launch attcks against the aggresor, make an alliance with your neighbours. giving them tech and ships improves your relations with them.

My favourite trick is if i feel a freind is losing badly pump out the constructors build a military starbase over one of the main combat points pile on the assist modules and the defence and weapons then gift it to said race along with a few ships.

More than once i've seen the AI scramble for cover when all of a sudden their former victim is now a gigantic powerhouse within the ranger of influence of that star base.

From my personal experience, I've beaten the game through sheer force of culture alone. If you focus on culture rather than weapons, you may have a better shot. In fact almost every time one of my worlds was taken over, I got it back in a few turns because the planet revolted and came back into the fold. And if you research Xeno Ethics and decide to align yourself with "Good", you can create that one improvement that will automatically have any race who surrenders, give themselves up to you.

If you're having problems dealing with an opposing super-power, obviously you aren't being enough of a political animal. Come on, man. You're a human! Get creative with this stuff.

Convince allies to engage in war. Support the underdogs. Build up a few ships and hit him while he's busy killing weaklings. Sell the victims totally awesome battleships that you made. Give them technology that will directly counter their opponents. Heck, you could just pay the superpower alien to make peace if you're looking to buy time.

As for it always ending in tragedy.. I win damn near every Freeform game through influence and I'm not even trying.

..seriously, I turn influence victories off just so I can research the higher tier stuff.

..seriously, I turn influence victories off just so I can research the higher tier stuff.

Same here, I got tired of influence victories, so I turn off the option. I've only run into a problem with enemy influence once, in the last game I played on a gigantic map. Unfortunately, the Drath managed to get ahold of two influence resources and the Resteraunt of Eternity. My 1 influence resource just wasn't cutting it (especially since I hadn't really upgraded it besides some basic defenses), but I wasn't about to allow my citizens to be corrupted by the Drath's culture. I am the one true source of goodness and light, it says so once every 15 minutes on all the entertainment channels, and I'm not going to let the Drath make them think otherwise. So to stop them I went to war (reluctantly of course, it was a real hard decision to stab one of my allies in the back, I had to ponder it for at least 10 minutes, maybe 15), took a few of the most populous planets, then sued for peace. Unfortunaely, the Korx used this and the money I gave them as an excuse to move in on the Drath (who for some odd reason, didn't have many ships left. Maybe it was the design flaw that made them blow up when my ships wandered anywhere near them), and 2 turns later they surrendered to the Torians.

Of course, that meant that I now had 3 influence resources, one of them upgraded most of the way in an attempt to deal with the Drath. 20 turns later, the outcome was pretty clear, so I decided to go ahead and upgrade the rest of the influence resources. After annother 20 turns or so, the entire gigantic map (and I mean the whole dang thing, every single square) was my color, and I was gaining 1-4 planets per turn from rebels. Some of the planets I kept taking over were half filled with embassies, so once they finally flipped, it just started snowballing. At the end of that game, I had a logistics ability of over 50, since I kept getting the hyperion logistics centers of other races. I was trying for 60 so I could have a fleet of 10 Huge ships, but the last race surrendered before I got there.

And man, I really need a spell checker on these forums.