Do the regular Empires do Stellar Manipulation?

[Jason2]

In my current game: Large universe, Clusters, not all warp points connected, with the mod-pack included:

The Earth Alliance is opening up warp points and maintaining vast fleets. They beat me to it's creation (I was researching weapons etc. to make sure I was ready once I opened a warp point) and through scouts I have established that they have opened around 5 or 6 different warp points to other clusters... very aggressive, and getting very big!

So the AI definitely uses them and doesn't always bankrupt itself.

Jason2