BTW, Magnumaniac, those are some awesome scores on your games (puts my 'triumph' into perspective!). I only win on suicidal by generating maps with the fewest planets possible. Would you be willing to share your wisdom?
Abundant everything is the key to the high scores. It means you end up in long, drawn out wars later on against AIs with 100+ planets. That 529K game had a total of 636 habitable planets in the galaxy.
It's all about really micro-managing everything early on, because a small advantage you get in the first few turns of the game is multiplied many times over the course of the whole game. e.g. taking an extra turn to get your first colony ship to a PQ11 planet instead of settling a PQ10 that it is right next to pays off handsomely because of the +10% morale bonus for being a high quality planet - often meaning higher tax rate and pop growth.
Luck plays a part too - some maps will have, say 8 economy resources and only 2 influence on them while another one will be the other way round. The first will generally score higher, but the second is easier to win as you'll gain a lot of planets through culture flipping without even trying.
I usually ignore the AIs completely in the early game (unless there is one ripe for conquest nearby) and focus on development of my own empire - and more importantly, the economy. Once that is "in the green" I can safely say that I can handle anything they can throw at me. Usually end up way behind in tech by the end of the first year, but soon catch up by getting techs through invasion.
There's a lot of discussion about scoring and strategy over at the forums we use at: http://www.thegalacticcore.com/ - feel free to visit if you haven't already.
