I've been getting smashed by the AI, terribly I might add. I can't even get anything going before I'm overwhelmed by every AI team in the game. They all come to my planet(s) and just kill everything while not hitting each other. Its freaking annoying. Its just simply overwhelming to get something going without getting owned.

If my fleet jumps to another planet, all of a suddenly invaders approach. When I return, they run away. And then the planet I just left suddenly gets invaded. Its ridiculous.

The AI really hasn't been hugely improved with the unfair difficulty, though it may appear to be so. It would seem as though they are better because they have a resource buff which allows then to get more ships more quickly, but outside of this their ability is only very slightly improved. This is why the unfair difficulty will make a big difference early in games, since the AI can pump out more ships that you possibly can, but I assure you, once you've established yourself the AI becomes just as pathetic as it has always been (the reason it seems that they run less is because the computer will never run when it has a 2:1 advantage early in the game). Large scale engagements are still a huge let down, as the AI still runs just as much as before. They're also not smart enough to disregard the much more powerful PJI, which leads to the "shooting fish in a barrel" scenario as you watch their ships go pop while they sit defenseless at the end of a gravity well trying to retreat.

The teaming up of the AI against you has nothing to do with 1.03 or the unfair AI, it can simply happen that way if your on either end of the power spectrum (if your empire is really weak or really strong, in comparison to the AI's), at least that's what the devs have told us. I recall having that happen to me the first ever game I played, but only a couple times since (and I've been playing unlocked teams/hardest AI setting since my 4th game). So it happens sometimes, and other times it doesn't depending on how the game plays out.

The unfair difficulty was a cheap, half-assed way to get around fixing the problem with the AI. Ironclad can't figure out (at least not yet) how to make it efficiently better, so they allowed it to cheat. This is not a solution, and I don't think gamers should be satisfied just yet, because this game promised to deliver epic battles, something which can't be done right now with the coward AI.

sorry i didnt know it posted!

You should be able to take on instances of 3v1, either through attrition or otherwise. There's no way an AI will beat a competent player 1v1 in a complicated game.