Someone on another thread asked how to beat Masochist. Here's my reply:
I have won on a large galaxy, with 9 opponents, set to Masochistic, and no diplomacy bonus.
The key to my success is to build a strong(er) economy, and to leverage that economic strength into an insurmountable lead in technology. That may sound impossible against AI players operating at 200% economy, but I assure you it is quite possible. (All along remember that your goal is to maximize your economy and morale to raise your tax base to pay for more research.) Here are some pointers...
Early Game:
- Buy colony ships to colonize nearby planets before the AI.
- Set industry slider to 100%. Set military slider to 0%. Re-balance technology slider each time you choose a new technology.
- Set tax slider to a rate that gives you 100% approval. Keep this rate until you're losing your BC fast enough that you would be broke in less than 10 turns.
- Focus on technologies that build your economy. Especially good are ones that give you an across-the-board bonus without building buildings, such as Planetary Improvements, Xeno Entertainment, and Xeno Industry.
- Keep your best ecnomic technologies away from the AI. These are your path to victory, if you trade them away, you'll never get an advantage.
- Use the ability to focus production on military production on worlds that have a lot of industry and where you'd like to build ships (constructors and frigates).
- Build 2-3 factories on each planet to give them a solid industrial base.
- If you're not sure what to build, build a research center.
- Make sure to build your industrial capitol on a very large world so that you can build lots of galactic achievements and trade goods there.
- Pay tribute to AIs if needed, unless they demand your prized economic technologies.
- VERY IMPORTANT: Develop Interstellar Republic and Star Democracy as soon as is reasonable. Each of these will boost all of your production, economy, and research by +25%. This is the BEST way to eat into the AI economy bonus (and the AI tends to ignore these technologies.)
- Develop Soil Enrichment and Habitat Improvement in order to get the Aphrodisiac trade good. +50% population growth is an extremely powerful advantage that you will need.
- Trade around military technologies for money. It will cause the AI to invest more resources into building newer, more expensive ships.
- Don't forget to develop Xeno Ethics and become neutral for the approval bonus and other advantages.
Middle Game:
- Keep your taxes at a level that maintains your approval above 75% to keep your growth rapid. There is a morale penalty for full 10% tax increases past 30%, so the best tax levels are often 39%, 49%, 59% or 69%.
- Build 1-2 Xeno Farms on each planet so that it can hold 17-22 billion people. Each planet gets a morale penalty as its population climbs higher, so you want a large population to be spread across all of your planets.
- Use freighters to establish trade with powerful or neighboring civilizations so that they will be more friendly toward you.
- Make sure to keep the mining modules on your mining bases up to date, and consider building economic starbases near clumps of planets to boost your production.
- Choose a race (or minor race) with few worlds whom you can isolate and conquer to expand your economic base. (Remember, the main purpose of war is to find new places for your population to grow.)
- At about the time you are going to invade an enemy world, you should develop most of the offensive technologies stemming off of Planetary Bombardment all the way up to the end so that you can use the powerful Mini-Soldiers invasion method. Tir-Quan training is priceless.
- When you go to war, one of the first things you want to do is to take out your opponents mining bases, and make sure that you have a constructor nearby to take that mine for yourself.
- You should develop a sufficient technology lead that you can now creep into building a lead on one type of weapon or armor which can give your ships an edge. Do this.
- Begin to use your specialized military production to build top-of-the-line military ships. You will have fewer ships than your AI opponents all game, but if you keep them in the right places, they will be sufficient.
- If a race is beginning to get ahead, bribe other races to make war on them and peace with each other as needed. Their 200% production advantage isn't as useful if they use it building expensive ships to destroy each others' expensive ships with.
End Game:
- If you can destroy one or two races and take their worlds, the rest of the game can be pretty boring to play out. Look for friendly races that you can turn into allies with a few technological gifts.
- As soon as you are strong enough, attack the biggest unfriendly race you can. This will help stop a series of opponents surrendering to the same large power, which can sometimes be a pitfall.
- Declare war about as often as you have enough population to invade worlds with.
