The AI in FFA games has always used the relative empire strength to judge its actions. I've tried games where I rushed to be #1 in everything, and lo and behold they started stacking bounty on me. In the next game I went slow, and they started bidding wars against each other instead.

There will inevitably be a point where the AI will start ganging up on you because you're the more powerful. The key, as kryo suggested, at least until you become more accustomed to fighting off attacks on various fronts is to use the missions they give you. 1.03 made diplomacy easier to engage in (longer mission durations, lower penalties for failing them, killing scouts no longer drops it to 0), so that should help.

Overall though, I would say the AI is a bit tougher. They build better defenses now, and they build more varied and well-working fleets that aren't just a capital ship + a hundred light frigates.

Actually, the harder the AI the easier an unlocked teams game is for me. When we're all on a level playing field that AI tends to have someone other than me to shoot at for a while. However, every game I played under 1.02 with unlocked teams did boil down to the AI creating alliances with itself and ganging up on me late in the game. Even if I had AI allies they still allied with my enemy and wouldn't shoot at them. They'd become lame ducks while I'd have to go around mopping everyone else up. And then there were these missions I'd get where they'd want me to attack my ally or my ally wants me to hit defensive structures located only on the enemy's home planet. Those were truly annoying since you'd have to jump past several enemy planets just to get to where those tactical structures were.

If the AI builds tactical and logistics structures more often, then this is a good thing and help help missions become accomplishable more often. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to try 1.03 yet. I have read that most of the problems that you're citing and I'm citing have gotten some level of attention, which is definitely a good thing.

I did a 10 player FFA last night.

Was Online tho.

I got LRM swarmed an hour in, after another 45 mins of pestering my attacker with my scuttled resources, I finally died (I was advent).

Though this thread's apparently about single player, I figured I'd post my shiznit.

Shoulda had more fighters Q.Q lol