Ok so just how does one beat the torian's???

Bugspray. Lots and lots of bugspray. Damn space cockroaches.

Either turn the Torians off, turn the Altarians and Iconians off (Torians are good, deprive them of their good allies and life will be hard for them), or use diplomacy to make life hard for the Torians.

I suppose you could rush up to Space Weapons and attack the Torians while they are still colonizing. This could buy time for other civs to snatch up planets the Torians otherwise would have taken, but it puts you in a war situation very early in the game.

Torians are no trouble. They tend to start off like a rocket... but end up being a damp squib. They can't invade for toffee...

Play as any of Drath/Korx/Yor and redesign your colonizers.
You should be able to expand as quickly as they can.

Build a decent economy (there are loads of threads on this).

Beware the Dregnim... now they may not grab as many planets. But wait till they've taken 3/4 of the Torians initial grab.

if you take any race with ion engines from getgo you have a speed advantage in colonization. they may breed like roaches but if you can manage to put a wall of planets around your borders you can try to pen them in, or at least redirect them away from enough planets to keep you competetive in the planet count. at a minimum you can snatch all the good planets from them

Sounds like you need to bump up the habitable planets setting a notch.

As for the Torians.... That's what they do, unless the Drengin knock them out early. Little green SOBs breed like maggots, so they can get away with rushing out more colony ships than anybody else.

One word...... RAID!!

Sprinkle Torians with salt and pepper; dip each in batter, and dredge in flour. Fry until golden brown in deep oil heated to 375 degrees F. Drain on paper towels. Yield: about 16 servings.

...Oh, you mean on the strategic map. The first thing you need is a solid strategy for the colonization phase. There are lots of suggestions sprinkled throughout the forum; mine involves putting lots of ability points into Morale and Economics to pump up production and cash flow throughout the game.

On turn 1, I turn off military spending and split production and research 50/50. I select New Propulsion Techniques if my race doesn't have it yet, and Galactic Warfare/Space Militarization if it does. Those two each give you a 10% military production bonus, so I don't wait long to pick them up.

Once I have New Propulsion Techniques, first thing I do is upgrade the colony ship. I strip it down to just the colony module, then add three hyperdrive plus engines. I never use vessels slower than this, and I upgrade again as soon as I get impulse engines. Then I turn military spending back up to 33%. I only rush buy colony ships in an emergency; usually I can pop one out on my home planet every 7-8 turns, and I also make it the first ship I build on other worlds. After a few turns, I'm cranking them out everywhere.

I buy one factory on my home world, then production-build at least two more before I start building anything else. I also do this for each planet I colonize; buy one factory, produce everything else normally. This ensures that I have cash to do this everywhere. Well, that and the fact that I play with trading on and basically sell everything but my Diplomacy and Influence techs to everybody.

Once colonization is over, you can try to beat the Torians with Influence, but their high populations make this difficult. Best thing is to see what defenses they've started using, develop a different weapon, go all the way up the planetary invasion tree, and take them out. Especially if you started next to them.

With a stick, while they sleep.

No, really? Try being diplomatic. The Torians come off strong in my games too (odd how races seem to be consistent for each player, but different between various players...), but I don't generally play Evil, so I can usually just talk them down until such time as the epic battle between Good and Neutral reaches its climax...

yeh those Torian frogs (well they are amphibious and look a little like a frog. and nothing against you Frogboy ) breed fast and spread quickly, so they tend to end up bieng a powerful race.

I've always found shooting them very effective.

Or, if that fails, bash them with pointed sticks.

I prefer to start with Ion Drive and then research Hyper Drive immediately. I turn off military constuction and set social to about 20% so that I can get Hyper Drive in about 6 turns. Then build a good colony ship (one colony module - I only put about 300 pop per ship) and the rest engines and life support. You can have 5-7 speed colony ships. Turn military production up high and start buying and building colony ships. In the meantime research any tech that increases production before ever bothering with universal translator. You should be able to grab 8-10 colonies really quickly this way before you run out of money. Of course now that you have them you have to figure out how to pay for them. I hope you grabbed some economic bonus' for your race! You probably will have to turn taxes really high and production down a ways for a couple of months while you build banks on all those planets.

Another effective colonization strategy is to give your race a 50% military production bonus. Turn 1 you send your first colony ship out into the unknown, rush buy a factory on your home planet and start building a basic colony ship (hull and colony pod, nothing else). Use this ship to colonize your secondary planet (ie mars if human). Set military spending high enough that you can build it in 2 turns (usually over 90%) the rest goes into research. Each turn buy another factory but don't actually build any, social production should be zero right now anyways, I usually stop at 3 or 4 factories bought and then just leave the home planet alone as far as buildings go until after the colonization phase. On new planets focus production on social, but the home planet is doing nothing except producing a new colonizer every 2 turns.

As you buy factories you can lower military spending and send that money into research to get faster ships. After that first basic ship is built you can start putting engines and life support on your ships and your home planet will still be able to produce one every other turn. If you find a planet with a 300% or 700% industry bonus, rush a factory on it and build a starport and start pumping out ships there too. By turn 20 you should have at least 11 colony ships and/or planets that they've already colonized. I find in the game settings I usually play this is near where the colonization phase ends, but you could potentially keep this going indefinitely if you play larger, more abundant galaxies than I do. Start working on your economy once you've grabbed all the planets you can. Any left over colonizers dump their people on the nearest planet and upgrade into constructors to lay claim to any resources on the map. On masochistic I can usually keep up with the ai during the colonization phase, getting just as many and sometimes more planets than they do.

What's this about pointed sticks, Ohalland? Fresh fruit not good enough for you, eh? We are here today to learn how to defend ourselves against a Torian armed with... a banana!