I am about halfway through the colony rush in a gigantic galaxy with eight opponents and eight minors. About half of the major civs never bothered to research space weapons. Two major civs have surrendered to another civ without a shot fired, and one of them, I believe, was only at war with minors (I could be wrong about this). As far as I could tell, they were so buisy researching colonization techs that they never bothered to research any military techs at all. I know that there has already been a thread about how thay already surrender way too easily early in the game, and I think this is a contributor to the problem.
BTW: The Korath are doing a great job of actually building an economy!(Some others are doing a respectable job as well) That used to be a real AI weak point.
Scincerely,
Scintor