My first playthrough of Endless Space is going well! After curbstomping the Sowers and assimilating all of their planets, everyone is suddenly very keen to make peace with the United Empire. Basically, I'm playing as this galaxy's villain 
To be honest, warfare is long and very tedious in this game, so I'm glad that once your empire is large enough, you can stop playing aggressively and concentrate on maximising production and research instead.
Following their victory over the Sheredyn, the Automatons thought it was a good idea to attack my empire out of jealousy. An empire which can churn out Destroyers armed to the teeth every single turn.
Long story short, I now have three more systems under my control.
The AI finally realised that it was more sensible to offer peace and send me gifts than to declare war and lose everything. Then I was told the Amoeba were halfway to an Economic victory, so I ramped up production to 1000 dust/turn, and overtook them easily.
Despite the lack of intuitiveness, I really enjoyed #EndlessSpace, but it did remind me why I don't normally play 4X games: you end up micromanaging spreadsheets at 1am every night for a week
Pixel Horse 🐎