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Discussions Rules and Guidelines
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Many have said that the ai factions pay no maintenance for its garrisoned ships, I am inclined to believe that. I think it's highly possible that they are also getting other kinds of bonuses, even on normal difficulty settings, to enable then to build up really fast without suffering penalties.
There are various ways of dealing with it, and I suggest you look at previous forum posts, but to make a few suggestions:
1) You need to get your production MEGA boosted right off at the start or it will simply take you too long to build things. (early sciences will look after itself for about the first 20+ turns or so - all the first techs in every tree are very useful, and they will all take only a few turns to research without much focus).
Build 3 or 4 starbases with overlapping bonuses around your starting 2 planets in your home system as quick as you can: 3 economy/1 influence or 4 economy and rack up the production so that you are able to build things really fast.
Take advantage of any bonus hexes (and the adjacent bonuses) with a focus first on food to get your population growing and expanding, then production, then science.
2) Get out there and explore and colonise as fast as possible early on. use your money to rushbuild your first 3 or 4 colony ships as and when you find planets.
Start building small ships, don't delay doing that. Locating a special source and start mining and building a few early ships with a few prototype weapons is worth it. high firepower for low cost. You can use these to fight off pirates and and help your survey ship with any enemies defending anomalies. Any *rescued* ships from anomalies are good to keep and defend your homeworld. (they normally have slow speed so defence is their use)
3) When it looks like you really need to start earning some cash, researching tourism is great: it will give you a massive bonus to money as soon as you research it. (trade is also very important: even 3 well chosen trade routes will give you lots of well needed money).
4) Researching techs to give you diplomatic bonuses when you have contacted other races is well worth it (You can stave off even the Drengin from declaring war of you have a good amunt of diplomatic points)
Make sure your 3 or 4 starbases around your homeworld system is always up to date with the latest youv'e researched. If you do it right your home system will become a powerhouse of production, science and money. This, of course,, unfortuantley leads itsef to the *constructor + starbase spam* problem which is also another frequently talked about issue in these forums. The game is such though, that you cannot avoid doing this or you will fall behind.
Even doing all this you wil lag behnd the AI until later on, but you will eventually overtake them.
I've been concentrating on spreading out and building an economic base from a larger footprint. From your tips, it sounds like turning my home area into a stronghold and then expanding works better.
Still, how does the AI get so far ahead technologically? The only way I can keep up is to sell everything I own to each one for 1/3 of their tech. It's not exactly a fair trade, but if I do it with all of them I can keep pace.
Civilization has been my game for literally decades. Maybe I'm stuck in my habits from Civ.
Getting the balance between expanding (which you really do have to do right from the start: don't delay doing that) and developing your home system can only be really learned from playing lots of maps and consolidating the playstyle you like.
Those 3 or 4 economic overlapped starbases I talked about not only will give you massess amounts of construction to build whatever you need: but also will massivley boost your science with the adds-ons to them. (and boost your money with add-ons too).
You will be able to surpass them, but not staight away, because they do get bonuses (the game likes to put precursor artifacts right next to the ai's home systems for example).
Also if you research those diplomatic points (and also if you have the same ideology) you will start to get much better deals trading technolgies. The ai will always want a deal that gives them more, but you can bring it right down to a reasonable level, so that instead of them wanting 5 of your techs for 2 of theirs they will accept 3 for 2. I have even managed to get them to exchange almost fairly with 2 techs for 2 techs (with one of my techs being only a few stages higher).
Eco Starbases as people have said.
Population is Key to all, it boosts everything, 2x farms + Hospital in a triangle so they boost each other, near your Capitol building so atleast 2 of the 3 are adjacent to that(Unless you get a decent food bonus resource). This should be done on ALL planets. 3 maybe 4 if you can fit them in on large planets. On a Huge map (Which is what I play on 90% the time) I aim for atleast 16 pop on small, 22 on Medium and 30+ large Worlds, by turn 100-150. (I play a mix of Gifted/Genius AI's)
Research - Go straight for the Tech Capitol Building Tech. While doing this make your secondary planet a research Hub, or your capitol if your secondary planet gets a decent manufacturing Colonizing event. 4-5 research centers in a ring with a space in the center for the Tech Cap building. Again you need space for a farm(2 if poss) and a Hospital, population really is the key. Also do this for your 2nd or 3rd colonized world outside you home system. Fill the middle with an Thalium Data Archive. Or if your in an area with alot of Thalium, simple build a ring of them instead. If your feeling brave use you starting colony ship to colonise a planet out side your home system first. This can also have a big impact.
Colonizing - Do not fill your early colony ships up, set them to 1 or even 0.5, I usualy do 1 unless I meet some major early on and need to make a mad dash for planets, then its 0.5's, gives you more working space to grab planets faster as your Homeworld is not getting to nerfed by all the migration.
