What difficulty level are you on, and what race are you playing as? Those are two key starting factors, and there is a bunch of others as well. Just from what you've written I'd say that if you've reached Large Hulls and Drone Carriers but haven't been building your production boosting economic starbases till after that point then that certainly won't have helped your progress. But there are a lot of expert players much better than me who can give you great tips to get ahead.

I put the Drengin on exceptional, same level as in my previous games. Then i put the other races on gifted.

I do that because i hate it when i get a really good game going and the Drengin manage to get beaten down by other races before i get to them myself! lol

I got gigantic map, abundant habitable planets (not that it fits the definition of the term 'abundant'!! Hahahahal). I am laying Terran.

Now let me stress that i only have large hulls and drone technology because of anomalies. As far as my own research is concerned.... not in a billion years would i have that technology!!!! my planets SUCK, seriously, they all sit there and don't want to do anything, lazy basteds.

Oh and i have not forgotten to boost population with farming which is a common reason for people falling behind in this game.

What is your building strategy for developing a world? How many food, manufacturing and research buildings do you use? When and to which tier are you upgrading them? How many production starbases do you get for your worlds? How do you manage approval. Can you quantify how muhc better their worlds are?

You write, that this was your first game in this update, what was the last update you played on before? Have you familiarized yourself with coercion yet? Have you checked out the new bonusses from durantium refineries and thullium data archives?

The biggest maps I play on are huge maps, but this shouldn't matter if your problem is the world development against gifted AIs. Do you mean incredible by exceptional?

also keep in mind that anyt texh you trade away is almost certain to be traded to every other ai within a few turns. Being able to restrict tech trading to allies and teams would be nice

Thanks guys... In that game i had tech trading and brokering switched off. I always seem to do really badly whenever i try that, ever since galciv2.

So what i did last night, i tried a new game with tech trading back on, and i reduced the difficulty 1 level.

I had significantly better worlds and soon ended up too powerful and now i am going to have to quit again.

Clearly the mistake i made in the earlier game was to have tech trading switched off, that is what destroyed me.

My usual strategy with tech trading on is to also have as many minor races as possible and exploit the shit out of them in addition to normal tech trading. Its amazing the amount of money i can get and rush buy stuff all over the place.... the same stuff that sat stagnant in that game with tech trading off.... that is where the big difference comes into play.

Sounds like you have a hole in your strategy if you can't stay even with trading off.  You don't really need to exploit the AI to pull way ahead if you build your planets well.

Also i had a good idea for that first game with the tech trading off...

The problem is that i have the ship designs to stop the Drengin, but i cannot build them, the production is too slow, so the only option is defeat.

Well that's what i thought.... but i had an idea that i will try.....

Those worlds that surrendered to me.... they are in a hopeless strategic location, Drengin ships all around... i will see if i can sell them and then use the money to rush buy the ships!??

Question? Which is better? Rush buying a powerful ship at the shipyard or rush buying a blank hull and upgrading it?

The small advantage of blank hulls is that i can send them out to defend strategic locations but if no enemy comes to that particular spot then i have saved allot of money on maintenance costs.

I googled the difficulty levels of Galciv3 and all kinds of rubbish came up, nothing useful, weird.

My stupid basted memory wont tell me shit on the difficulty levels,,,, well ok, sure, i have only been playing this game series from just only 2004, so its understandable! (extreme sarcasm alert)

Edit: Wow, that's amazing, i just spent an hour looking for a list of the difficulty levels in order and found NOTHING! Its not even in the Galciv manual!!

I even did a search in the forum, again, NOTHING.

I am using all kinds of variations of the search terms... list of difficulty levels, difficulty levels for galciv3, difficulty levels in order, etc etc etc

Nothing nothing nothing nothing, so weird, hahahaha

Sure i can go play the game and find out that way, but its useless, five seconds after exiting the game i wont remember, not even if you offered me a million dollars.... that's how fxxxxxx dumb my memory is.

It sounds like you are not specialising your planets.

What race are you playing?

Try using iconian or Thalan  tech tree. Thalan  is best early game, but iconian  has the best tech in the game - living ships, once you make it past age of war. Iconian is also good early game- just not as good as thalan.

If you were going to use terrain techs and wanted to be stronger just change the power plants bonuses from from total manufacturing to raw production. Then the thalanswould be more flexible not stronger than the terrans. It is important to change your shipyard sponsered planets into industrial worlds.

So i am still wondering why my planets develop so slowly early game?

The AI seems to have a big advantage on speed of planetary development?

Perhaps i am thinking too much with a mind from Galciv2?

Because in galciv2 i am changing the universal production settings quite dramatically...

Gov spending on like 99%

very early game i have military production on zero or 1% if i want to rush buy a survey or colony ship.

Once i get a few key technologies i am putting science quite low as well.

So i am used to all that boosting going into planetary production, and used to keeping up or getting ahead of AI on planetary production. I am not used to how slow planetary production is in Galciv3.... tech trading and rush buying covers up this problem for me to quite a degree, but take away tech trading and i am fxxxx big time! lol

Edit: i don't touch the universal production settings in Galciv3, it stays on standard, i see no use for it at all to be honest.

First the Alterians and drengin get economic bonuses on your settings. Second this could be fixed by changing your gameplay to fastest at startup. Your insistance on not using factories wouldbslow you down. The Terrans don't  have the best tech tree. Also one way to counter coersion is high morale, and starboard.

When I started playing gc3 I wondered if a pure dredits build works. I didn't try for long, because I felt my early game was so much slower. If you don't want to develope economy worlds there are things you can do. Build a trader or two, unlock tourism, build a faction that has handy +1 or +2, trade strategic ressources, get some economics through starbases later, ...

Usually there is nothing wrong with going broke. If you go negative in credits, all your buildings shut off and you are producing only credits for a turn and are fine again for another few turns. Only if the income you produce after this is still negative, you are getting into trouble.