I've noticed that during the first turns of any new game on Suicidal, the AI empires spend their treasury as quickly as possible. I've generally tried a "slow-burn" strategy, where I go with a factories-only build using initially 0%/100%/0% production until factories are online, and 1%/99%/0% once I want to start cranking out colony ships. This has generally allowed me to steadily develop a handful of worlds, but of course I end up well behind the AI in number of colonies and especially technology.
My thinking is that long-term, cash is king. Since people = cash (to a point), my idea is to win the population race, and thus hopefully win both the economic and influence race.
Is this slow-burn strategy really viable? Should I be buying like crazy like the AI? Something in the middle?
Note: I've recently been playing on Abundant everything except for Anomolies (Rare), and Very Slow Research; victory is by military only. Finally, I'm using DA v1.6.