Your main concern seems to be with diplomacy, where all AIs I know of are awful at best. (At worst they are easily exploited, cheated and abused) You may consider to leave diplomacy aside (meaning there will be no trades, treaties, or other things along these lines) with the AI, hoping the AI won't attack you when you are not watching.
Otherwise, if you do like diplomacy, you should really play PBW as only humans can be interesting in this field. When playing the AI you cannot quite grovel, bully, threaten or bluff, while an human will respond accordingly. And good luck for asking an AI to withdraw these colonizers from your systems.
Re: A little disappointed...
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