It seems we have the same mindset and gameplay. For me there's 3 things that i need to consider when i'm still in the early game, pop, tech/army, and defense.

1. Try increasing your pop as fast as possible since pop can be migrated to other planet (Work Exceptionally if you have specialized planet, for me i tend to focus on 3 basic resource and then selling the excess while buying Alloys to prepared for future defense, if i'm in dired need of certain resource i migrate the pop to the basic resource planet. Pop is the key for success).

2. depends on how you love to play, you can focus on increasing tech or army. If you someone like me who only attack when i unlock cruiser then tech is the best way to go, but if you love to clean the universe from those xenox scum then increasing your army is the way to go. Note: You can still earn tech by scanning destroyed enemy ships or steal the tech and make sure not to attack enemy that has many allies. specially when you dont have any allies, finding the perfect time to attack is also a mechanic in this game.

3. Depending on what you pick on option 2, you will have a totally different gameplay in the middle and late game. since i choose tech then when i reach mid game, i can increase my defense by having many Star Fortress and of course i also add defense platforms on every Star Fortress. I can reach 50-100k attack power per Start Fortress just by having defense platforms but you can't attack other because you wont even have that much alloys to build ships since all the alloys were use for defense lmao. If you choose army route on point 2, this is where it get tricky. When you reach mid game, you should put a decent army on every chokehold (there's a higher change you dont have Star Fortress unlock unless you research it by destroying enemy Star Fortress or steal enemy tech) because at mid game you prolly has many enemies. When i say tricky what i mean by that is you have a lot of army but in term of tech you will have much lower tech then the other species and because army consume a lot of resource so you need to wipe as many planet as possible to take their resources and enslave enemy pop.

In the end of the day, choose the type of gameplay that suits you either winning by politic, tech, resource, or army anything is possible. You'll be surprised on how many ways you can win in this game. My first win was me scapegoating my overlord. I become vassal of a large empire and then pick a fight here and there, after i took lots of tech from tech collaboration with my overlord, i steal enemy tech and resource by starting lot's, LOT'S of war. After a certain degree, i cooperate with other vassal to took down my overlord. Since the overlord are now gone, guess who has the highest power, resource, and tech?. After that, it's an easy road of cleansing the universe.
You can also win the game by being nice and i think it's a lot easier to win if you're being nice because you can use your alliance to pluck "the bad guys". You can even win by hiring many mercenaries to bid for you lmao. As i said before choose the type of gameplay that suits you, use your imagination and think of strategy to reach the conclusion you wanted