I tried the gigantic galaxy and set up a FFA with 9 AI players. All went well at first, I made an ally with my neighbor and was able to push back and eventually defeat by other neighbor.

Thinks didn't keep going so well though. Even though I had this uber fleet of about 7 captial ships at level 5-8, which were defeating everything they came across, I couldn't make any progress at all because I had to keep them on defensive duty. every time I tried to push outward, the enemies would send their huge fleet to kill my planets.

I had mass defenses too, which could on their own hold back medium sized assaults, but the attacks keep growingso even 3 level 1 battlecruisers were dieing. My only effective weapon was my uber fleet. By the point where I had researched almost everything I was still stuck with my starting planets and the 2 that I took from the neighbor.

At the beginning, everyone was fighting each other, and at the end, everyone was teamed up against me. WTF is up with that. . Plus I would get a mission to give res or kill ships and get up to 45% or so and offer a cease fire, have it accepted, then quickly cancelled by the AI, and the political scale drop back to %0.

I hate to have to play with locked teams since I like diplomacy options, but at the end of the game, theres little My one uber fleet can do when I have 2 huge enemy fleets at every one of my outer planets. I didn't ever have a problem with resources either. I was ranked number 1 at metal for the entire game and around 2 for credits.

One thing that I never got to was try to expand into the other solar systems first and see if I can control the whole star system while everyone else fights for the first part of the game while I expand unchecked.