I got this game for Christmas, but haven't played through to the end, until now. I started a game with the following setup

Terrans
Tough
9 AI
Gigantic galaxy
Everything abundant
Tight clusters
Conquest victory only

I started off with the usual colony rush, focusing on improving Earth with several factories instead of rush buying colony ships directly. In such a huge galaxy, I wanted to make sure I could churn out colony ships at a steady pace. The first few turns I was focused on researching up to impulse drive, then sensors. My colony ships became faster, and as soon as I could afford to, I started building the Surveyor 1-0, a cargo hull outfitted with several impulse drives, a survey module, and some range. As time progressed, I saw very little of the AI for quite some time. I eventually built 4 such surveyors (I put a priority on building them early) and set them on their merry surveying way.

I have to say I did cheat a little bit. I did Control-N several times until I got some decent tiles on Earth (a 300% production tile, a 100% production tile, a morale tile, and a prucursor library tile with 700% research boost). That precursor tile sure gave a huge research boost to me early on (and I assume throughout the game).

I had believed that my cluster of stars was the most southerly civ. However, there was a small cluster of stars at the very southern tip, which was separated from any of=ther star cluster by about 4 sectors. I didn't think much of it at the time. Why would the computer assign any civ to such a small cluster? Besides, I was too busy colonizing my own star cluster to try and colonize down there. The Thalans were in the large star cluster to my northeast, closest to my star cluster. The Drengin were in a star cluster due west, though many, many sectors of empty space (~6) separated their star cluster from mine. The Yor were in the northwest. The other races (Drath, Altarian, Korx, Arcean) were so distantly situated to the North and northeast (beyond Thalans space) that I did not make contact with them for some time.

I soon learned that southern cluster was not so empty as I thought. The Torians had set up shop down there, and I started to notice Torian colonies springing up in my sector. This instrusion into star systems that were quite clearly mine made me decide then and there that the Torians had to go, and fast. Unfortunately, I had no military. I did some shrewd tech trading for Stinger II missiles and set about making some basic fighters. But the Torians seemed to be intent on firmly entrenching themselves in my star cluster, and worse, they were beginning to feel a little cool towards me. The Yor were encroaching on the northwest portion on my star cluster, and were also none too friendly towards me.

It was time to make things happen. Since the Torians apeared to be on the top (at least when looking at the military graph), I bribed them to attack the Thalans. I also bribed the Yor to attack the Iconians (located in the far north corner of the map). At this time, my focus was on getting everyone to attack everyone else, and have the whole galaxy at war except for myself. The Yor were feeling their oats, so I was able to bribe them to attack the Drengin as well.

An interesting thing I found in this game was that the strongest empires very often turned out to be much weaker than they appeared when put to the test. The Thalans looked pretty weak by comparison to the Torians. However, the Torians had a distinct disadvantage. Their main producing worlds were 12 sectors away to the south, and their ships were none too fast (~3-5 parsecs per turn). They had colonies in my star cluster, which was close to the Thalans star cluster, but they were rleatively new colonies, not yet able to produce starships or anything of substance. The "war" between the Thalans and the Torians lasted many, many turns, with nary a shot fired as far as I could tell.

About the time I had rush researched to planetary invasion (in order to take colonies from the Torians in my star cluster), I noticed Thalan troop transports invading Torian worlds which had been colonized in the Thalans star cluster. Seeing the Torians fall so easily there, I knew I had to rush to invade the Torian worlds in my cluster or I would soon have to be taking these worlds not from the weaker Torians, but from the stronger Thalans. The Thalans had invested heavily in powerful mass driver technology, and their ships were much stronger than Torian ships. But this was not a battle between fighters, it was simply a matter that the Torians had no ships whatsoever to defend their worlds in my cluster when the Thalan invasion came. I made very fast troop transfports as fast as I could, and ended up taking over most Torian worlds in my cluster, but not before the Thalans took a few Torian worlds in my cluster as well. Peace between the Thalans and Torians soon followed, and the Torians had to accept a humililiating defeat from the Thalans. But the Torians were simply in too poor of a position to defend such distant colonies, and their ships were too slow to defend them in time.

