Well, I am not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, so I will accept your surender. However, I do think you tossed it in way too early. The advantage of being in the center of the map was more than accounted for by the complete lack of colonizable planets in and around my home systems. My choice of Gas Giant for this game was somewhat the cause of this, as I only had two available planets in my home systems, but the six systems around me were all dead ones. At the time you surendered you outnumbered me in planets 24 to 17. In fact I believe the sparseness of my systems was the cause of me being in first place so early on, as I had 15 colony ships searching around for some place to land.
It probably spooked you to see the carriers on the front line, but you might be interested in hearing they were empty of fighters as I had not had enough time to fill them.
They did have some weapons, which would have been good for defending the warp points, but I wouldn't have been able to root out your colonies for a while without minesweepers.
Given this was our fourth game and my first win against you though, I'll take it whatever the circumstances.
Geoschmo