[Will]

Have a SY in each system devoted to mine production, and have ships to distribute them on all the warps (repeat orders very helpful to automate this).

Also use several Groups of fighters to defend the warps, if the mines are breached (a good idea is to use a temporary fleet, train to 20%, then transfer all the fighters to that fleet, giving them an "unfair" advantage). They are zero maintainance, and very powerful (with or without the v1.35 bug).

Go on the offensive to take out the zero-maintanance player, along with at least one other player. Make a show of throwing yourself into battle, but let him do as much dirty work as possible. Take advantage of your temporary ally's fleets while in enemy territory, there is greater safety in numbers. Engage mainly single ships, use Plage Bombs to slowly destroy unprotected colonies and throw the empire into chaos.

For intelligence, it's likely you won't get many operations through. So focus on Counter-Intel, get each one to about half completion, then hit a single empire with several cheap ops and one major op Last (IE. 5-6 Econ. Disrupt, 1 PPP), make sure all can be completed in one turn. The cheap ops should take care of the enemy Counter-Intel, leaving a greater chance for the major op to succeed, while your saved Counter-Intel projects will protect you.

If possible, use troops to capture Homeworlds. It seriously screws the opposition's happiness, empire-wide, while giving you a nice resource boost.

I would say that many of the Stellar Manip. strategies said here would be useless, as it would take to long to construct the ships, while providing little offensive advantage. The best idea, I would say, is use warp manip strategically. Isolate enemy systems, make several connections between two enemies, and make sure they fight. Don't nuke enemy planets after glassing them. Let the enemy waste resources to recolonize. You have a chance that it will be recolonized and start producing again, and a chance that the colonizer will be picked off by your fleet, effectively tying up a space yard for the time it took to build.

Destroy as many ships as possible, while losing as few ships as possible. Make use of field train/retrofits. Make a Version of your main warship with all PDCs. Build and put in with your normal fleets, and have it take care of all seekers, sats, fighters. Then, when experience is high, retrofit to a warship, the experience is kept.