Minor Races - what to do?

I try to keep them around as trading partners, but I usually don't put to much effort toward it. The planets they're on are pretty nice and worth taking, but I usually don't bother.

-Dewar

Minor races are always my first step in Galactic Conquest. Their defenses are poor, and they don't have a Galactic Government to retaliate and declare war when you take their only world.

Ally! They can be quite useful as puppet nations. Give them some of my nice, powerful ships, and say "I really don't want the Drengin there, move them please"

Nothing more pleasing than going to Lord Kona with a view to ending the hostilities with my good squirrel friends, and him saying "It's not me causing the violence, oh great Ford Prefect, if you want peace go talk to snarky"

He just got owned

I always feel bad for them. I set up diplomatic relations (economic/tech trading), but if it looks like another civilization is going to invade their planet, I execute a "mercy killing". Their planet is better in my hands anyway, eh? eh?

Since you can only build one per "empire", I usually wait for them to build a couple of "capitols" (manufacturing, techno.) before I take over.

funny... a Mino Race actually became a Major Power once in a game... it was scary. He owned a quarter of the "Large" map, the Torians, and Drath kinda sadly enough met their end against them... but then again they were too busy fighting each other... hehehe...

EAT THEM!

No seriously I like to take hem over after they have build up their planet a bit.

I turn them off because I normally just ignore them anyway and the AI seems to take a while to research planetary invasion, at least it did in beta1 for me on tough, so I always end up getting messages from them every couple turns... "Help *insert race here* are owning us! Give us something please!" Made me wanna kill 'em just to shut 'em up......

pq15 planet in the late game when all the other worlds are taken? I devour them!

I never thought of using them as puppet nations though. Maybe next game.

If the drop up inside my boarders I tend to "enlighten" through force, but if they arent immediately accesible I just use them as another way to make some cash.

I did once see the Andians become a major force they had about a quater of the map and all of the latest tech and a VERY large fleet. But it was only that once.

I know it may just be me, but I always wanted to have evil little squirrels serve as my battle thralls. How could anyone resist?

With the exception of the Akilians, I tend to leave them alone. The Akilians have an annoying tendency to drop influence bases next to my homeworld, for which the punishment is DEATH. I'm going to be editing them out of the XML file soon anyway.

The other ones... I like trading with them. They usually have pretty good economies, they usually have pretty good tech to trade for and I can go to war with the major races without losing a trading route (or three).

On the other hand, especially later in the game, the major races react almost instantly to a newly discovered minor race with an invasion. It makes me sick, so I usually end up giving them a fleet of warships and any military tech they don't have already. Most of them can't make use of the warships for some reason, but the other races don't seem to realize that, so they impale themselves on the warships that are just sitting there. If they at least have the brains to park the ships in orbit, I'll build them a military base with all the ship assist stuff. Makes them nearly impossible to invade.

Some of the minor races can become as powerful as the major races. They'll send out fleets of warships, invade planets, etc.

In my game the Jessuins are expanding ruthlessly and have made the Drengin surrender. By the way, what are all of the minor races? I have encountered the Snathi, Jessuins, and Carinoids.