My games are all HUGE maps,9 AIs,rare anomolies,abundant planets,etc..

The difficulty on the ones im losing are normal to challenging.

Things that seal my doom:
I ALWAYS end up with the highest ranking AI on my border. ALWAYS. I dont know if the game does this on purpuse or what.
I never have any real space to expand beyond like 8 colonies.
I am always attacked by my neighbors fairly early.
If i dont research the culture techs ,im on the ropes by culture alone early on.

Things im going to improve on in my own play:
I never use trade routes- i will start now.
I am going to start putting more than one embassy on a planet- til now ive only put one on each.
I dont build very much industry,as i dont undertsand how it all adds up yet.I buy almost all my ships outright never allowing the build time to build the ship.- I am going to build more industry in hopes that i can get my ships at a decent rate thru build time.
I dont declare war on anyone- i will start to pick the fights myself IF given time to.

Things mentioned i am already doing:
I already trade research heavily with the minor AIs.
I already use the econ sliders
I already colonize as fast as i can
I already use the flagship to get anomolies (but often get messed up with worm holes-just bad luck i quess)
I already up the production slider to 100%- when i can.
etc...

Things i do that might be bad, but i dont know yet:
I turn off military funding early on to help economy and research- set military slider to 0%
I only use the largest hull types available at the time- i shy away from using swarms of small hull ships when possible.
I tend to close to nuetral I think in my actions(dont knwo where i can find my actual alignment,but i try to limit evil choices.

Thanks all for your replys.i hope to improve my game from them and future ones.