I recently played a crippling game on a large map, a setting that's still pretty difficult for me, and I discovered what appears to be a bizarre and overpowered combination!

I was playing a custom race with First Strike, econ +30, morale +20, mil +50, and soldiering +30 -- or thereabouts. I did decently well, playing a general research game, using diplomacy to keep people off my back (and eventually spin control + fodder) -- but the humans! Wow, they pulled off some strategy that would impress me from a, well, real human! They routinely diplomacy'd races into warring with each other en masse (the map was often a giant free-for-all), then they'd stand back and defend and build up, and each time, when a race ran out of military, they'd surrender to the humans. One by one, the whole galaxy just surrendered to the humans, regardless of who was actually doing the pummeling, which was rarely the humans, themselves.

I was in the middle of the galaxy with four worlds -- 9, 9, 8, and a 20PQ barren. Meanwhile, the humans had amassed about forty worlds, a psychotically huge military, insane research and production capacity, and were surrounding me with a creeping mega-influence. Despite my focus on research, they had FAR surpassed me very quickly, and were literally about 10x higher on the chart for almost everything! Luckily, I had kept an awesome relationship with them, but as I was the only remaining target, it wouldn't last forever.

So, instead of quit, I limped up to the plate: I switched over to all factories, and kissed their asses while I started to churn out a respectable, but still technologically deficient force. I had ramped up my logistics points with tech, and had the second-to-last beam weapon (oh, but the last is SO much better! -- and they had nightmare torpedoes!!), only medium hulls, but all miniaturization and hyperion shrinkers. But I didn't have the time or the planets to catch up, so this is what I did: I built ALL transport carriers. Advanced transport carrier, one warp drive, one life support (I was in the middle of the map), and a TON of beam weapons -- and I piled them into a mass of giant fleets. Sure, there are downsides, and it seemed overall like a stupid idea. If I lose a ship, I lose 2000 pop, and whenever I invade, I lose ship(s)! But like I said, I had to invade like hell to start turning this around, and this was my only option. I had tons of population and tons of growth, so I was able to feed them troops as fast as I churned them out (which, with +50 military, full industrial sectors, and good tech, was FAST). Once I had about 10 fleets of 10, I picked a fight!

I was still way behind in military, according to the charts, and they had been pushing their other leads while I built, but I kept my fleets together and pushed straight through clockwise, from one world to the next. The force was unstoppable! I was invading with HUGE armies, and using mass drivers each time. I couldn't defend the worlds, but the rate that I was taking worlds far surpassed their ability to take them back. I don't know how OP First Strike is, but these fleets DEFINITELY held their own against other fleets, and really annihilated planets. By keeping them all together, they bulldozed over all systems. Also handy was the fact that the fleet kept steadily diminishing: I had far over-built my financial capacity to support them, so as I added population (and taxes), I had to pay less support at the same time. Within just a few turns, I had half the galaxy. They STILL had me way outranked in every category, probably because I mass-drivered my way across and destroyed what would have been my new advantage, but I added what I had built in the meantime to the diminished fleets, and was able to push through the rest of their planets. Annoyingly, as I hadn't turned it off, I popped an influence win, but they were almost gone.

Even at the end of the game, their military far outstripped mine in size and tech, but there was no way for them to keep up with the invasion dominoes. I had a race + to soldiering and finished all soldiering techs, and used all mass drivers -- though they did have Tir Quan till about halfway through the slaughter.

It still seems like a counterintuitive strategy. So many downsides. But for an all-out slaughter against a superior foe, I will definitely be using it again!