[Ack]

Did you take the Normal Race trait? If not (and you did not take Pirate or Nomad), you will not get colony ships and a lot of other things, which is bad.

If you are playing as a Pirate or a Nomad, you are not supposed to colonize, and the game is supposed to be a lot harder.

Understood but to expand in technology you have to pirate ships. This leads to war, but remember a pirate has a very finite amount of resources and ship yard construction ability (SY ships vs planets). Ergo all a race has to do is outbuild you with ships of a moderate technology and the pirate has lost. There is no way that a pirate can match a planet based economy with their stunted technological growth and limited (and easily destroyed) resource collection facilities.

It seems to me that the best possible outcome is a long stalemate. Unless there is a strategy or technology route that I do not know about. The only thing I can think of is to make use of the lower ship maintenance cost by building huge numbers of ships over time. But this technique will result in vast numbers of obsolete ships against a modern enemy (ugh! Civ3 reference, think spearmen against tank).