My first few games...

[Foraven]

I can say that this game is quite addictive, building up an empire is quite a task. On other hand, it took me quite a while to understand how to not get in the red economically; at time i still wonder what is draining all my cash away. I also learned to not trust my advisors ; they keep telling me to build crap that just end up costing me too much to maintain, or make me seek war with trading partners for no real reasons... One reason why after a while i decided to turn them off, i prefer to run things on my own and decide where and when to spend (only exception is troops, too much of an hassle to keep track of them so i let the AI decide where to build some).

But i managed to make a lasting empire after quite a few tries, my empire became the biggest and most powerful and no one dare to attack it except monsters and pirates (that die quite fast now). I learned a few tricks like making my trade ships faster for faster deliveries and spaceports everywhere to help my colonies develop faster (and increase the trade flow). At some point i was surprised how many ships i could maintain without straining my economy too much. Still, the biggest problem after a while was boredom; my empire was successful but there was hardly any challenge. I could have started to invade other empires, but i like to play the honorable empire, i don't want to fight others for no reason, i prefer them to throw the first punch... Problem is i became so mighty nobody would try. I guess i will have to make a new game with more aggressive settings so getting to the boring phase isn't as easy.

[torrenal]

Your advisers were probably suggesting war because they were building things in your territory.

If you want to provoke a war without pulling the trigger yourself, build some mining stations in someone's home system, and park a fleet there to patrol those stations. Odds are, you will be getting threats of war very soon (although if you are tooo big, they will be afraid to pull the trigger).

An alternative is to use the planet-destroyer and blow up a planet or two. You'll make enemies very quickly that way (12 front war, anyone?) Granted, you do have to blow up populated planets, but you can pretend the planet never existed and that everyone just hates you for that noodle incident.
//Torrenal