[Marik Wahoooka]

I also get the impression that the AI is reacting to me. I met a race that packed DU cannons. They met fiery death by tactical nuke. When I actually moved to invade them, I ran into ships with Cap Ship Missles lvl 3. It seemed that they had switched from using particle weapons to outpacing me in missle tech.

Could just be a natural progression in the AI's research tree, but I dunno...