Yes, there is. First, non military cultures should focus on trade, diplomacy, and research. If you build up significant trade routes with a variety of neighbors, you can quickly leverage control. It will build you relations with them (helped by the added diplomacy), and as you get rich, so do they.

Should a war arise, you then have powerful group of friends to either call to your aid, or to get money from. If you build a good economy, and a good research division, in a pinch you can also rocket from space weapons tech to plasma weapons (or equivelent) in about one tech a turn (full spending, most into research). This allows you you quickly make up any shortfalls you have militarily. Building just af ew powerful ships will keep thier transports from getting any ideas, and allows you a breather while you allies (not neccesarily by treaty, but by de facto) slug it out (three on one works well if possible).

Once your aggresive friend has been beaten down by your friends, you can sweep in and seize thier good planets (have a couple transports ready). They will quickly fall, or sue for peace. Thus, with very little military might, you can conquer someone.

Also, if you think you might have a problem in the future with someone, pay off people to attack them now, otherwise they could build up and keep other races from joining the party when you want them too ("thier military is too strong")

You just have to leverage people, the friendly ai realizes when your an assest to them, and will act accordingly.

Yes, but it often involves involving other races in the attack, especially if you are facing a superior opponent.

So far I've only played humans and I've found you can do either (win by war or influence/diplomacy) even within the same game. The trick as a non-military species is to play to your strengths (production, research, economy) until you can overwhelm your enemy with a sudden and decisive military campaign. Think "arsenal of democracy" from the American perspective during WWII.

You can avoid being invaded in the mean time by making strong allies, establishing strong economic ties with everyone and building a defensive fleet that is strong enough to give any potential invaders something to think about before deciding to launch an attack. It actually doesn't seem to take much to achieve this at the lower to middle difficulty levels.

Good stuff, you guys, thanks. I came away with one bit of knowledge and one question:

> I didn't realize you could pay another race to go to war.

> Does Gal Civ II have the equivalent of a "Zergling rush" I should be aware of (if I were to bide my time using Inocare's "arsenal of democracy" strategy)?*

*For those of you unfamiliar with the tactic - named for a race in Starcraft - it is comprised of using a horde of small, cheap units early in the game to overwhelm your opponent before they can develop adequate defenses.

i to prefer a miitary victory. But I build up my infrustructure so that when I start to build a military i can support it, and my economy won't be hurt by any 'unsafe' trade routes.

I tend to go for a "beat them senseless" approach but tend to like a long lead-in, so I spend a large amount of the game as a big research outfit just begging to donate NLC's to the Altarian cause (its ALWAYS those jerks).

To avoid said fate I tend to keep a couple planets turnig out small-size ships with a bit of defense and a bit of offense, and use them to keep my military numbers up. Also I'll do my best to get a weapons system or three out of a friendly player, even if I have to hand over the keys to the vault to do it (I prefer buying tech to trading when possible, unless its something I know won't hurt me like a weapon they skipped because they traded better from someone else which can get a LOT of non-military techs for you) so I don't fall too far behind.

If I *do* get attacked before I'm ready (and so am still in research mode working on the non-military stuff) I play a defensive war while I (as mentioned above) dump money into quick weapons and logistics, and then start upgrading groups of my little fighters with newer weapons/engines and sending them out as kill teams to keep the transports at bay. Usually so long as I have a decent supply of hulls and haven't been too wasteful with my cash of late I can build up an AI-type "offensive small ship" group and just start playing attrition first with their transport fleets and then with their bigger stuff. Popping mining bases helps a lot as well, as does tossing a milbase or three up near where the main part of the fighting is going on (one thing I *do* usually research is the first level of milbase upgrades relatively quickly, *especially* if I'm planning on not trying to get an offense up and running ASAP).

Defensively, non-military cultures can use the "engine/gun/armor" fighter + milbase bit (constructors and fighters are both pretty cheap to build, and while the milbases get expensive after a while if you're going for something other than a military victory you probably will be getting econ techs up and running before you would otherwise so there'll be extra cash around. Plus the fighters are really easy on the maintenance costs) to hold out for a surprisingly long time, often to the point where the AI will spend most of their ships and you can turn around, buy a couple transports, and start snatching planets. You don't have any reallyl good options for an offensive war without using allies to knock their fleets out, unless you have high engine tech and can up-engine the fighters and constructors and drop milbases in place as you attack. That is usually a really big investment though, defensively the big advantage is in research time more than cost (you spread the costs of making the ships stronger out a lot but you still end up paying a good bit for a useful amount of overlap in base coverage), slowly putting an array of bases together is a lot less of a sticker-shock than trying to toss four up all at once and park fleets on top of them.