Sure, default aligments, all race at incredible. Then I took Feds, but Industrialists should work just as well, if you boost your economy from the abilities otherwise.

Yes initial rush 100% military until all Colonizers are out. On Tiny/Rare this does not last too many turns... Note that on that last turn you can already come off 100% and allocate some of your money to other purposes. I always try to complete anything (any Mil/Soc/Res project) with minimum required on that slider, throwing the rest to other work. Its hard work -yes- but minimizes waste and can get you there much quicker. The locks we had at some point were great help for this...hopefully we'll get them back in the Expansion set.

GOOD LUCK FOR YOUR GAME!!
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I am interested in trying +60 culture. I am finishing a medium maso game with tight clusters, +10 culture (+50 diplo, +1 speed - populists).
I think the tight clusters help fight cultural aggression quite nicely, which is a bit of a trouble with the maso bonuses (hence I lost 10 diplo for 10 culture in my starting picks).
Now using scattered in order to have more stars to extend influence may be a good idea, but in my game, I settled a PQ13 near the Drengins in order to get a foothold, and it got a skull before I could finish Soil Improvement on it. I managed to hold it (rush building news network and sending constructors there), but the ai influence bonus is quite hard to fight. Getting the Culture Wonders is key to the snowball at this level. I wonder what other picks would be best beyond culture: speed or diplomacy?
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Speed requires 5 points minimum so it seems out of reach. Diplo sounds a great bet as always, and trying to reach Minors quick to make some excellent deals early on. The rest probably for economics.

Hitting a blue starbase somehere near would help too... not to mention one of those purple planets (WE HEY big time!)

By the way if you share a sector with the AI...does it still moan if you build influence starbases there? Hmmm, I bet it does...

This could be plenty fun...but still an unproven case. MAN, if I just had that early retirement coming up a little earlier even Just me and GalCiv, version 11.0967...
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Max diplmacy could be the way to go. Tech trading without always leaves me behind.
I've tried merchantile picks through a slew of difficulties, but they don't work on maso.
War picks helps, but since I intent to outmanuever the AI, it's better spent elsewhere.
Soldiering isn't a bad pick, the first soldiering bonus is something like anti-matter weapons or molecular medicine.
Influence would not be a bad idea, sharing a sector with an AI is basically giving them a colony.

Yes it does. But on maso, my experience is that the influence bonuses are usually so big that systems in a foreign sectors fall to the owner very fast, so maybe you'll get flipped or manage to flip the ai before they have time to make their demand. I also wonder what would happen if you built say 4 influence starbases at once. Maybe they'd ask just for one, you could give it and still have the remaining 3 to flip the ai... Probably a bad strategy and a waste of resources, though, but if there are no empty neighbouring sectors?

I've tried it once. They do just ask for one at a time.

I refused that time (I was in the mopping up stage, and was hugely militarily superior) so I don't know how it affects relations.

Intermediate report from my +60% Influence/Tiny/Rare effort. Its still very tough going! Year is 84, we managed to beat everybody to Galactic Exhibition and Restaurant of Eternity, got the Satellite waterpark going...etc etc, but all the AI capitals are still hanging out there too. In this game there is less warring going on between the races, but they are more hostile towards us and we been having very hard time keeping some of them like Yor and Arceans at arms length. Also, havent been lucky to sneak capture any influence starbases this time.

Maybe, if we manage to establish enough trade and improve relations enough (pay tribute even), we can still persevere. Staying out of all wars is a must as we dont really have anything to defend our starbases or hit back with. It also looks like it may require those CultMax enabled star bases again before there is real good chance for any flips. Certainly is not the cakewalk I was thinking about. Right now rushing for Star Democracy and Political Capital, then aiming for CultMax next.

Abundant may be better choice for you as the Capitals hold extra resistance. This rare map hasnt got any other kind of star systems at all! On the other, with abundant you will then have to face the incredibly powerful AI rush as they will PQ upgrade every old rock they touch.

Every game and map really requires somewhat modified strategy - thats the beauty of this game! Still learning new things and tactics...

