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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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