I've had one game too where the Altarians didn't build a single military ship the entire game. Just a bunch of scouts and troop transports around their worlds.

Most recent game it was the Thalans - Decently sized empire but built no military even after the Drengin DoWd them. Altarans have been average, but the Terrans were my biggest competitor the game before that.

I am wondering if there is more variation in personalities in the expansion - makes it harder to determine a head of time who are going to be troublesome and who are going to be pushovers

Left unchecked, the Torians will mop up a lot of planets and this gives them the basis for a strong economy. I tend to find that they build a lot of ships without engines, and are stuck with those (fleets move at the speed of the slowest ship) in the later parts of the game. They also target colonies that are more than ten turns away at a speed of 4, rather than trying to engage fleets in their own space. There's not much point going to the trouble of reearching and designing ships with the cool and advanced warp drive if you can more cost-effectively slap an impulse engine in there and cut travel time by 50%.

Torians have gone bananas in my game as well. They're by far the large civilization I've met (met them, Krynn, Iconians, Drengin, and Drath so far). Interestingly, I can't place a spy on any of their planets: they don't have any Improvements at all (at least the planets I can see). I'm hoping they're a paper tiger: their influence is starting to hurt, so I'm going to have to start a war with them with nothing but Troop Transports.