I tried a 60% influence (other picks in diplomacty) game: medium/common.
I was being killed by the Torians, which is a real shame.
I had a system with one of my stars and a Drengin system in it. The Drengins built their political capital there (which was quite clever). I was so backward in science that I couldn't compete. The sector remained mine, I built the Restaurant, but the Arceans would have crushed me hadn't I paid them a fortune, and then the Torians decided to wipe me and I couldn't do much to get rid of them. Had I had +1 speed, I'd have taken more systems, in particular 2 Torian stars, and probably the Carinoids if I had had those stars. I may try again with +1 speed and the rest in influence, but my diplomacy will hurt.

I managed to convert the Altarians and Alexinians now, but the Arceans and Drengin are ruthless. Definitely need some military powers to fence them off. Just trade and bribing is not enough. Maybe building some battle ships would help. We dont have those techs but luckily Altarians were in the middle of building one.
Another option is to buy Interstellar.

Playing a Maso Gigantic now with Beta3.

The AIs do seem to be less aggressive if you are trading with them. Didn't get any AIs declaring war on me even though I had zero military until frigates.

That was quite different from my recent 1.05 game where I had 3 AIs declaring war on me early on.

The AI generally is not too good with redirecting transports once their targets are set. This works tremendously in our favor as transports launched from their planets to invade ours will usually not turn back and reinvade planets just taken under their noses.

So using superior speed, I swoop in with frigates and transports and then swoop out before their capitals can touch me, leaving the newly captured planets empty. Currently, my transports move at speed 7 while their capitals move at speed 3.

Beta3...I'm drooling. What would you say are the THREE BEST things with it? Can we still wait, or better just go and get it, right now?!! This is sheer torture

Hmm, three best things, ok let me think about that while I go play some more. LOL

Ha! - I was completely on the wrong track there. Turned out we had simply missed acquiring Diplomatic Translators from the Carinoids. CRITICAL MISTAKE!! We backtracked to the point when those guys had it ready, made MUCH MUCH better deals with everybody, and played the following years thru again. Needless to say with much more forte and success in all our activity.

With a good domination going on, the AI treat you with respect and no serious war threats are thrown at you. They seem happy and content taking out weaker races and each other instead

We proceeded to flip the Altarian capital the same year as reaching CultMax (87-10). That is finally some proof that flipping even capitals can be done, at Maso and without Cultmax. Required lots of Influence bonus though, including the three early wonders. Alexinians went soon after, Drengin and Yor few years later. Carinoids put out a huge and very impressive resistance, and actually never succumbed to our way of thinking. Truth is, the Arceans precursor PQ52 system was even closer at flipping!! Would have been charming to try turn that 30M pop over too, but it was all over by 93, this time as cultural conquest.
(Somehow those counters seemed to work little funny. We had one crash during '91, had to reload, and that seemed to reset them again.

My suggestion for culture game now is building massive production and really focusing on tech deals early on. Stay on top of the AI to avoid wars. Make sure to dominate the game! Regarding abilities, it seems that choosing 60% influence is no better than picking strong production points, and building some awesome powerhouses serving as constructor factories. This because a really focused effort with 243% star bases seems to be very necessary anyway.

However, that is a "Rare" statement. I am really intrigued what happens with Abundant. Rare has so few planets, hard to flip, that the snowballing tends to be minimal. Wondering how different story it may be with Abundant... With the confidence of having that one under belt, maybe we can face that challenge next

(Plus, want to try our luck again with Alt-N and the PQ roulette again )

I also think we have now nailed the optimal tech+ wonder+achievement path down pretty well, at least for the cultural approach. Should document it little better perhaps.
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Ray the Wanderer! - WONDERFUL PLAY, judging from your latest Metaverse submissions too
(This "congrats" smiley looks more like a party animal to me though...the MORNING AFTER picture LOL )

A Superior Speed Frigade Wolfpack is simply Pure Demolition, especially on the gigantic. I have a feeling it may require major rehaul before the AI can seriously start countering those tactics. Maybe Speed will become much more costly soon. I hope not though - its such good fun
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Yes. You can abuse that if you like, but culture accumulates over time. So for instance, at turn 0 (load game), your culture is computed and will never extend beyond 1 sector of your own stars. After 1 turn, culture will stretch one more sector, generating positive feedback on your own sector. This means that saving and then reloading can stop a cultural conquest (because your of the positive feedback you had in-game) or make a planet more likely to flip (because it resisted flipping thanks to far away cultural influence). Buggy IMO.

