Just one thought on

1) If an AI is too strong to be conquered militaristically (and if other methods such as bringing AI's to declare war on him will result in him being only more stronger) then I´d put all my efforts into allying with him - even if that means I have to pay 10.000bcs for a radical alignment change. After the alliance is set this guy is ripe to be conquered culturally.

Yeah it depends on his strength. If he is just some edges stronger then keeping the AI at war will keep them also weak all the time. But if a single AI has so strong ships that he won't even loose shipfights then it's only a matter of time until he's going to successfully invade planets and by that becoming even more stronger.

Actually, speaking of this, I remember an other game (I think it was the Drengin Gambit) where the Altarians had a Precursor Library on their homeworld, and became immensly powerful. I was able to conquer the Torians very early on, so there was only the Arceans & Altarian left - both stronger than me. Although I had 40% of the planets in game the suicidal AI outsearched me fairly, the Drengin in TA have a bad economy + research abilities, so in the long run, this game would have been lost.

But I brought the Altarians to war against the Arceans - and built some very fast Transport Troops and positioned them along the Arcean border (to not provoke a yet good relation...). The Altarians send some fleets and took away all Defenders & fleets, leaving the Arceans entirely defenseless. I then send in my Transports before the Altarians got the chance to - conquering the Arceans in a single turn.

After that, I had 75% of all planets - which, in the long run enabled me to win, but I did never ever use that strat again.

Is it easy to get the AI gang up against the strongest player in the game? I would think that they are afraid om his military strength. I think, however, that it should be easy in the game as it is the only way - at difficult levels - to damage him. Resembles the game of RISK in which human players also try to form an alliance to weaken the strongest player/bully.

What do you think?

"Yes, it is actually more difficult to get weak AI's to attack a strong AI than getting the strong AI to attack the weak AI's"

Perhaps this should be addressed in a future patch or galciv3. I think it is logical (at least in board games it is) to gang up against the strongest player, otherwise you'll lose the game for sure at high difficulty levels + it is less realistic.

So far the game is most exciting in the early/ mid stages. Once I am the strongest player in game, this game is won already.

It's like the more power one has the more power he'll be able to scoop up and so forth resulting in omnipotency. The steps are only minimal in the beginning and become gradually greater overtime, that's why the beginning is most hard to determine & access.

I hope in GalCiv3 there will be more "unbalancing" super-events than now. Esp. it seems that some Superevents such as the Jagged Knife etc can be of great advantage, too.