Whereas in GalCiv 2 you don't need a military until someone attacks you. My last playthrough, I focused on exploration/expansion/influence, tech, and economy (mostly economy) for most of the early game. The first bill to come up to the senate (or whatever it's called) is "Force all ships out of the territory of someone you declare war on (ie, no surprise attacks)" and it passed, so when some aggressive idiot decides to wipe me from the galaxy and declares war, they gotta go halfway across the galaxy to do it. In the meantime, I designed a custom ship (utterly bristling with level 2 lasers and enough armor to counter their weapons), then spent my reserves on having contractors 1-turn build me a fleet of them. Enemy fleet is wiped out (1 ship was more than enough) at first contact and they quickly beg for peace.
Having like 20 death machines just floating around kept the rest of the universe from picking a fight, so I build my economy up even more and spread my influence across the stars. Every time someone picks a fight, I upgrade my death fleet with even more weapons and they shut their mouths.
The only thing I really hated in GalCiv2 was the random events. "Half your planets, despite being really happy with you, just went rogue. Also they took all your tech and ships with them so good fucking luck there." I think you can disable events? I dunno, was a really long time ago.