Best Race to Win vs. Suicidal

Krynn's not a bad choice due to the strong bonuses. The Yor are another very nice choice, especially with the miniaturization bonus.

Something to think about is your Super Ability. Against a Suicidal AI you are competing against the AIs widespread of bonuses. Super Breeder and Super Hive are good choices as they help compete either on the production or economic level as the AI. Intelligent use of racial bonuses and Super Diplomat can be a good way to go, especially if you are want to go through with the Influence Victory, since its likely that you will upset the AI with your alarming influence.

In a Suicidal-difficulty game its more about doing everything bigger and faster; so just find what works best for your personal playing style.

Hi!

IMO Super Breeder, because:
- your pop grows so fast there's no money crunch in the colonizig phase of the game (you simply never run out of money, just don't build everywhere immediately);
- at the end of the colonization phase you easily can have more pop as the rest of AIs together, so you can start invading their mostly below-100M planets (which will start paying for themself only in about a game-year) WITHOUT any significant dent to your economy.
- you can never run out of troops. Having just in-game pop growth bonuses (70% + a small bit from anomalies) I've breeded about 1B pop on each 2B+ planet each turn!
- invaded planets start payig for themself almost immediately (just dump 2B pop there), and start producing troops 3-5 turns after invasion.
- bonus tech from invasions comes really handy, so you can significantly decrease spending for research and "live" only by those techs. The more planets to invade, the more of those techs you'll get.

For more you can check Playing with lots of planets - how to financially survive first year?.

BR, Iztok

Super Hive for me. It doesn't provide an advantage right out of the gate like Super Breeder, but it sure makes production fast and cheap. It's interesting to note which races expand most quickly when playing against them. Barring a poor starting position, it's always the Torians and Thalans.

I think it's pretty clear that it's the torians or the thalians. Me personally I like the thalians. The missing peice for them, is getting numerous survey ships going very early, such that you can keep your expansion going. (also take max pop bonus)

Because that works out well for me, I don't see the need to play the Torians. (I don't really have much of a money crunch.)

The last possiblity is the the korath. If you can get going fast with spore ships you can roll. However in practice, at suicidal it's hard to hit them before their defenses are up. (at least for me)

The cheesy suicidal win, is to play the korath against just the iconions. It's rediculously easy to spore them out of existance...

Speaking of the Korath, if you look at them closely, you'll see they have some pretty darn good free bonuses. Definitely can be a big advantage for the right game settings and play style. Plus, they have spores. If you can live with a standard production and population growth rate, they're actually a pretty good race to play. They're ideal for a short purely offensive game.

The Yor are also good and my favorite in Dread Lords. They have strong free bonuses in production and the miniaturization bonus can be very helpful. The super isolationist ability really does make a difference in keeping the other races at bay. If you're going to work the turtle angle at all, the Yor will come through for you. You can actually turtle a little bit on Suicidal, but still need to work offense hard most of the time. The Yor are good for that.