Do I just suck at this game

Yeah I've found out that trying to be peaceful will get you wasted. You can be PASSIVE but you need the beezalls to back it up. Too many times I thought I could pass on the military advances to be then pounced on by the AI.

Not neccesarily. I have been playing a game for a couple days now on normal as the Drath. I found out early on that the min/max capability of the AI far outstrips me, so my best choice was to go a more peaceful route. I carefully cultivated relations with all the major powers and brokered tech deals between all the races while spamming constructors to capture resources and freighters to open trade routes, result: I have no military but the Terrans and Alatrians are friendly (borderline close) with me and the Drenging are Neutral->Cool. When the Drengin look like they are eyeing me ( I know ahead of time thanks to Advanced Espionage) I sic the Altarians on them.

Currently I am last in every category except Influence (second to Alatarins) and the Altarins are the leaders in everything else. My advice? Make good, good friends with the good civilzations as they are less likely to declare war on you for being unprotected use the breathing room to build their dependency on your trade routes with them. At this point I am aiming for an influence victory (which will be hard as the Altarians are going to be tough to beat) or Alliance (The far more likely outcome). At this point however the game is still very much up for grabs.

In much the same vein as gal civ 1, you need some sort of military as a detterance. If you have a great empire with not a single military ship, even your friends are thinking, " Hey bob, were are friends and all, but that class 20 planet you developed would be a great summer home. Time for you to move." You don''t need to be an agressor, but it is simply not good strategy to go undefended.

That said, you can go certain routes to improve you defense at cost. Dont upgrade engines or life support, keep your ships essentially defensive. SImply add weapons and armour and park em in orbit. Additionally, you may want an orbital fleet manager. That allows all your ships in orbit to act as a single fleet. Even a bunch of cheesy ships become formadable that way. Also, there are planetary defenses available.

Unfortunately you're going to have to resort to tech-whoring. Just make heavy use of diplomacy and try not to weep as you feel your soul slide away.

*In case you haven't guessed, I was hoping for less of a focus on tech trading... it seems like you never have a situation where one race has powerful beam weapons and armor, while another has powerful mass drivers and shields (in other words, a cool, diverse battle) since as soon as a tech is researched, it gets distributed to every major race (and not a few minor ones)*

I mean, the AI will be quite reluctant to give you techs like Impulse Drive and weapons techs, but for some reason they have no problem whatsoever sharing amongst themselves. Wtf?

You are essentially forced into one of the following options:

1: Giving a tech to one race, thus guaranteeing that everyone and their grandma will have it in rather short order

2: Giving a tech to every race, thus netting yourself an insane amount of money and IP (bah, IP ), but railroading you into a very boring style of play.

3: Not giving anyone any techs, thus dooming yourself to falling further and further behind the technological curve, as you cannot afford to buy all the new techs as they appear (which would just make your competitors richer anyway).

It's not as bad as you're making it out be, even on Intelligent AI.

1) Research your own branch
2) Buy new techs that a civ researches
3) Sell those new techs to the other civs
4) But keep the techs you researched to yourself
5) You now have exclusive techs that no one else has, while having all the techs the AIs have.

And I have no issues getting military techs from the AI. They won't trade it to you *only* if you're too powerful, for good reason. The AI makes ZERO distinction between AI and human players, no matter how much you'd like to think they do. Also, they don't always tech trade to everyone. How else could the Terrans and Altarians always have almost the same tech level as me (minus the techs I refused to trade them), while the Thalans and Korx remained constantly technologically behind.

Pick two weapons types and don't do the third. Trade/Steal for third type whenever possible.
I do the same for armor as well.

Get the most out your techs.. if you sell off your new Ion Drive tech to one race for Xeno Factory, go to each and every race and get some BCs for it if they don't have any techs to trade for.

