if you kill off one AI HW and take a long time to get the other, due to the AIP boost it gets from the first one going down.
And Raid Engines are basically machines designed to ruin your day.