Maybe I'm missing something, but it can be such a kick in the nuts most of the time. Minors and majors get so entrenched, so quickly, that it kills any momentum you had going till then.

I massacred a minor faction with orbital nukes 3 times in a row, just to find out that all that population and building destruction amounted to nothing as they started pumping mediums and wiped me out clean.

Next one I'm gonna try concentrating more on the space battles at first, see if Spoils of war and Taking trophies gives my science output a push to get my military where it needs to be, then trying ground warfare. Then again, AI tends to flee space battles quite a lot. :|