Oh but it is on the road map,  been discussed many times,  it might have been mentioned in the lase stream but i don/t recall the time frame

May I ask what "same" things you are doing?    I find that different races really do play significantly differently. 

I also find that if I am going to go for a conquest victory I research a lot differently than if I am going for a diplomatic or culture victory.

The different races all have some unique buildings and those can majorly change how the planets are built....


While by and large the tech trees are going to be mostly the same..  start by doing the Planet improvement one.. then the farms one... then possibly universal translator...  etc...    by 40 or so turns in I tend to change up what I am doing based on what my "goal" for the game is...

So perhaps you need to just change up your play style or have a different goal...  

With 7 AI on a Large map, you should be meeting people fairly soon, being threatened, swindling the AI for techs, and a whole lot more.  I am not sure I get where you are hitting end turn so much and getting away with it.  Waiting until you have Large hulls before you start building military sounds like my kind of trick and I always get invaded or threatened or both.  Frankly, I would find turns of hitting end turn a break.

Do you have pirates or events on?  They help break up the monotony in sparser maps.  

Things like research decisions are strictly your choices.  I have seen enough discussions of wildly different approaches to know there are many viable opportunities.  I don't see how you can be properly min-maxing enough to not choose some of the juicy options in the different tech trees.  The difference between Thalan Hives and Snathi Scavenging have to have some effect on your tech path, or you are more stubborn than I realize and avoid all race specific techs.

Maybe I misunderstand you description of map size and you are more isolated from the AI than I envision.  Being a little too spread out could be a source of the situation you describe.  I did that for a while, since I do like an expansionist role with some room around me.  If so, add a couple more AI.  Adding one or two AI at a time until things got busy but didn't feel crowded helped me a lot.  It might help you.  Then again, you might get too many factions and they might all gang up on you.  You never know.

You're correct - some military is required most of the time.  In answer to your question - Diplomacy.  Any race can easily research enough diplomacy tech and build a few buildings to make sure diplomatic relations, even with aggressive races like Drengin or Krynn, never get bad enough for war.  This is of course augmented by trade, gifts, open border treaties, and declaring friendship.  Last game I played as Drengin and pure Benevolent Ideology.  No one ever declared war on me the whole game (350 turns or so). 7 opponents, huge galaxy.

The other way is exploiting Ai weaknesses.  For example, the Ai never sends more than 1 transport, and never loads more than 2.5 troops on it.  If you build elerium shields and other planetary defense on your worlds, the Ai can never successfully invade you.

As for human wipeouts.....only if the human player has virtually no knowledge of how to play the game.  Any player with a decent amount of experience and knowledge of game mechanics quickly realizes how to prevent this, and realizes the Ai's ability to actually wage a war is stupidly, ridiculously, laughably poor (especially compared to its desire to actually declare war).  No tactical awareness of enemy ships, bizarre fleet groupings, failure to garrison captured worlds, 1 transport at a time loaded with 2.5 troops, poor prioritization of what to invade, building a huge fleet but most of the ships can't even reach your worlds, lack of use of engines, only making 1 attack per fleet despite movement remaining....the list goes on.

Minor civs are basically filler at this point.  They're just a tool for the human player to fleece tech and money from.  Even if you empower them by giving them planets and ships, they don;t do anything with them.  At best, they're a niche resource for a small group of players.  I agree with you that it would be nice if they were more active in the galaxy.  Guess we'll have to wait and see on that.

I think the lack of human wipeouts is more that if the game goes poorly we restart.

On minor race's, I have seen the lanterns in one game get three planets. I dunno how they managed it though. If you play with 20+ players and rare planets, the minor race's are nearly as powerful as the major races.

So you are not exploring the galaxy? You are not hunting for anamolies? You are not securing resources? You are not trading? You do not use money to rush buildings or ships? 

Especially the anamoly hunting is something fun and important in the phase of the game you describe. Some anamolies advance or even finish the current research project. Also making (for example by mining and selling resources) and using money is important, since you can build the planets up way more faster.

If you are just hitting the end turn button your really missing a good part of the game. I can't even remember a turn where I had literally nothing else to do but to end it.

Yes, they are initially all about peaceful promotion of their "spirtual" ways but they soon start hostile behaviours. They're so annoying.