Search through the posts, there have been a lot about racial abilities (I know I've replied to posts about the subject on at least a couple of threads). There have also been a lot of posts about how to win at suicidal.

Hopefully not to burst your bubble, but there is no one quick and correct answer to your question. The beauty and difficulty with this game is that there are many different potentially successful strategies.

You need to look at the races, their abilities, their starting techs and your political party choice all together in conjunction with your strategy. Part of the fun is discovering your own path through the game. Trial and error is the best teacher.

However, I know how frustrating it is to ask for advice and get a bunch of generalities, so here's one of the strategies I use.

Pick the Torians. In the abilities tab hit the reset button. This clears the abilities except the "inherent" (i.e. free) abilities. With the 10 points select 70% pop growth (6 points) and 30% economics (4 points). Select the Federalists for the 20% economic bonus. All told you start with a 50% economics bonus, a 25% morale "inherent" bonus and the 70% pop growth bonus. The pop growth bonus is deceptively powerful. It causes your colonies to grow faster and therefore become profitable faster. It also allows your home planet to pump out a colony ship every other turn (which should be your goal) without depleting your home planets population. The 25% morale bonus is the best you can get (the max is 20% for 3 points if not an “inherent” bonus) and morale is money since it allows you to operate at a higher tax rate than you otherwise could. The 50% economic bonus is self explanatory. Clearly, the overriding concept behind this is a strong economy and that is what you need to focus on if you chose this kind of strategy.

Pick a galaxy setup that gives you a fair amount of space to develop. I generally go with abundant everything on a gigantic map with 4 or 5 AI opponents. On a huge map probably limit yourself to 2 or 3 opponents. Also, to start out, pick “weaker” AI opponents (Terran, Drath, Thalan, Iconian). Also look for a starting position where the AI’s aren’t crowded around you. The AI’s don’t begin to get aggressive militarily until almost all of the planets are colonized. You want to break off your colony rush somewhat before they do so that you can start to develop militarily.

I fast build 3 or 4 factories on my home planet (less if I have some production bonus tiles) and add the manufacturing capital. This gets me to the point of producing a colony ship every other turn. I set my tax rate to as high as I can while keeping my approval at 100% for as long as I can by deficit spending from my initial 5000 bc plus whatever my survey ship can find. If you find a 1000 bc anomaly or two you can keep this up for at least a year, maybe even two. I tend to build advanced market, farm, factory, factory on my first dozen colonies or so because the market and farm have no support requirement which allows time for the pop to build (i.e. income) before the factories (and their 2 bc per week support) begin to come on line. Once my overall economy starts going a bit I go with a more standard build sequence starting with factory.

Starting out neutral is probably the best choice. You’re less of a target being neutral plus you get the 10% morale bonus (morale = money) plus you get the NLC. I generally research to Impulse drive to get some speed on my colony ships and then immediately research up to Xeno Ethics to chose neutral and build the Harmony Crystals for the morale bonus. Once you’ve built Harmony Crystals you can begin to crank up your tax rate and rake in the cash. Use it to fast buy the buildings on any colonies whose development is lagging. One of the benefits of the Torians (besides the 25% free morale ability) is that they start out with a strong bias towards good. This allows you to take a fair amount of the evil colonization choices while still ending up leaning neutral when it comes time for the choice. Just keep an eye on your alignment in the civilization manager and make sure you don’t end up leaning evil.

Even with all this you’re still going to end up pretty much last in every category except perhaps population. Don’t worry too much about it. You can live with being out researched 2 to 1 however 10 to 1 is a different matter. Pay off credible requests for money to not kill you. Ignore requests from weak empires or one’s across the galaxy from you. Spend money on early espionage and see what weapons and defense your likely opponents are researching. I research the entire planetary invasion path and build Tri-Quan Training as soon as possible. I research as far as I can up a weapons branch for which my opponent has no defense (He’ll be the one that pests you the most for money). Once war breaks out (wait for him to declare it on you, I’ve never had to wait too long), I go with small hulls with the best weapons I can mount with two engines. These are cheap to build which is good because you’ll need to build a lot of them. You’ll be able to take his planets faster than he takes yours. While taking his planets you’ll be getting lots of free techs which should catch you up in tech development. Let him surrender his last couple of planets to some other AI so you don’t get labeled as a conqueror. After swallowing your first customer you’ll be on a more even footing with the rest of the AI’s.

