[geoschmo]

Not to mention one small mine with 2 level 1 warheads will take out a whole one of your escorts. Anybody facing you would throw up a few mines at every planet, a few more on warp points.

And while you mass your escorts and launch massive suicide raids against the minefields, I'd be going around methodically capturing your planets since you took all your points out of that "useless" strength characteristic.

Your strategy might work well against an AI, but it's very easily countered by a human player.