Actually, they can win. In fact, Draginol himself once lost to the Akilians. Read it on his journal under "An Ironic Defeat".

Hmm... I think I have a theory. Maybe there's something in the AI code that says 'I don't have enough influence, so I should build an influence starbase.' In that case, they'll build influence starbases forever, since (as you say) they don't have influence.

it is for this reason that I think the devs need to tweak the AI so that they are part of the other races as for as galactic meetings and as far as being able to use spies on their planets.

In my experiences, the minor races have never expanded. However, I believe I figured out why they do sometimes. When I was at war with the Drengin, some of the other races gave me ships to support me, and the ones they gave had colony modules on them.... so the minor race may have gotten gifts like that and ended up using those to colonize.

Minor Races- Questions
By AGENT93
Posted March 27, 2007 10:08:01

I wonder about this myself. Many players report their minor races do nothing. I've experienced just the opposite. In my games there are some minor races that have conquered half a huge map militarily. I suspect it depends on how powerful a computer you have. My system is an Asus A8N32 mobo with 4GB DDR400 dual channel, a 500GB HD, AMD64x2 4600, and an Asus 8800 GTX video card. I always play with advanced algorithms on. My last game on suicidal some funny frankenstien looking kinda Sanderian kinda fella was robbing the Iconians blind about every 5 turns, for a while, and then was offerring these techs to me for planets. I just paid paid cash for them, but this was with tech trading enabled. When its disabled I suspect the so and so's invest their money in espionage. The piker that sold me the Iconian techs also sold the Iconians my techs - I have advanced espionage in my DL game with the Iconians. Those are the "friendly" do nothing minors. The ones I hate the most are the evil "@#!$" because there favorite strategy is to ally with the pirates. After the pirates wipe out the defenders fleets they move in with transports and invade all the worlds. One in my game looked like a green Scottlingas - he was allied with the Drengin and the pirates both. I invaded the Drengin capital world and they surrendered all there remaining planets to the Altairians for pity sake - about 17 planets. Then 4 pirate fleets (3 20 to 30 ship fleets and 1 66 ship fleet) entered the game and began eating all the fleets and SBs they could find ... those evil little green goblins came right behind and invaded all the Altairian worlds and about 15 turns later - after several peace treaties - the Altairians were history. The freaking imps actually began attacking me!!! I was fighting the pirates and had my hands full when suddenly 5 transports show up at 5 of my worlds and the beasties werew demanding one of MY worlds for peace. I told the imps to pike off!!! So they attacked ... minor race is kinda a misnomer in my games. It really means vicious, despicable monsters. For the rest of that game they #1 and I was #2. We battled constantly ...I killed thousands and they still came ...after I captured a world they sued for peace. I reamed them on it and after that I always got a senate message that we had made peace ... no more tribute... For about 50 turns this went on with all the other races allied with those blink blinks!!! It never saved their arses though ... they evenually got absorbed into those little green borgs and I won by default. So I guess if you have trouble take appropriate action (in megatons) otherwise, no worries mate!