My normal tactic is to get excavations relics and get way, way ahead in tech than my opponents. Then I research weapons which outperform my enemies (early game it is the red gun) and gun them down from orbit, leaving the ship in the system to destroy whatever they try to rebuild orbitally. This prevent them from building up defenses and the AI is too stupid to build anything else so it deadlock that particular system up.
I hate shields which suck up energy as you activate them. I always use those which are way less powerful but are always active (simply don't forget to activate them when you build or refit the ship as they are built off by default) and try to stay out of range of harm. If the ship take a beating I get it back to a manufacture playet with a dock and refit the ship to get armor back (and/or better components upgrade at the same time) and rinse and repeat.
Once all the opponents planets in a given system are beaten up, a single ship firing on every planet every turn deadlock them. AI is terrible building ships too so they are not a problem either when I encounter them.
Doing this and securing checkpoints early game guarantee me the win in every single game.
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