Making Friends - If you do not make large fleets, then the AI see's you as weak, but, there is a work around for this. Embassy Building and a few diplomacy Techs will keep most of them at bay far easier than a large fleet of ships.
Defend your Planets - Tiny Balanced ships will do. 5-10 at each planet. They are quick and easy to build, defended planets give a decent boost to the bugged "power" graph.
It a comon misconception that the AI gets boosts on Normal. They do not, they simply build 3-4 Eco starbases in pretty much every system. Boosts do not start happening untill Gifted and Above. I am a modder and have modded the AI to be harder as I find in certain aspects they suck real real bad. but that another topic!
Iv'e noticed the map generator usually likes to place a number of precursor artifacts in the ai's home systems, or very near them.
But as you said in your post the Ai has more ships and planets than you on the first encounter and can easily make all the threats and demands they want left and right and as often as they want and there is little you can do but bend over and take it like your tied to a rack.
I have yet to reach a max level in any single Reaserch or idiology before I have been killed off or too discusted to keep fighting and just surender to the AI's.
The Ripe for Conquest issue is simple, Garrison ships on your planets, 2-5 tiny ships will do.
Id also like to amend my stantment above about Farms, the more the better!!! I am now doing 3-8 per planet and it soooo much easier now. Throws Specialized planets out the window pretty much. I have 1 Research planet and am way way ahead on Tech nearly every game. 2 Manufacturing planets <--- For quick ship building.
You should set your Global Wheel to 12/44/44 or 20/40/40 if you need a bit of cash flow for upgrading rushing. Then use the Labor improvment to set specific planets to a diff setting if needed.
Indeed. The minor races are your cash cow. All minor races will stay confined to their one planet. They're not expansionists, so they are never really any threat to you. So you can safely trade your research to them for all their cash. You should do this every 20 turns, as I believe this is the time you must wait before you can trade again.
Some other general tips (maybe I'll write a guide)
1) In the early game, spread out and colonize every planet you can find. This should be goal #1. Real Estate, like the real world, is finite. Once the map is fully colonized then things get tense, as the only way to get more real estate is to flip a neighboring planet or take it over in a hostile manner (war). Use your initial $5,000 to rush buy colonizers when you find uninhabited planets.
2) If you're playing the Terrans, don't colonize Mars right away. Instead, look for a bigger planet. If another faction colonizes Mars, it will flip to your side because Earth's influence is so high. Never worry about Mars. You'll get it eventually. Save your colonizers for bigger planets. It's crucial to spread out in the early game.
3) When you colonize a world, if it grants a specialization (ex: +50% Research), rename the planet with the specialization in parenthesis. Example: "Rai IV (Research)". This will make it easier for you to identify its purpose in the various screens in the game, and to remind you that you should focus this planet's output on Research.
4) Take advantage of special tiles. If a planet tile has +3 Tourism / +1 Wealth, use it for a Port of Call. If you haven't researched Port of Call, save the tile for when you do. Always use the biggest bonus when possible.
5) As others have stated, eventually you want to build Starbases with Economic rings around your planets, to boost wealth, research and productivity. This is important, but not more important than real estate early on. In the early game, if you have a choice between laying an Economic Starbase or mining some resource nearby, create the mine. It will lay claim to the empty space and add to your real estate.
6) Choose the starting Ideologies that allow you access to the buildings. Whatever you choose (Benevolent, Pragmatic, Malevolent), your first choices should always be the ones that get you access to the buildings (Missionary Center, Prepardness Center, Intimidation Center). These buildings allow you to gain Ideology points over time. Otherwise, you only get those points when you colonize a planet or there is a galactic event; and colonizing planets will eventually end. You want to be continually earning points in Ideology because some of the Ideology abilities are VERY POWERFUL. For instance: Benevolent: Prominence is a great way to grab multiple planets at once, and can swing things in your favor in the latter half of the game.
7) Ideology to Focus On: Pragmatic Builder #2: reduces shipyard decay. This is crucial for expanding your empire, as you want to build new shipyards farther out from your core planets, closer to your front-lines so you can more quickly assemble and attack your enemies. To do this, you need to be able to assign your biggest manufacturing planets as sponsors to the new shipyards. But that production will be decayed, unless you unlock this Ideology.
8) Ideology: Benevolence: Outreach. This is my personal favorite. After unlocking Prominence, this is the next thing to get unlocked. In the early game, the extra colony ship is great, and so is the extra class 10 planet. In the late game, getting a free class 16 planet is awesome. Also, this is a free tile for every planet - better than terraforming.
9) Pick one planet (good size, without negatives to manufactoring) and put nothing on it but factories and military improvements like "Hyperion Logistics System". This planet gets all of your improvements that help ships out. Assign this planet to your primary ship-building starbase, which should always be closest to your front line of whichever major faction you are currently at war with. These improvements significantly help your ships and keeping them on one planet lets you easy assign that planet to another shipyard.
Ack, all right. That's enough. Guess I'll submit a guide.