Not dead yet, but...
Small test game, me against the Zuul. I start by building three long-range ships and send them scouting along three of the four(!) nodelanes I have access to.
First system: Swarm. My scout barely has time to turn around before it is vaporized by space bugs.
Second system: Alien Derelict. After seeing what the Swarm does, I hightail it out of there.
Third system: A
second Alien Derelict. This time I get curious as the previous derelict didn't move. I send my scout in to investigate and get blown to smithereens.
So I only have one avenue of exploration available and found a colony at the first habitable world I find (it takes a while). Guess which shows up at the colony five turns later? Von Neumann. I lose most of my pitiful tier-1 defense fleet before it decides to go away on its own.
Oh, and just about every planet in this galaxy that I've been forced to skip is perfectly habitable for the Zuul. I think it might be time to turtle.