Hope this was helpful. Good luck.

Drath and Humies have +25 diplomacy, which might help you not go 'splode. On the other hand, it might be a good idea to play someone else so you can buy +30 diplomacy.

Try Torians. (Morale!)

The best is prob Yor; the 25% miniaturization bonus is just awesome.

I have not played as the Yor yet but now that miniaturization is more useful in v1.3, I might try them. That 25% miniaturization bonus will make it easiler to design fast colony ships with good range, early in the game!

With the increase in the maintenance costs of initial colony and the decrease in the output of the economic and morale planetary improvement in v1.3, can you still expand at this rapid pace? Can the AI on suicidal?

Can't answer that question as I haven't played v1.3b3 yet, but my strategy was based on trying to bring my newly colonized planets to profitability as quickly as possible. With the support changes to v1.3b3, I would think this would become even more important. Whether, or not you can do this at the same rate remains to be seen. You could always build an occasional constructor if you need to slow down a bit. Also, at times I simply park a colony ship near a planet I want and delay colonization until an opponents colony ship comes near.

I suspect that the initial colony and economic building changes favor the AI with all their bonuses at crippling and above and favor the player at tough and below. As far as the morale and farm changes, I think they totaly nerf high pop planets, but if you limit pop to the 19B level, the morale techs and wonders plus a morale resource or two to mine will be sufficient to keep your pop happy without ever building a morale building (IMHO).

Can't answer that question as I haven't played v1.3b3 yet,

but if you limit pop to the 19B level, the morale techs and wonders plus a morale resource or two to mine will be sufficient to keep your pop happy without ever building a morale building (IMHO).

Im playing 1.3beta 3X,

Depends on how high you want your morale -- to keep morale at 100% with 79% tax rate -- I've had to build 2 VRs for pops up to 17B on planets that have no stock markets -- I have 1 morale resource with full +56% morale bonus, Ultra Spices ( +15% morale ), Frictionless Clothing ( +10% morale ), and researched all +morale techs.

Oh and the morale usually drops below 100% around 16B or so. And 4 stock markets ( +10% morale ) = 1 VR ( +40% morale) for morale purposes now.

Im playing 1.3beta 3X,

As you say you're playing it and I haven't so I must defer to your experience.

Actually, I'm kind of dreading it because I truly liked the challange of getting planets up to the 100B limit. I fear that high pop just got extremely difficult, if not impossible.

I'm not really trying to contradict you or criticize your strategy. I had elsewhere made the argument that the net effect of the farm and morale building changes was to totally nerf high pop while only minimally changing the management of the "normal" 15B planet pop. Of course, with the farm changes and limiting what farm tech you research, the exact pop level that you stabilize on is now different as well. Anyway, one point of my argument against these changes was that you could manage morale on your planets with these changes without needing to build any morale building except stock exchanges.

Even with the evidence you've quoted I still think that's possible. Perhaps you need 2 morale resources to mine instead of one (another 56%), perhaps you need Harmony Crystals (20%) and Virtual Reality Modules (12%) in addition to the other wonders. Though these are treated somewhat differently than the effect of the buildings adding the above and changing your 2 VRC's for stock exchanges should make up the slack. Do you really think that you couldn't manage morale in this version without the VRC's if you had to or wanted to?

The race you pick really depends on your play style, diplomat, warmonger, etc. (except Human, that's the sucker race). For me, I play the diplomat and Custom works best. You can't beat the AI at their game on Suicidal. You have to exploit their failure to build-out which can be done around halfway through the game, if you can keep them off your back long enough that is. It's always touch and go. Though once you get over the hump, you can beat them in the stretch.