It seems to me that the games that I truly dominate in (versus struggling for a win or flat-out losing) are games I begin at the center of the galaxy. Starting in a corner or on one side carries with it massive exploration penalties; while I'm building better life support, the other races are busy making weapons to clean my clock.
Perhaps in a future version, there should be some racial benefit that starts a person out closer to the galactic core or, perhaps, a spherical universe that wraps around at the edges, so that no one will ever have to start in a corner again.