On Suicidal, I have found that the only playstyle which works for me is:
Racial Picks:
+50% diplomacy, +50% research, Populist party (for +20% morale and +20% diplomacy)
Initial Strategy:
Build 3 factories on all colinized worlds, with the rest being research labs. Then proceed to out-research the AIs, and trade my techs for BC to fuel my nonexistant economy.
Sliders:
100% Spending
0% Military
50% Social
50% Research
Note #1: This strategy CRUSHES AI's on Intelligent and below.
Note #2: You can't do this forever. Eventually (around week 52) you have to change your economy to facilitate military production, and to support itself (albeit barely) without relying on selling techs.
My main point in writing this (besides responding to one of many intelligent posts), is that I don't consider the above strategy as "abusive" on Suicidal as the game still supplies me with a great challenge at this difficulty. There are numerous events which occur which force me to adapt from this initial strategy (AIs quickly producing a military presence and wanting to thrash me is among them) The only issue that I have is, this is the ONLY playstyle which I've found to work on this difficulty level.
I'd like for other playstyles to be just as viable. If anyone else has a strategy that works on Suicidal let me know. I'd be interested to hear it.