AI Behavior on Small Starting Planets?

Due to the recent patch saying that AI was improved to better start on planets alone, I decided to play a system I had made for a friend and I to battle, which had starting planets that were the smallest size we could make them (i.e. 500 [?] radius moons).

When I had tried this before, the bot simple sat around after making some aircraft, letting me literally build Haleys on his own planet due to how little he had in the way of defenses.

This still happens, though. Is this due to the size of the planet rather than the AI?

Hard or harder AI will get into the orbital game on it's own.
Chances are it got build stuck (not enough clear pathable area to build on between the metal spots), making it impossible to place thier orbital launcher/general building queue stuff anywhere.