I just finished a small random map against an hard agressor and in my opinion they definately improved it a bit.
he stood up some pretty nasty fights and even attacked me on 2 fronts at once!
didn't run very much, mostly because he outnumbered me 3:1 but my tech was way better than his so in the end I won.
and he lost about a dozen cap ships in this game didn't run either

so patch 1.04 pros:
- AI stays fighting more often
- AI cap ships = no more pussys
cons:
- AI does not put much into research (except for research-AI of course)
- AI targeting still is random... *completely* ignores jump-inhibitors and doesn't take them into account while retreating
- AI doesn't upgrade all planets right - after 5 hours of playing he still had a terran planet with 1500 HP...