Ok so seriously, I had this sick idea after watching Fight Club - that corporations would dominate the world right? So why not put that little mix into GalCiv2? Thus was born the modified Terran Race - Microsoft, lead by none of other than "Chair Punter Madman"...
Ok so jokes aside, here was my idea and it worked AWESOME.
Customized Terrans:
+30% Influence (Commercial Giant...duh)
+20% Economics (Gifted Moneymakers)
+15% Morale (brain-washed employees...)
Pacifists (bwahaha - funny I know, but I had too)
Everything was on Random for a Medium Galaxy, with opponents on Painful difficulty. If people really want a walk-through of what happened I could, but here's the general idea.
I landed 4 *nasty* opponents, one close and the others equally distant - I landed 2 more plants besides Earth/Mars of 13 and 9 quality. No anomolies and horrible planet quality. After that I stuck to two major mottos:
"You can't talk with money in your mouth" - I fed my 4 opponents enough money to back-off and kept them at bay for quite awhile as I worked my way down for the entire cultural tech tree. A few influence starbases to win the Senate vote, but not enough to anger anyone in the beginning - maybe 2 at max. I led one to fight another (disabled tech trading and minor races, that's cheap), side stepped a war once by paying the guy 20,000. Typical business tactics....just stall

"A true pacifist is evil to the core" - That's right, Ethics trained and I went evil as soon as possible. Why? You have any idea how many upgrades those influence stations take with all options?!? It's like 15+ just for influence! So yeah, free money....oh and Mind Control Center is awesome and fits the Microsoft way. Resistance is futile! It's ironic how well Diplomacy+Bribery+Evil works.
I pretty much side-stepped every major fight (I had one, thankfully I had Evil weapons - Psionic missles are nasty and easy to get), I quickly took over planet after planet, throwing money at people so they'd die quietly....I lost 1 ship and killed 13, and yet I won a resounding victory.
Tip for the influence fanatic: Sit with 10 transports just outside an enemies influence and in one turn, buy one starbase and upgrade the heck out of it (it's free if you're evil). Watch their standing go from friendly to hostile in one week, but I've had a planet turn in 3 weeks after that tactic.
Long live Borg-Microsoft Domination!