My war with the Torians had just begun, however. A turining point came when word arrived that the Paulos had stolen the entire tech tree of the Thalans. I went to work trading as much tech as I could with the Paulos to get some of the most powerful mass driver tech in the galaxy (singularity driver IV). That same turn, I traded as much as I possibly could with all the other races. By going around in a tech trading circle, if I couldn't get a certain tech at the beginning, I would get as much as I could. Then I would trade with another civ for as much tech as I could get. By the time I came back to the first civ, I would have acquired enough unique techs in order to get the tech I wasn't able to get before.

Meanwhile, the Yor were beginning to realize they had bitten off more than they could chew by going to was with both the Iconians and Drengin. They soon signed a peace treaty, much to my annoyance.

With my new tech advantage, I designed the gun fighter 1-0, a very powerful mass driver fighter with 3 singularity driver IVs, 2 warp engines, and good range. I started to send fleets over to the Torian star cluster, with the intent tobreak their defenses, then follow with an invasion of at least one of their worlds. After some suspense, where the success of my plan began to be in doubt, I was able to cripple the Torians and land transports on their manufacturing capital. I wasn't ready for a full scale invasion of their system, and I was beginning to worry about the growing power of the Thalans, so I made peace with the Torians and set about preparing myself for future conflict.

The next several hundered turns were relatively peaceful. I spent the time focusing on my economy and researching. I started to get a sizabel tech lead, while still maintaining a modest military. When I had been fighting the Torians, my military ranked at the top of the galaxy. Hundreds of turns later, neglecting my military, it had soon become mediocre at best. But, by this time I had a commanding tech lead. In fact, I had researched to the very end of all the weapons techs, all the defensive techs, in fatc all the techs except for starbase defense techs and the techs needed for a technological victory (and some planetary improvement techs, which were unnecessary considering I was a neutral civilization, and got tile upgrades for free). My commanding lead was helped by the fact that I had several mining star bases, and had been focusing all my starbases for a couple years on upgrading these mining bases.

When all the tech I wanted had been researched, I switched gears. Research went to zero, military to 80%, and social to 20%. I designed the Ultimate Behemoth, and huge hulled beast with four doom rays, three black hole eruptors, 2 black hole guns, 3 hyperwarp Mark III, 4 zero point armor, 2 aeron defense and 2 ultimate invulnerability, along with 6.3 sector range. Nothing in the galaxy comes close. One of these can take out almost any fleet while suffering maybe 2 or 3 hitpoints damage. With my 3 military starbase mines fully upgraded, these ships are fearsome indeed.

The next few years were bloody ones. The Thalans, who were dependant on mass drivers, could not stand against my fleet of ships whose defense focused mainly on armor. Most of the other civs were also mass driver based, and designed to defend against such. My fleets were mainly equiped with armor, doom rays and black hole eruptors. Of course, my capital ship have defense against all three types of weapons, but are best against mass drivers.

Let me tell you, it takes a long, long time to conquer a gigantic galaxy with abundant star and abundant habitable planets. Even though no military could withstand any of my fleets and were totally outclassed, it takes an awful lot of troop transports to get the job done. I entually desiged the transport 1-3, which ahd a speed of 82 parsecs/turn. Even then, it was not fast enough, as the ditances involved in crossing the galaxy were so enormous.

It was a foregone conclusion as to my victory, which is the reason why I have until now not finished a game. I always play with gigantic galaxies, and avoid anything other than conquest victories, so when the challenge was gone it was hard for me to continue to fight. At one point, I ended up giving the Altarians, Drengin, and Arcean my entire tech tree, just to give me more of a challenge. Fools that they were, they still spent many resousrces researching the remaining useless techs, and failed to upgrade their fleets properly to counter my threat until it was too little, too late. When the last Arcean world fell, and I got the screen showing a conquest victory, it was a little anticlimactic, but I did it, gosh darn it!