Defend ALL your planets.
AI sees an undefended one its like signalling blood in the water to a shark. There's some initial time in the game where undefended is alright, but I'd start making some defenders as soon as you can while still sending out freighters.
Which leads me to trade is your friend. AI is less likely to attack a trading partner right off, though sometimes theres overriding factors.. Like Drengin hate Torians or your too evil and Altarians can't stand you. Either way if you have a strong potent military these guys will hold off attacking you and pick on someone weaker.. like a minor civ.

How good is espionage for getting techs? One late game I played with it and was pumping about 300/turn into a race that was way ahead of me in tech, and I didn't get any new techs from that for about 15 turns after advanced espionage.

One quick question/complaint

-On my third attempt on normal I noticed that the computer was throwing out colony ships much faster than me(In the beginning of course). I finally figured out that they were buying colony ships from the start. This is quite annoying, because I haddn't even thought of. Granted I now have learned this tactic, It kind of scares me to think of all different strategies I can't contemplate. My question-exactly how many tactics does the computer on normal know compared to the other difficulty levels, mainly beginner cause thats the only other one i've tried

On playing peacefully:

It seems to be fairly pointless. If you have little to no military, AIs will not take you seriously in negotiations, so you'll get a terrible deal in any trade... since the trade rate is based on your relative military power. I picked this up on the forum, and it seems congruent with my exerience, where all AIs wanted 4-6 military techs in exchange for a single non-military tech... except for the minor, who traded 1-to-1, as he was also very militarily weak. I had no military ships at all, by the way.

The only way to interact with other empires in a way that is not demeaning or unrealistic to have a military bigger than theirs (this is speculation on my part). But then you have to research military techs and build a military, so you lose any advantage of playing peacefully... and you can conquer them, so why not do it?

The AI loves to beat you when you're down.
I always get a small miltary force in space ASAP. Even if it's just little pea shooters with 1 damage.
Expand first, to any and all neighbouring colonizable areas, when you colonize your first new planet buy up 2 factories and a spaceport, then have that planet churn out little fighters while your home world focuses on more colony ships / constructors.
As soon as you have claimed all worlds/resources within range build up a military starbase where you think the action is most likely to take place, those assist modules are VERY powerful in the early game, suddenly your little fighters are 2x or even 3-4x more powerful than the AIs if he tries to invade.

Just a quick, and probly stupid question.

-If the other empires attack you if you have undefended planets, would it be a sound strategy to have your ships not protecting your planets, but close enough to defend, thus causeing them to declare war, making you look like the good guy.

You've got to abuse minors. I've sent one a planet once to get all their techs and money, only to conquer the planet back and take their main world. That would probably work with major civs, but it's a bit more dangerous.

Also: rush constructors to take any resources you see early on. Those things can turn a game to your favour quite powerfully.

You've got to abuse minors. I've sent one a planet once to get all their techs and money, only to conquer the planet back and take their main world. That would probably work with major civs, but it's a bit more dangerous.

That's just... fantastic I'm going to give that a try later. Except I'm going to build several troop transports right before I trade the planet, to drain it of population, and give myself a nice force in space to take the planet right back.

so exactly what do the reasorses do, or what effect do they have.

Couple of interesting tactics that might help you survive:

Large enemy fleets can be distracted and diverted off for many turns. Simply make a fast scout (>6 moves) with good sensors and one lazer to kill freighters and unescorted troop transports.

Then make a perimeter around your worlds.

when enemy fleet come in, bring your scout to within N+1 grids, where N is the number of moves teh enemy has.

The enemy fleet will usually divert to kill your scout, and they will move within 1 or 2 spaces of you.

Next turn, move N+1 grids away, or n+2 grids if the enemy is 2 grids behind you. (that means they have some autopilot moves left, and will use this underhanded tactic to smoke you if you are too close.)

Move in a direction perpendicluar to their original line of travel (that means at right angles away.)

then circle back and lead them back where they came from. They will usually give up and return to their worlds anyway.

Move scout back into position, and repeat as needed. Really a lifesaver when those pesky battleship appear and you've only mediums

Also:

Leave one or two planets with no defenders. The enemy may flood undefended transports at you. Use your fast scouts to pick them off. Cheap population control