You are Ripe For Conquest

Don't worry.... the way this game calculates strength, it would probably say the humans were more powerful than the Mimbari before the war in Babylon 5 !!! It might even say Iraqu was more powerful than America! .... well probably not, but it would say Iraq was much more powerful than the reality..... because its the quantity, not the quality, that's why.

I find this goes away once you make a decent number of ships and get close to equalizing military strength ratings with the AI(s).

Gotcha - thanks again for the information. So if I build a bucket load of crappy attack ships I should see this "Ripe for Conquest" thing less? Not that I'm going to do that - so far in the limited wars I've fought in, I seem to kill enemy ships at about a 5 to 1 ratio (I have no idea if this is good or not).

This is probably caused from complaints that ai won't attack unless they are stronger. No one can seem to agree how the game should be played.

Depending on the personality aspects of the AI should determine whether they attack you or not. Certain traits, should basically make them completely ignore the power rankings and go by proximity plus or minus culture, while others, would go purely by the power scale.

And furthermore, They should probably gang up and attack you if you are too close to winning, or at least certain personalities should. Personally I think a lot of issues come from races not behaving as players Expect them to behave.

frankly I'm sort of mystified by this message as well. I fail to see how every single planet having its own Huge-hull Battlestation (with six high-cap carrier modules, no less!) and every shipyard having two of said battlestations, and something like six-seven fleets of mixed Large/Meduim ships doing border patrol is 'ripe for conquest,' especially when my medium hulled frigates are happlily slaughtering their way through entire fleets of Large and Huge hulls because the AI apperently cannot into Defenses (hint: ~2000 attack means absolutely nothing when your ship blows up in the first exchange of fire and mine doesn't, because I actually put some ruddy armor, shields and PD on. Fighters just make it even worse, since while the AI ships are happily blowing up the things that'll be replaced next turn at no cost my Missile Destroyer is blowing holes the size of Milwaukee in their ships.)

seriously, I think I get the idea, but it really needs to be smarter about it. but then, the Galciv AI has always made me feel like I was shooting a duct-tape'd puppy when it comes to ship design.

Yes it should help.  Also, I read somewhere that it might have to do with unprotected planets as well, so garrisoning planets might be worth experimenting with.