another thing, TA, Is that the latest version?
TA is Twilight of the Arnor, the second expansion of the game. I usually abbreviate it as TotA, because TA stands for Total Annihilation in my mind.
I have the ultimate addition from steam. So does that mean those AI's are bugged in mine?
Yes, when you play the Ultimate Edition, you're playing TotA.
AI 10, the torians, and iconians, so far have been some of the biggest expander's and have had the most ships that i have seen. In fact, they really seem like one of the more powerfull races, and AI's Maybe i am just missing something.
AIP 10 is a great expansionist, no doubt. However, once it has a certain amount of colonies, it stops building anything on newly acquired worlds. So, early on, it's quite strong, but the longer the game takes, the weaker AIP 10 becomes, because it falls more and more behind in production, research, and economy.
If those are bugged, what would you recommend doing?
Either increase the difficulty of the bugged AIs (you can set the difficulty of each race individually) or switch them out with ones that work.
I see there are many mods, but many focus on techs, and things like that. does that also effect how the AI's use them?
Yes. To be frank, there are still quite a lot of bugs in the game. Most of them are within the racial tech trees (which were newly added in TotA), the planetary improvements, and the starbase modules. Some of those bugs, especially in the ones in the tech trees, prevent the AI from playing as good as it can.
For example, in the Altarian tech tree, the Space Weapons tech is categorised as Point Defense. This means, that the AI will only ever researched this tech, if somebody is using Missile weapons. So, unless that is the case or the AI managed to buy/steal weapons from somebody else, it is a sitting duck.
I guess one of my worries is, if 7 and 10 are bugged, that really only leaves 2 left, wouldn't that kinda take the uniqueness out of the game by changing them?
AIP 7 has some problems, but it can work with the right settings. Only AIP 10 is beyond hope.
btw, thank you folks for taking the time to explain all this stuff to me
You're welcome.
i am tempted to try the mods, But they often look like the scare me, because they change so many things.
You could try APT 1. It is primarily a bug fix and doesn't change too many things. Once you're more comfortable with the game, you could try out APT 2 or one of the other fix mods. In any case, if you have questions about any of the mods, just ask.
though i suppose if i don't like it i could just uninstall it right?
Of course.
though at the same time, the idea of making my own mod does sound appealing, yet a bit daunting.
It sure is. I began working on my mod in April 2008. If somebody had told me back then how much work it would be, I probably would never have started in the first place. But then, it's probably my own damn fault for constantly expanding the scope of the mod. 
