This is my first ten planet start, and only my second against 20 races. Before now I never traded with the AI except to give a 4/3/3 resource plus treaty when first meeting. But I saw that doing tech by myself was just not going to cut it. Also though I created this map with lots of ruins I intended to take only a few for myself and let the AI get free tech off the rest. But the game progress is as follows :
Start - outnumbered 19 to 1
turn 20 outnumbered 14 to 1
turn 30 by 11 to 1
turn 45 by 5.5 to 1 and already half of MEE in score. So by the time I reach MEE at 5000k I will still be outnumbered in score by at least 3 to 1. Of that score 3400k is yard bases, not warships or production. So the actual odds are more like 10 to 1. I do not like those odds...
So I will exploit them while still learning what works. From watching the Krill fight the Ukra over my colony in Red, I can see that the AI has surely gotten smarter.....