(I originally posted this on Google+ for my friends, so it might be a little too explainy for this audience)



1) Other factions will start to hate you for being less powerful than them. I imagine this is meant to be more of a predatory thing than emotional, but the game only has a like-hate scale. It makes sense for other factions to want to kill you if they think they can get away with it, but it doesn't make sense for the game to be conveying hurt feelings because of this.



2) Your allies like you for having a common enemy, but hate you for taking the enemy's territory. (And it doesn't look like you can just kill them and not take their territory.) They see it as "expansionist", I see it as "destroying the people trying to kill us". Technically, they're only angry about me having so many star systems, it doesn't matter how I got them.



3) In my first game, I made my ships with a balance of varied weaponry and armour. It turns out that this is a terrible idea. The AI tends to make ships with a bunch of one weapon and some of one armour. This will destroy a balanced ship. I've found that putting as many missiles as will fit pretty much guarantees victory, at least until the AI starts doing the same. The AI seems to take a long time to adapt to my strategy though. It wasn't until I had plowed through half of their space that they decided that lasers and bullet armour weren't cutting it.



4) After I had destroyed the two factions who declared war on me for having a tiny military, I decided to do some trading with my ally. I noticed that you can trade star systems, so I asked for every available star system of his, in exchange for two pieces of advanced technology. (They have an indicator that shows who benefits more from each negotiation, and according to the indicator he got the better bargain.) He accepted! I now owned every star system except for the one he couldn't trade. I started production for a bunch of ships to destroy the rest of his fleet and take the last planet. However, when I hit the "end turn" button, I was taken to the victory screen. Apparently, you only need to own 75% of the galaxy to win a military victory.