Here's a screen shot of the map

Not sure how many games I've played with vasari, but the current one I'm playing I've actually survived to mid-game.  I managed to ally with everyone except the orange Tec to the left of me.  I'm red.  If you check the map, I've manged to take his home world, and repeatedly raided his homeworld to keep from being a threat, but I was never able to press my advantage, because by the time I was finally able to capture his home world my alliances with everyone but the Yellow advent had fallen apart.  The light blue vasari on the far left and the Pink Advent on the top right basically launched attacks at the same time with pretty strong fleets at the top and right of my empire.  I used to control the two volcanic planets close to the sun from my homeworld, but lost those to the Vasari.  I also did lose my Terran homeplanet and the desert planet did get razed to the ground.  I did finally manage to raze the Advents Ice planet to the top right by engaging portions of his fleet in various parts of my empire by using my fleet and phase jump inhibitors.  Up to this point, I've managed to establish phase gates on my Ice planet and the Asteroid I control and have moved my Homeworld to the Desert planet.  I've also unwittingly let the Orange Tec build a fleet back up, but manged to demolish his fleet when he got trapped by a Phase jump inhibitor. 

I'm making about 26.7 gold (or whatever money is called),2 metal and 3 crystal now.  Somehow I've got a decent reserve of cash and crystal although metal could be a problem later as I lost most of my supply of metal with the volcanic worlds.  It looks like this one I might have a chance to win this one and the only thing I can think of is that getting lucky with easy missions from the AI's bought me enough time to build up a fleet to survive when the majority of the AI's would eventually turn on me.

Currently my fleet is composed of about  18 skirmishers, 30 Assailants, 2 evacuators, a Devastator, a Desolator and that other capital ship that can distort gravity for faster movement.  I also have a secondary fleet with 10 overseers and 10 subverters, but they don't seem to be getting too much action when I'm on the defensive, which I've been on for the past 2 hours of the game.  Maybe they'll see some use if I manage to go on the offensive.

thanks for the responses sagewon.  I've finally manged to gain the upper hand although it isn't really any different then how I've played with vasari on other maps.  I guess it really did boil down to just phase jump inhibitors and getting lucky missions via the messed up diplomacy.  I really don't like the way they did diplomacy, but I suppose I'll just have to deal with it the way it is unless they put out and an expansion to address it.