AI cheating/overpowered hardcore?

So I've restarted a game like I don't even know how many times and was constantly trying to improve my game. I'm playing on Normal difficulty but it always seems like the AI is sky-rocketing leagues away from me in terms of basically everything.

To the point where were some were not only 10s but 100s of times stronger navy, already have planets making resources in the 10s and are travelling across the systems before I even completely surveyed my own system. Whats the deal with this? I am new to this but I've been trying the last 2 days to constantly figure out stuff and make better but it always seems like nothing I do makes a difference when AI has 500 military force and I have 70 cause I just got to my 3rd-4th tech.