Do Empires Factor in Starbases before Attacking?

[Starcomet]

For over 200 years in game, I have no ships what so ever due to my naval cap being 0 from all of the negatives to naval capacity from this mod. In return for this, I have several Star Fortress and Citadels dotted throughout my empire upgraded to be bastions. There are enemies touching my border and they are bigger than me, but they have not once considered attacking me. I thought the AI only looks at fleet strength.

 

[anamiac]

I thought it looked at the statistics in the contacts. IE, is their fleet power overwhelming compared to you?

 

[Starcomet]

Pretty much everyone is overwhelming compared to mine besides the few small empires who are pathetic compared to me.

 

[Mauer]

I don't think they do. As a pacifist you can actually lure them into attacking you by keeping a very small fleet and strong starbases capable enough to take on their fleets (they may or may not attack them in the end) and keeping large alloy reserves, then once they declare war on you, you build your fleet and can make claims.

I play with high AI aggressiveness though.