Meh. I've found that the only thing they look at is your military strength. They don't care that your research or economy is horrible. If you you have the #1 military (just build bunch of tiny hulled ships with 1 point of offense) then you're golden.

Your strategy seems good, just outproduce military ships and you can attack when you choose. Use military starbases to your advantage, and you'll wonder why it's so easy.

Daemon Jax: Describe how you use Military Star bases.

I put them up and add some basic offense so they're not sitting ducks and then add "assisting" weapons that help ships in their area fight. However; it seems difficult to get the AI to actually engage in battles at this location more than a few times, so I need to build more (than one on one good spot).

What is your strategy?

Weyrleader: How do you keep the Drengin from realizing you are a threat to eventual victory and declaring war on you?

I play "Throw my friends under the French Boot" from Civilization 4 -- Napoleon loves war, so you convince others to go to war with him, or you seed your cities to other nations so Napoleon hits them first instead -- that's a little costly in Galactic Civilizations 2 but the idea is to keep the Drengin busy.

I have a fleet of constructs follow around my attack ships.
Then when I find their fleet (normally near their home planet) I drop down the military star base do full upgrades to both attack and defense of your ships. Don't bother upgrading the stations weapons it's self as they'll never get close to it if you do it right.
Then move in to wipe out their fleet.
They don't stand a chance when your fleet of small ships has like 80 offense and 80 defense.

Basically the way to beat them is just pull all your ships together in go straight down the middle of their empire, engage them in one decisive battle and destroy their fleets. The computer isn't good enough to try to get behind your forces to attack your undefended planets so it's really easy to concentrate all your forces in one place.

I find focusing on one Weapon tech and One armour tech works well. saves you alot. For example, I always go missles and shields (Because shields and missles look cool). gets you better weapons quicker. (One AI i faced had about 33% reasearch on each of the weapon techs, But it didn't matter, because my large hull packed with photon torpedoes wiped all there ships out pretty quick ^-^)

Eyes of the universe. Having every ship with 15 scanners, including trade ships, and matching it to ships designed to be fast with well placed starbases is my strategy to keep a nominal defense force with teeth and the flexibility to counter any incursion but an all out attack. It frees up my main forces to actually attack.

Actually, the AI does that all the time to me. Just sends in about 3 or 4 transports to capture all my border worlds.

Yes... but they try to send them straight there, which happens to be straight through your attacking fleet. It's not smart enough to try to move around your ships.
And even if it does, which normally results when they had a transport far out of position when the war started and is now making a bee line for your planet or they have some remote world not in line with the rest, it normally comes unprotected. I personally have a specialized ship made just for shooting them down (and their freighters which also seem to think they can just wonder through my territory) which is simply one gun, one hull, and a hell of a lot of engines

Eyes of the universe. Having every ship with 15 scanners, including trade ships, and matching it to ships designed to be fast with well placed starbases is my strategy to keep a nominal defense force with teeth and the flexibility to counter any incursion but an all out attack. It frees up my main forces to actually attack.

That's far to much. Just take a cargo hull, fill it with sensors and place them at strategic points, cheap and effective.

Try making an active trade network with as many civs as possible. If you do that, you rarely get any other civs to attack you on Normal. On higher levels they will attack you, but far less frequently if you have have enough trade routes.

My strategy is really dependant on the situation, but I tend to try to research the republic and xeno ethics as soon as possible. Having these far ahead of the AI will give you a great long term advantage. If I am enclosed in a small area, I research Planetary Invasion quickly, so I can take over minor races or close-by civs to gain more planets. You need to do that early, if you didn't get enough planets in the early land grab, because they will build up stronger than you if you wait. (My current game, I just managed to colonize the two home planets, and was unable to find any other habitible planets until they were all taken. So I took out two minor races and the Altarians, and now I am the second most powerful civ. - playing either tough or painful on 1.1, cant remember which difficulty level.)

Until you change your government type to Republic, a morale of 41% is the same as a 99%. If you can't keep it at 100% then 41% is just as good. Being at 100% will double your population growth. Feel free to crank up your taxes or delay building entertainment centers and spend that money on things that will give you an immediate benefit.

Not necessarily true. Low approval rates cause planets to be more likely to defect or leave your empire to become a minor race. It also makes invasions against you easier through Information Warfare. I have a feeling there might be a few other under-the-hood issues it can cause as well, but I don't have any proof.

-Dewar

Wow O-o a lot of replies! I like it!

just read through all of them, some really cool ideas! ( sensor ships, all-engine-one-gun-ships ).

So researching all the xeno stuff first is a bad idea...ok I can see why. Does the following plan sound any better?

Research:
1. universal translator
2. diplomatic relations (to get to trade)
3. trade
4. The diplomacy stuff, maybe 2 levels
5. weaponry?
6. Xeno research
7. whtvr

and basically I should bribe my neighbours into attacking others...but where do I get the funding for that? All those trading things don't come until a bit later I believe?

Also, your approval rating effects your population growth. 100% is the best, then 70% is the next level. I am not sure the breakdown. I should characterize that. The more population, then more tax revenue, the more invasion forces.

Does the following plan sound any better? Research: 1. universal translator 2. diplomatic relations (to get to trade) 3. trade 4. The diplomacy stuff, maybe 2 levels 5. weaponry? 6. Xeno research 7. whtvr and basically I should bribe my neighbours into attacking others...but where do I get the funding for that? All those trading things don't come until a bit later I believe?

I was going to post something along these lines, as I prefer to play an influence or diplomatic style. The two best methods to keep the other races at bay early on are trade and diplomacy, IMO. If you research trade first, build some fast trade ships and then open trade routes to all the neighbor civs asap you'll put them all in your favor before anyone has a military. this can take the heat off you and let you get a good jump on research.

also, consider toning down your colony rush. i've started ignoring the intial level 4 in my own system and now send the first colony ship out to find a 10 before the nearest civ does. each colony puts a significant drain on your economy early so cherry picking planets and making sure they get into positive cash flow quickly can give you an economic boost also.

once you get ahead of the curve on economy and research you're golden. watch the military graphs and if more than two civs jump ahead start building defenders to boost your rating. if you've got good diplomacy and money or techs to trade with you can usually get those two military front runners to go to war. once you've got the upper hand diplomatically and have a strong economy you can usually maintain it the rest of the game and be the "puppet master".

this is all assumign you're still playing normal difficulty also, i would guess it's not so easy on higher AI levels but I haven't ventured there yet.

One tactic I have yet to try is sending them a sacrificial planet to keep them appeased. Its really the only good use I can think of for the class 4 planet you start with, and if you do it right you might be able to "re-gift" the planet several times if you can get it to culture flip back to you quickly. I'm thinking that setting up a couple influencer bases next to the starting class 4 planet, gifting the planet to someone to keep them off your back, then waiting for it to flip back might work, but I'm unsure how it'll affect other diplomacy options (close borders? alarming influence? something else?).

And yes, tech trading is a bit too powerful at the moment, but at higher difficulty levels you won't get nearly the same amount of cash for techs so it does balance somewhat. Even so, I've been able to sustain my economy with tech trading so far on the suicidal game I started yesterday, and I haven't even met all 9 races yet. Since the AI doesn't get any cheats other than a 200% economy, if you can suck the money away from him and use it in your own economy you'll be just as dangerous as the AI. But since the game is still in the early phases, I might still run into issues.