Thanks jn64.

I'm finding Maso to be enjoyable again so will be playing at this level for a while.

I can't think of any really great reason why you should get the Beta now but I think all the little changes and fixes make it worthwhile. Personally, I'm also trying to support SD with my $30.

One more observation I forgot to mention. That is, for some reason Altarians did not mind us building the Waterpark in their sector. Stayed warm all the way up to their capital flipping. I believe it was either due to the fact that we were mining an existing resource, or that somebody else (maybe even them, cant remember) had been mining there first.
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There seem to be a randomness to which the "I'm under cultural attack" routine is triggered for the AI.

In the end game when I do my culture bombing, I'm always by far the dominant power. Sometimes, I get the SB demand from the AI, sometimes I don't. Can't detect any pattern as yet.

Reporting back from the Tiny Abundant 60% culture experience. Was not any easier I tell you. This went down much quicker but there was more planets to manage so it turned out to be about the same play effort than Rare. We took about all the cheese we could find but still the AI put up a remarkable resistance. With abundant and little luck on their side too, the AI can move really fast, and with us wasting time colonizing, the AI got quite a jump start on Techs. We were playing catching up on that for a long time.

In the end it was plenty fun though with abundant and all those systems flipping about. The first Altarians joined us June 81, but that was purely luck having them in the same sector. The rest really required having those sweetie 243% quality starbases around. Culture conquest really depends on them.

Sometimes the system would be scorched, and we had to deal with the 1% morale problem. However, several times the AI was actually willing to buy those systems back, and sometimes to our great benefit. Since we were highly up there in influence, it didnt matter who we sold it to - it would always bounce back to us. Made a deal for StarFed even once!! However, some other times it would not work and we had to build colonizer quickly to ease the tensions, and really keep the poor system ourselves.

Eagerly anticipating for the next update and hopefully the NIGHTMARE mode too . Right now with all the cheese and exploits my feeling is that the best tension and challenge is little bit slippering away. Plus, some little UI enhancements would be really cool too. You can tell I am not very good with self inflicted controls and rules....if its in the game its in the game.

~SDC~

NIGHTMARE MODE??....::passes out from fright::
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Nightmare level would be lovely wouldnt it. For starters, no Save button. It would only autosave every so months (eg every 6 turns). All the easy to fix cheese would be eliminated. The AI would be strong and MENACING. The Ultimate GalCiv Challenge as we all know and love it would be back again
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Any comments how the OVERALL economics play out by the way? Reason I am asking is that we had a very different outcome in the last two tiny games (Rare and Abundant). Exactly the same starting abilities but they played out very differently money wise.

In the rare we were flooded with cash, breaking +5000bc easy, and finding it difficult to spend enough (100% all the time). In the abundant, it was almost complete opposite, just hanging in there barely,
-500bc balance and affording to go at just 70% spend most of the time.

The playing strategy in both was very very similar, trade routes and all. Can the build order this much? Or number of planets? Or is there something else simple in there that can make such a massive difference? should maybe analyse some of the turn statistics little closer to understand this difference better.
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My guess is that your trade income remained the same but your industrial and research capacity was much diminished in the Rare game with less planets resulting in alot of cash surpluses.

Yes that makes lots of sense actually. Maybe staying away from some of the more expensive projects (fusion power etc) on lesser planets would have helped too.

This is something I noticed also, with less planets I always run a surplus of money rarely lowering the slider from 100% spending but when playing on maps like gigantic/abundant I am rarely able to keep the spending slider over 50% due to huge amounts of cash going out to planets.