1.1 Beta - why is everyone so beastly to me?

The military thing means they think you are too weak. The AI's only rrespect military strength. Friendship through force is my motto

Yes, they start out with an ethical alignment.
And we know what you're doing means if ANY ships are near them, or you appear to be trying to arm yourself, prepare to be nuked. Figuratively of course, what they actually do to you is far more painful

Peace through superior firepower.

I don't know how the AI judges military strength, but it is a huge factor in the game. Whether or not you are attacked, what kind of ratios you get in trade deals, and whether or not an AI will even consider your proposals are all linked to your strength.

So, build a military base near your capitol, upgrade it to +1 attack and +1 defense, and put fleets of cheap little 1att / 1 def / 2mov fighters near it. These will not only boost your military rating, but serve the real role of a strong home defense force. A couple speed-2 fleets of (2,1,1),(2,1,1) fighters can take out most sneak attacks and unwanted enemy starbases.

Thanks for the responses. Military strength is obviously much more important than I thought, I have tended to put off building up my ships until I've finished colonising and starbase construction. Unless I'm imagining it the AI is much more savvy in 1.1, so I guess I need to refine my strategy. 'We know what you're doing' is used a lot more now (perhaps too much?), previously I've only got that when I was making aggresive overtures.

Am I right in thinking that those empires with + by 'military strength' in their opinion of me are even weaker than I am then, or do they just like the fact I'm weak? It's mainly the Korx who have plusses in this way, maybe they're weird like that?

Saber Cherry - if I'm reading you right, the ship bonuses from military starbases factor into your military strength rating. I guess this is a good way of improving your military reputation quickly.

Saber Cherry - if I'm reading you right, the ship bonuses from military starbases factor into your military strength rating. I guess this is a good way of improving your military reputation quickly.

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that! What I meant to say is that I believe the AI only calculates strength based on "number of armed hitpoints in space." The cheapest way to create those is to make minimally-armed tiny ships. But the only way to make minimally armed tiny ships useful is to put them near a military starbase (or use them to kill enemy shipping). So by doing that, you kill 2 birds with one stone... but you don't kill three birds with one stone

Two birds it is then. Cheers.

whats wild about the "we know what your doing" message is when I get it from someone I would have to go through at least two Empires, and take over at least one of thoese empires to get within range of them,

Sorry, one other comment to add. The AI seems very quick to try and invade any of your planets that has nothing orbiting (defending) it. So I would get some Defenders at least onto every planet as soon as possible.

On my current game, even in the mid-late game, where I'm dominating everyone culturally, technologically, and militarily (i.e. attack Torians, steal their planet, then offer a Peace Treaty if they also give me 40K...), I've seen the AI start sending a vessel to steal a planet of mine that temporarily didn't have a defender on it.

What does a peace treaty do, if it doesn't stop rivals from stealing your planets?

And BTW I agree - the AI loves to steal planets with unescorted transports. So a single tiny ship with 1 attack on top of each world - basically, the same as the default Phalanx fortified in each city in Civ 1 - is a necessity, and again, it's cheap and boosts your "apparent military strength".

I've refined my strategy through years on galciv one, and now the new game. Do the colony grab and start building up. At the same time make sure to create defenders of some sort. You need something around every single planet as soon as possible. In my opinion the most important thing is to get ahead technologically. For instance in my last game, I had a big tech advantage, but weak ratings in everything else. So my neighbor attacked me. What they didn't take into account was that although their military was ranked higher then mine, I was about to start turning out medium size ships with upwards of 16 mass driver attack points apeice, and good defense in each area. they were fast, too. It took several turns, but I lost only about four ships in the war, compared to dozens and two planets from them. Eventually I just got a peice treaty and lots of cash. by then, though, I had by far the most powerful military in the galaxy, as well as the most influence, and with the help of my stolen worlds, the best economy. Eventually I got an alliance victory, because everyone wanted to be my friend. So, in conclusion. MIGHT MAKES RIGHT!

You can get a lot of mileage out of:

+ Diplomacy ability

+ Trading with them

+ Ethical alignment

If you want to keep them from getting too mad at you, build up your diplomacy abilities and make sure you trade.  Also think carefully about whether you want to be good/neutral/evil.

The "We know what you're doing..." factor applies when you've got ships and/or invasion fleets near their territory. They get jumpy when you're projecting force near their colonies, especially if your offending ships are a long way away from your colonies. Alignment applies from the beginning, with evil races not hating each other as much as good races do. Military strengh will be listed as a positive if you're strong, or a negative if you're weak. I was going to give the same advice that Frogboy gave, but his word has a little more weight than mine so it wouldn't matter much.

Does 'military strength' mean they view me as weak and an easy target, or building up an invasion force and needing to be destroyed? Some races had plusses and some minuses by military strength, so I don't know which way to go to stop antagonising the galaxy as I seem to be doing at present.

Military strength minuses will cause the AI's to say to you things like "we are sizing you up for an invasion right now" or "we could crush you like a bug" or "you're lucky we like you". They know you are weak and depending on their distance from you, their relations with you and whether they are in any other wars.... they will be looking to attack you soon.

Military strength is also correlated by the quality of your ships - i.e. their tech level. If you have a 100 stock defenders, your military strength wont get near an equal sized AI who will have piles of fleets out. If you don't want to be attacked, get some first generation fighter fleets out round your border planets.

Conversely, if you want to pull the AI into war with you, have a high technological and manufacturing potential but little defense (preferably a military starbase in the path of where the AI will come from). When the AI declares, crank military spending up to 100%, design a high tech ship and push a load out. This can cripple an AI..... I've often had the AI arrive in my space and already be up for a peace treaty as my military might has soared over theirs. This is a particularly useful method if you dont want to drag any allies in by declaring yourself!

I think the "I know what you're doing" thing is now messed up. Every race had it as a negative for me and all I had was a single defender on each of my planets and 1 on a starbase. No fleets, nothing not orbitting a planet yet races that I didn't even share a border with had that showing on my report screen.

I just finished the most boring game that was non-stop war with me. If Stardock makes one change this beta, it has to be how the AI measures military strength. A race would declare war on me, I'd take a few planets, then another race would declare war, I'd pay for peace with the first one then take a few planets from the second one until the 3rd one declared war at which time I'd pay for peace with #2 and take a few planets from #3. Rinse, repeat. I had 6 beam medium hull ships with 5 movement versus heavy fighters with 2 missile and 3 movement. My only difficulty was having enough population to take planets fast enough. It really, really sucked.

I had a race down to 3 planets versus my 14 with 4 fleets with 3 medium hull ships nearby and they declared war on me and all they had were 8 heavy fighters --- total!

We have access to a graph of military rating, so I'm sure the AI players have access to it too. Whether more military is better depends on the race though. Militaristic races respect foce, and any military smaller than their own will give a relations penalty. Other races see a large military as an invasion waiting to happen, and will have a relations penalty when your military is stronger than theirs. Ethical alignment has a starting value dependant on race, and factors into relations in a big way. It seems that for evil races, having the same alignment has less of an impact than having an opposing impact, whereas with good races having the same alignment has a much larger affect on relations. Neutrals will not tend to have a huge adustment for alignment with anyone.