Cheating or not?

I am new at this browser game. And have just experienced that an AI player on our map, gets activated, and the new active player sends all his minerals, money and some troops for free to a other player on the map, yes not asking anything back. The new player then a few days later sends more minerals and money for free again. So in fact its someone feeding the proper player.
When I confronted the other player, he say this is not cheating ant totally allowed.
So before I spend/waste anymore time on this browser game, I would like to know if this kind of exploitation of AI players is accepted?

Regards Angel Ranger