Mid-game+, I feel like I have nothing to do

[True Guesser, Wand Bearer, etc.]

My empire is a healthy sized blob, I bribed my neighbors immediately and so have a Defensive Pact with them, I'm working on the last Artifact, and all other Science ships are assisting colonies. The 2 Crisis events are still a ways away, but until then I'm just monitoring my planets for when they need housing or amenities (stability is minimum 80% across the board). Am I missing something?

If I'm not actively trying to conquer the galaxy, is there anything I can do after the first ~70 years besides wait for the Crisis?

[Dakota]

You pretty much choose what you'd want to do, so if you aren't actively choosing to go out and do stuff its going to be pretty dull. You can go and bully marauder fleets, attempt to gain power to beat a fallen empire, declare wars for the fun of it or as ideology wars or whatever else, you can go and hunt down leviathans that the curators tell you about, and you can go and hunt space monsters like the crystalline entities.

[Malaficus Shaikan]

One of the things i do as a self impose challange is take a preset empire(useally one of the human's) make myself the ruler and have the self imposed rule of losing if my leader loses power(by death of getting kicked out of office)
An other thing is starting a democracy, geting my choicen leader elected, and make him god emperor of a divine empire.

Self impose challange's can be fun.
Starting with a nation and trying to get that nation to become the exact oppite ethic is very hard to achieve.

[Cylian]

That's the point of 2250 ENDGAME date...
I am currently having one and I must say that I feel the thrill again.

[MissedHurry]

I'm new to the game and I've been researching in the forums about what people say when it comes to upgrading starbases and especially how to best fortify the ones at the entry points into your territory. I also recently got mega-structure and gateway technology, so I'm busy upgrading starbases, growing my fleets and building gateways while in this otherwise "slow" period of the mid-game.

[MissedHurry]

Extra note on the mega-structure technology. The two times that I got it in a game, I had selected the Ascension Perk for technology that gives you 1.5 times the amount of rare techs. I'm not sure if that's always necessary to do, in order to get the mega-structure tech to come around.

[MissedHurry]

Ooohh... Or, try custom-building your own ships. I just got in to that. This guide is great IMO: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=705465925

[Markus Reese]

My midgame in a peaceful/federation builder game usually consists of two parts. Going to run through my phases of play in federation builder just so it helps clarify how I divide up play.

So during expansion phase, know the drill. Explore, establish secure borders, colonize. Of course here you cannot specialize so much because you do not know what is around you. Focus fully on say tall science while beside a fanatic purifier or other heavy militant might not go well. Specialization before establishment for me usually goes bad.

Midgame peace usually exploration of L gates or other moderate risk investments, dealing with mauraders etc. On a peace play, I consider this my Renaissance era. This is where I really get the tiered ascensions, upgrade planets and constructions, start perhaps get the megastructures. It is where I take advantage and start to really exploit my niche and features of the race and location.

Example is my qlorvins, a life seeded species. This midgame is where I start getting the roboticization (is roleplay, not meta species I started when machines came out). This is a long process, but because life seeded, I start getting planets set up that are otherwize not habitable to get ally species in through immigration. If no ideal ally, I do the terriforming.

Essentially use this time for housekeeping and pushing the final path you want to go. When the Endgame crisis shows up and werent minmax exploiting, you wont be able to make us of those advantages or policy specializations as much once you need to push economy back to wartime.

[Iskaka]

Get gigastructural engineering then, i sience rushed my empire and so i started unlocking some structures in the 2060's and by the 2070's i starded my first planet mine where i mine up an entire planet, As of writing this the year is 2094 and im currently activating my 3rd planet mine aswell as contructing some for when the old ones run out, i started some other structures like one wich harvests energy and special resources from a gas giant, one that can blow up a system with a black hole and some storage units to make up for the lack of energy production due to these projects.

beware tough, im by last playthrough i managed to create one massive explosion in a star system and killed over 50 pops Whoops....

[Nightmyre]

Short answer to your question is - no. There isn't really anything to do, if your goal isn't to play aggressively and conquer other empires.

If your intended playstyle is to build up and defeat the crisis event, you should set your crisis date to be much earlier, or you'll just end up sitting there twiddling your thumbs for hours.