Torians are no trouble. They tend to start off like a rocket... but end up being a damp squib. They can't invade for toffee...

Play as any of Drath/Korx/Yor and redesign your colonizers.
You should be able to expand as quickly as they can.

Build a decent economy (there are loads of threads on this).

Beware the Dregnim... now they may not grab as many planets. But wait till they've taken 3/4 of the Torians initial grab.

Sounds like you need to bump up the habitable planets setting a notch.

As for the Torians.... That's what they do, unless the Drengin knock them out early. Little green SOBs breed like maggots, so they can get away with rushing out more colony ships than anybody else.

Sprinkle Torians with salt and pepper; dip each in batter, and dredge in flour. Fry until golden brown in deep oil heated to 375 degrees F. Drain on paper towels. Yield: about 16 servings.

...Oh, you mean on the strategic map. The first thing you need is a solid strategy for the colonization phase. There are lots of suggestions sprinkled throughout the forum; mine involves putting lots of ability points into Morale and Economics to pump up production and cash flow throughout the game.

On turn 1, I turn off military spending and split production and research 50/50. I select New Propulsion Techniques if my race doesn't have it yet, and Galactic Warfare/Space Militarization if it does. Those two each give you a 10% military production bonus, so I don't wait long to pick them up.

Once I have New Propulsion Techniques, first thing I do is upgrade the colony ship. I strip it down to just the colony module, then add three hyperdrive plus engines. I never use vessels slower than this, and I upgrade again as soon as I get impulse engines. Then I turn military spending back up to 33%. I only rush buy colony ships in an emergency; usually I can pop one out on my home planet every 7-8 turns, and I also make it the first ship I build on other worlds. After a few turns, I'm cranking them out everywhere.

I buy one factory on my home world, then production-build at least two more before I start building anything else. I also do this for each planet I colonize; buy one factory, produce everything else normally. This ensures that I have cash to do this everywhere. Well, that and the fact that I play with trading on and basically sell everything but my Diplomacy and Influence techs to everybody.

Once colonization is over, you can try to beat the Torians with Influence, but their high populations make this difficult. Best thing is to see what defenses they've started using, develop a different weapon, go all the way up the planetary invasion tree, and take them out. Especially if you started next to them.

yeh those Torian frogs (well they are amphibious and look a little like a frog. and nothing against you Frogboy ) breed fast and spread quickly, so they tend to end up bieng a powerful race.

Or, if that fails, bash them with pointed sticks.

Another effective colonization strategy is to give your race a 50% military production bonus. Turn 1 you send your first colony ship out into the unknown, rush buy a factory on your home planet and start building a basic colony ship (hull and colony pod, nothing else). Use this ship to colonize your secondary planet (ie mars if human). Set military spending high enough that you can build it in 2 turns (usually over 90%) the rest goes into research. Each turn buy another factory but don't actually build any, social production should be zero right now anyways, I usually stop at 3 or 4 factories bought and then just leave the home planet alone as far as buildings go until after the colonization phase. On new planets focus production on social, but the home planet is doing nothing except producing a new colonizer every 2 turns.

As you buy factories you can lower military spending and send that money into research to get faster ships. After that first basic ship is built you can start putting engines and life support on your ships and your home planet will still be able to produce one every other turn. If you find a planet with a 300% or 700% industry bonus, rush a factory on it and build a starport and start pumping out ships there too. By turn 20 you should have at least 11 colony ships and/or planets that they've already colonized. I find in the game settings I usually play this is near where the colonization phase ends, but you could potentially keep this going indefinitely if you play larger, more abundant galaxies than I do. Start working on your economy once you've grabbed all the planets you can. Any left over colonizers dump their people on the nearest planet and upgrade into constructors to lay claim to any resources on the map. On masochistic I can usually keep up with the ai during the colonization phase, getting just as many and sometimes more planets than they do.