Starting off, I'm new to this game and have loved almost every detail of it, except one problem I've come across a couple of times now.  At the beginning of the game one of the first civilizations I meet will have an insurmountable head start.  This has happened with the several of the normal factions and one of the customized one.  The faction will start with a lot planets, and huge fleets in the first few turns.  All of the other AI act normally.  Is there a way to fix this?  (The AI are all set to normal, with a few being set to easy)  There is no way to fight against whatever faction starts like this because they can get over a thousand ships before we reach the Age of War.

Side note:  I convinced the Yor (fourth most powerful faction in that game) to go to war with the Galactic Colonials(The extremely overpowered faction)  two turns later I got a message from them saying that if I didn't assist them in the war, they would be wiped out.  The Colonials had almost entirely removed them from the game in 2 turns of war.