Have any of you guys beat it on Suicidal - Immense - Abundant everything without using the ways mentioned by Kzinti (that would be impressive). It just seems to me it would be almost impossible during the colony rush phase to get enough planets when the AI gets such large bonuses.
I have. In fact it was my first suicidal game, you can seee it in my profile, it's the 316,000 point game where I played as the Thalans. It's Dark Avatar, which means it's gigantic instead of immense but whatever. I didn't even know of any advanced strategies beyond the all-factories approach at the time. I just basically hunkered in, and stubbernly refused to be defeated. It was tough, and took a long time. I'd invade one planet, wait a few months to recoup, then try to invade another... 13 years later I was finally able to build enough ships to take out the Iconians, who still held a large corner of the map. That game got scary, I was on pins and needles most of the time.
Without knowledge of the all-factory strategy, I probably would have lost that game, though. So i guess it depends on how you feel about all-x approaches.
