WEll, not even tough is that tough on a gigantic. I think the games are harder on smaller galaxies because if you have one less planet than everyone it's alot where as on a gigantic I'm 20 to 30 planets behind number one yet still have a stronger military, Economy, and tech base. So this "Land Grab" thing isn't quite as powerfuli in those larger galaxies.

As for different types, I only played MoO2 with the toxic, barren etc. I really enjoyed the "Lithovore" ability as I never had to farm. Add in Unification (bonus to production) or maybe telepathic, and you win. I usually liked Telepathic, Creative, Unification and large homeworld. for plusses...

Anyway, It would be great if you could BUILD an orbital terraformer to terraform class 0 planets up to class 5 or so. That would be it, but it could help.

terraformer to terraform class 0 planets up to class 5 or so

I always think this would be great as many others have mentioned it. But I think it should take a lot of time for this to be done - research the correct technology, then time and cost to terraform the planet.

If you cannot within first 3-4 turns get your homeworld to a point where it builds a colony ship every other turn, then go back to beginner. Not a flame jsut advice.

I think the answer of many people in this thread (buy colony ships) should really be clarified a bit, with the later patches and especially Dark Avatar.

I agree that in a galaxy setup that leaves just a few planets for each player, it might make sense to quickbuy colony ships. I like to play at big maps, however (usually huge, gigantic is a little too big for me), lately at crippling level. One thing that should be clearly understood is that using money to quickbuy things is vastly less efficient than using it to finance an economy that's running a deficit for a while.

So, my beginning of the game is as follows: I try to find a starting setup that gives me some manufacturing bonus on my homeworld (one +300% is perfectly fine) and then quickbuy the first factory on that tile, still in that starting round. After that, I just regularly produce colony ships. By the way I agree with the suggestion to use faster colonizers, because for one it gives you a better chance to win races to some planets, and also it reduces the time your population is crammed in the colony ships and not on some would being productive.

On your new worlds, I usually would not recommend buying anything, just start regular production on a starport and some factories, because even if you quickly obtain these two things, your new worlds won't have the population yet to make colonizers with 500M people on them.

While you are busy colonizing only from your homeworld, try to find some morale resources, research the first morale tech and lower taxes to try and get 100% approval on your planets. That is especially important for the new ones, so they start producing income more quickly.

If you meet other civs during the early time of following that advice, you'll notice that they usually have more planets, sometimes many more. However, since the AI is doing exactly what many in this forum suggested, quick-buying colony ships, they will soon go broke and need to raise taxes and reduce their spending level. During that time it is no problem at all (up to crippling at least, don't know about even higher difficulty levels) to overtake them in the colony race, and since you (should) have high approval at that time you'll soon have a lot more population than anyone else either.

During that phase of colonization, I typically run a deficit of 100-200 bc a round, so even if you are lucky enough to find some money with your flagship and the other survey ships you hopefully built, you'll eventually run out. For that reason, you need to build economy buildings fairly early, on your homeworld and on the new ones as soon as they have some real population. If you didn't wait too long with the economy buildings, by the time your cash runs out you can raise taxes and slightly reduce spending and your economy still won't be paralyzed, as it often seems to happen to the AI players.

At that point I usually have somewhat more planets than most computer players and a lot more population than any of them. My economy then is among the strongest too, which means I can at this stage happily go to war with one of the weaker opponents and consilidate my empire

For your race statistics, the importance of your economy rating simply cannot be overstressed. The +30% you can get with 4 points of your race picks are worth it almost always, and a federalist government can help a lot too (though I often pick the technologists instead). I usually play an evil race (the Yor) because the +100% economy rating from the mind control centre is just too sweet to pass by for me. I know MCC is pure cheese, but there you are.

The main point of my story: use your starting money wisely, quickbuying is not the answer because it's just terribly inefficient.

If you are playing Dark Avatar, Stormbringer, the Thalans may "come out ahead" as you put it because of their Super Ability. I've heard many people here call Super Hive the best of the Super Abilities, and though I've not yet tried Thalans in Dark Avatar, those people likely are right in that assessment. If you can build factories in a single turn at no cost, that simply gives you quite an edge in the beginning of the game.

If you can't deal with the Thalans otherwise, just choose them as your race

Interesting point. I was just yesterday thinking about some of these issues, with regards to how "crowded" the galaxy was. I made a quick chart showing how many "sectors" each race gets, given the galaxy size and number of opponents:

Tiny Small Medium Large Huge Gigantic
1 4.50 8.00 12.50 32.00 72.00 162.00
2 3.00 5.33 8.33 21.33 48.00 108.00
3 2.25 4.00 6.25 16.00 36.00 81.00
4 1.80 3.20 5.00 12.80 28.80 64.80
5 1.50 2.67 4.17 10.67 24.00 54.00
6 1.29 2.29 3.57 9.14 20.57 46.29
7 1.13 2.00 3.13 8.00 18.00 40.50
8 1.00 1.78 2.78 7.11 16.00 36.00
9 0.90 1.60 2.50 6.40 14.40 32.40

My first game was a small/5 opponent game. That's 2.67 sectors each.
My next game was a medium/6 opponent game. That's 3.57 sectors each.
My last game was a large/9 opponent game. That's 6.40 sectors each.

As you move into the larger maps, the space per race goes up a lot, and it gives you a lot more breathing room. It makes the colony rush a little more bearable. I definitely found these games to be progressively easier, and that's with progressing difficulties, as well (1st was normal, 2nd challenging, 3rd tough). This is even more pronounced with abundant settings (as I had in game 3).

Crushbone

Also, forgot to mention... When you settle a new colony, it automatically costs 12bc in upkeep, and if you settle with just the base 250M from a colony ship, you get about 2-5bcs in taxes, so every colony you take costs 7-10bcs. If you start settling a LOT of them, your economy starts to fall apart pretty quickly.