Spent most of the game thinking I was pretty much screwed. From the opposite side of the galaxy, the Torians had declared war after I refused to just hand over the entire Sol system at their demand. That's when I noticed they were flaunting Battleship and Dreadnought technology whilst I hadn't even researched Corvettes yet.
That is how far behind I was. Luckily, since they were on the opposite side of the galaxy, neither of us could reach the other.
Then, something happened. I don't know exactly what. Maybe it's the other empires all deciding to send their freighters to me, giving me some decent cashflow to actually get things done. Maybe it's the fact that I picked that trait at game start that gives +25% luck, which suddenly decided to give me about a dozen free Ranger-class ships(fun combination of a Battleship and Survey Ship) over the course of several turns, meaning that I want from zero military to 3rd total just from those ships. I don't really know.
But rather quickly, I went from last in tech to way and far to the most technologically advanced empire, causing everyone else to decide to
not screw with me. The only exception was a random event(prevented spying on the other empire) caused a war between me and the Drengin Empire, which ended after I nearly conquered one of their better planets while they made several failed attempts to take one of my worse ones. Even better, when they asked for peace, I demanded that planet and got it.
After that, all I did was sit back and watch the rest of the galaxy tear itself apart in pointless warfare while I went and researched Final Frontier to win the game.
Galactic Civilizations I.