[Starhawk]

Okay all this is in my very first game of SEIV...it is now almost 80 years in game and my empire has actually not expanded that far..reasons being.

Okay by turn 20 the EEE had over 200 ships and over 100 planets!!! WTF!!!?!?!?? The Gamilons had 80 planets and 120 ships!!!!
Okay now currently my empire has over 100 colonized planets with buttloads of mineral and radioactive miners yet I can barely support my 40 ship star fleet!!

So what I ended up doing is cutting my empire off from the other two and have since been launching devestating raids against them blowing up entire worlds with several raids, and in four cases I even destroyed entire star systems with billions upon billions of people and I even took out 57 EEE warships!!! (20 in combat and 37 when I destroyed the system) yet they don't seem too effected.

I have been more cruel and devestating to the evil Gamilon empire whom I have destroyed several 16+ ship fleets in battle and even a 28 ship fleet when a system of theirs went nova! Yet I am still in 3rd place and still have a small fleet!

So my question is WHAT IS GOING ON WITH THIS!? How did the EEE have so many ships so fast much less planets!? Sure they had a lot less tech then me at the time but still it confuses me?
The Gamilons were agressive colonizers and war fighters so it doesn't come as a suprise to me that they had conquered one or two of the neutral empires and taken over their space which is what allowed them to make such great leaps in their territory and production abilities.

I am a natural merchant so I don't even need space ports so shouldn't I be getting a lot more resources then them since i can devote entire worlds JUST to mines?