I fail to understand this. I am Blue (seen in screenshot), My home planet is Kionos (bottom right). The A.I.is orange and clearly comes from the very top (orange circle). Look where it massive forward settles me at Corvus (orange arrow). The A.I.'s home system is not even on the screen. What is this? Its on normal difficulty 4 players. No human player would do this exept with the intention of just trolling, in which case I would just quit. Thats what I did, I quit the playthough. This stupid A.I. behaviour should be fixed in my opinion. I am open to suggestions hovewer. Anybody know what the hell is up with this? Kinda ruins the game experience for me.

may be faction mission for critical development

It's hard to tell what the AI is up to without a save game to look into. I suspect Hidel and Phad were undesirable to it, and after it reached Corvus, it realized the adjacent systems are occupied and decided to settle where it was.

expanding far away is also good too making relatively back up for yourself ai is fuzzy in low difficulties try hardest then code will work as it intended

Thx for the suggestions, I'll adjust.