Do you think the pacing on the solar map should be sped-up again?

[nas1m]

So far I had the most fun in the multifaction battles and the early game should deliver that experience before new players quit out of boredom or whatever. 
I'd propose to give the races some substantially increased rate of fleet construction for a while once they become spacefaring. E.g. you could explain that story wise that this is part of the space race. In the beginning each race wants to be the first and strongest spacefaring race and devouts near full construction effort to fleet construction. Later other construction projects become important and so the fleet construction buff can reside. That way when the fleets clash there will be quite some action, the more ships on each side the better. 

Second, there should be conflicts between the races so several factions are hostile to each other e.g. when battling out who will get that sieged planet: Acutians sieged and will probably loose? Then the races who attacked them would have now to decide amongst them who will get that planet either peacefully (perhaps by swapping RCI values, techs) or by battle. 

This is an interesting idea. It would definitely lead to some interactions between races on the solar map early on in the game, something that I have yet to see in my games (which have been usually up to 3 hours in). Might be worth considering if it is at all feasible given the remaining available time...

[PokerChen]

A quick fix solution would be to shift the random distribution of times such that ~3 other races would be < 5 minutes away from space-faring, and bring the maximum down to 60 minutes.

Doubling the initial fleet numbers when they do become space-faring will also help. It may trigger wars faster.

[Hyfrydle]

Why is races been at war so important? Maybe diplomacy should be tried first by races and if that fails then a cause for war is created.

As it stands I feel races go to war too quickly. Combat would still be important as pirates are hostile to everyone.

Artificially inducing wars I don't think is the way to go.

[GenScorpius]

In the long run I can imagine a more fletched out AI diplomacy setup. Races going to war to achieve certain wargoals, not necessarily extermination of the other race but maybe just making them a client race which can be liberated by the player or more benevolent races, conquering outposts perhaps starbases, financial and material resource exchange (with a more meaningful resource model like certain amounts of resources needed to build an armada or the lack of them slowing down production rate) etc. Basically, introducing more assets with which the AI's can play around and settle conflicts even by their own perhaps even on the negotiations table before war is declared. Sure, this goes in the direction of Europa Universalis 4 and similar games but I think there is a huge potential and it could keep the game alive for years to come. 

However, right now this is more for future expansions and we should concentrate on the system we have currently. This means more war and less diplomacy unless the player intervenes. There is not much the races can do except to prepare for war and go to war eventually if left unchecked by the player.

[PokerChen]

 Artificially inducing wars is not the way to go - on the other hand, we don't have quite enough feedback as to whether the races are actually engaging in diplomacy or not. There's no communication like China and Japan lambasting each other for taking an uninhabited rock in the sea, or making "military exercises" near strategic outposts.

 Makes a difference between an imaginary diplomatic game and a observable war game.