Is it just me or the AI in this one is just bonkers? Admiral in Thrawn's Revenge I can easily handle, they even give you enough time like at least 10-20 cycles to even try attacking you. In Fall of the Republic however, the Republic AI specifically is just too aggressive and has way too much resources. Their early and late game ships are potent while the CIS has to always take losses with their weaker brawler type ships. If they were cheaper that would be nice but something like the Munificient cost as much as an Acclamator when the latter has more utility with their fighters and variants. Hardcells are great but when the AI almost always have like 10 point-defence ship minimum in a fleet it's not really helpful. Also what is with the planets you owned not get basic defences and tax collection agencies built up? The amount of ships you're given are just insufficient against the Republic's starting roster while needing to spend more to defend against them. Not to mention compared to them, you have to pay money just to have the rest of your allies help out, burning even more eco and losing planets because of the lack of defence forces.

Playing as the Republic, you can win almost all battles just by having enough Carrack frigates and come out net positive just because of their cheap cost and heavy turbolasers. Their small size and the lack of hard-points makes it even harder to deal with when they're at range and with just some point-defence ships alongside fleet tenders, they're basically almost unkillable. It doesn't help that the AI knows and abuses this by spamming them out. The Republic's frigate roster is just ridiculous in general and the CIS lack the firepower to deal with small ships and hard-pointless ships.

I'm no veteran by any means but the eco balance early on as the CIS in Admiral difficulty feels very unbalanced. It's not fun waiting 10 cycles just to be able to build a few ships that immediately dies in the next AI fleet blob with 10 Carracks, Peltas and Acclamators.

What are your thoughts on this?