I don't actually play all the much with the normal Entrenchment, I prefer to play with mods (my favorite is Dolynicks latest edition of Stargate races), but if the other person goes super-culture, it is relatively easy to counter it in either version. You can easily build culture centers to counter, or at least slow the spread of enemy culture, long enough to build up your defenses and fleets enough to attack deep into the enemies empire.

Lol, imagine spamming Nova's on a huge map.

True, but it is hilarious to watch a dozen Nova shots rain home within 10 seconds.  Just target their capital, desert, and terran planets with 2 shots each and you will kill all of them, destroy their tax income and prevent them from recolonizing for a couple minutes during which you can run through them without having enemy forces increasing, while yours are an endless wave.  (Besides, Nova's don't suck up 75% of your income)

True, I meant that their ship production would be down.  Sure, all tha stuff is still around, but the point was that it is cool to watch...

you HIPPIES!!!!

THE NOVALITH IS ULTIMATE!!!! NUCLEAR DESTRUCTION FROM AFAR!!!!

The only use I have for culture (spits at saying 'culture') is for countering the ANNOYING tendencies of the AI to spam it. PARTICULARLY Advent (spits at saying 'Advent'). The Advent (spits again) are a bunch of HIPPIE ELITISTS (spits again) THAT WILL FALL TO THE NUCLEAR DESTRUCTION OF NOVALITHS.

A super-economy player is really just boosting their income to increase defense spending. THAT'S IT.

like I said, YOU HIPPIES!! NUCLEAR DESTRUCTION GAINS YOU SALVATION BY THE DESTRUCTION OF YOUR ENEMIES!!!!

SO WHAT!!! I like my Novalith cannons. I've got a game that's been going for around 8 hrs against 9 AIs, and I've got almost max fleet research, credit income of ~30 net (after fleet tax, which is ~56/65% (it's the 2nd level), and I've got THREE NOVALITHS. I've already nuked the 'Adjun Imperials' home world FROM ACROSS THE STAR CLUSTER (I'm playing the Random Multistar huge map). The shells took SUPER LONG to get there, but get there they did. THREE shells, one of which was redundant. That's a Novalith Cannon for ya.

why you cryin' man? You aren't a HIPPY are you? (begins laughing in extremely low voice in a maniacal fashion)

well, I should clarify what advances I've got.

My research- FULLY COMPLETED ALL MILITARY RESEARCH; almost all the defense, and working on the civilian.

Fleet- I had the 5th/6th fleet supply research; 7th cap ship research.

And I had an SB on almost all worlds, plus a couple of neutrals. And 3 Novaliths whips 10 Deliverance Engines easy.

Honestly, for an 8 hour game, I'm not surprised you were starbase massing.  Fact remains that 30 credits per second is absolutely pathetic for the 8-hour mark, regardless of your upkeep level.  By that late in the game, you should have had the time to build dozens of trade ports and build a significantly long chain.  Heck, if the map was large enough (I'd be shocked if it wasn't for a game that dragged on for 8 hours) you should have over a hundred trade ports that late.

Bingo.  Anyone with enough time on their hands can build just about anything they want, and the AI is stupid enough to sit around and let you do it.  What matters is how well you manage resources and how quickly you can field these things.

Presuming I'm not just sitting there and twiddling my thumbs while the novaliths destroy my worlds (like the AI does) they're not a serious threat.  It takes two novaliths to destroy a world, and they recharge at a snail's pace.  It may take you hours for those novaliths to start having an impact on my mature late-game economy, and they will not offer your fleet any meaningful help in a combat situation.  On the other hand, deliverance engines enable me to spread my own culture, which gives my fleet friendly culture advantage in battle.

To actually kill an enemy off with superweapons alone, you need 2 novas per enemy world and you need to synchronize your barrage.  Provided how many tactical slots they consume, this essentially requires you to have twice as many worlds as the enemy.  On the other hand, one deliverance engine per enemy world constantly bombarding will easily cause their entire empire to revolt.  This is made easier by the fact that Advent are the only faction that can put two superweapons on one planet.  So if you want to kill with superweapons alone, the deliverance is by far the most effective.

I'm not criticizing you, I'm well aware that you're primarily a singleplayer gamer.  What I'm pointing out is that the economic position you're talking about is exceptionally weak by the 8-hour mark, which is why n3rull said "/cry".

You can talk about R&D expenditures all you like, the fact remains a mature economy should generate enough cash to complete the entire tech tree in under an hour.  By the 8-hour mark, you've had all the time in the world to expand and consolidate to your heart's content, and your tech tree should have been completed hours ago. 

Yes, high security protocol and weapon's test facility can enable two novaliths, but these are exceptions and will not allow you to systematically build two superweapons per world.  Most of the time in 8 or 9 hour games superweapons are built in bulk, like 40 or 50 of them. 

So?  This isn't a big deal.  The only faction that has a significant advantage in reaching its superweapon is Vasari, due to not requiring any prerequisite technologies.  By the 2-hour mark, putting up a few extra labs is a very minor cost.  If anything, Advent will want to bring out allure of the unity (an awesome 8-lab level technology on the civic tree), whereas TEC has few worthwhile technologies requiring 6 or more military labs.

In practice, this isn't quite true.  Advent turn out to be the game's strongest military faction in huge fleet battles; in fact, I'd never fight an Advent fleet head-on without a numerical or tech advantage.  Fortunately, Advent is also the weakest faction when it comes to small battles without their capital ships or support cruisers.  Moreover, any faction can be strong at anything, the variations between them aren't as absolute as they first appear.  I was spamming trade and culture as Vasari the other day.  My start location and strategy easily outweighed the fact that my faction wasn't very good for this.

In any case, back to the topic at hand:  in a realistic scenario a novalith isn't actually that big of an asset.  10 or 20 of them is fearsome, but that's rarely if ever seen.