Empire balance problem

[M2xim]

I came back to play for the first time since launch and I'm having an horrible time fighting wars.

I started the game with everyone on pre-warp(one empire for each race/normal difficulty). 100 years later i start my first war against the closest neighboring empire(the smallest, least powerful one, no allies or treaties with anyone). I got 8 times their population and military power, 16 times their research output(actual not maximum) and i still can't scratch the shields on any of their ships while they're mowing down all my fleets of destroyers with escorts and frigates.

It's like they're being artificially boosted to put up a fight and it feels totally unfair. Also seem like it's something new because it definitely wasn't like that when i bought the game.

I'm totally clueless about what I'm doing wrong can someone enlighten me? This never happened to me in Distant World Universe and it's pretty frustrating since the same thing happened the last 3 game i created. Played around 1500-2000 years across these 3 games and i never managed to kill a single military ship. NOT ONE even though I'm consistently way ahead of my opponents in absolutely everything lol

[Nightskies]

Upload a save and we'll take a look. You're giving us nothing to work with, we could guess a thousand reasons why.

Google Drive works well, be sure to set it to share with anyone with link. Free upload sites that you can find with any search engine should work fine as well.

[Cauldyth]

Yeah, I'm a little baffled as to what it might be. Unless you accidentally have ship design on manual without realizing it, so you're still using intro tech on all of your ships, even though you have better techs?

As far as I know, the AI gets no bonuses to combat, they play by the same rules as the player. They get bonuses to things like income depending on difficulty level, but on the battlefield you should both be playing by the same rules. It sounds like something strange is going on.

[fruitgnome]

Difficult level? Higher means less accuracy and countermeasures. Did you researched target accuracy techs? If not research them and put hangar bay maybe on destroyer.

[hurkle]

...and i still can't scratch the shields on any of their ships while they're mowing down all my fleets of destroyers with escorts and frigates.

Just on this point, check your builds have actual weapons as there was a bug where all your ships only get point defences in all the weapon slots, and point defences are ineffective against shields.