Thanx again!
I may well have to do something like that. That epic (for me!) game at Suicidal ended up in defeat, as I was unable to finish crushing the Terrans before they got the Research victory. I had been sabotaged by the memory crashes several dozen turns earlier when one AI surrendered to me (I was not at war with them) and the game crashed at save. Every time I re-ran it, that race would surrender to some other race, and not me, despite my trying perhaps 5 - 10 times to recreate the original surrender. It was the Terrans they surrendered to, and I was already at war with the Terrans.
The Terrans had gone from maybe 60 up to 100 planets at that surrender, and I had crushed them down to about 30 when the Defeat screen appeared. If I had gotten them to surrender to me, I think I could have intimidated the last two non-allied races into alliances.
<sigh>