How become overpowered:
1. Choose one of the larger map sizes. Gigantic or larger.
2. Create custom race: Put positive points in population growth, ship speed, military production, research, food, and economy. Take points away from resistance/invasion/accuracy/hit points/evasion. In other words you'll have the crappiest warships ever. BUT you can expand super duper fast with your fast colony ships and fast production of colony ships.
3. Choose the super traits: Patriotic (no morale penalty for large empires) and the Free Building Trait upon colonizing a new world.
4. Choose BENEVOLENCE as your ideology. The key is to get the rank III Benevolence trait that gives you 5 EXTRA POPULATION on new colonies. After you get that, prioritize the research tree of BENEVOLENCE. The second goal is to get the rank V research bonus of BENEVOLENCE that grants an automatic 5 research for all of your colonies.
5. At the beginning of the game, put ALL of your production points into military spending to construct colony ships. Every time you colonize a new world, use your free first building super trait to construct a shipyard.
6. Thanks to BENEVOLENCE rank III which automatically grants +5 population to your new colonies, you don't need to put any colonists on your colony ships. The moment your colony ships colonize a planet, that planet will AUTOMATICALLY have at least 5 population AND a free shipyard. Which means that that new colony can now immediately begin pumping out colony ships too.
Consequently your growth is exponential. You don't need to put any points into research or social spending until you've colonized a quarter of the galaxy. Once you get Benevolence rank V in research, ALL of your colonies will automatically produce 5 research. And because you can get a lot of colonies, that's a crap ton of research without spending ANY points into research.
In the meantime, use your survey ship to research for you (by finding anomalies). Key early research is: engines, engines, and better engines (so your colony ships move faster). And universal translator. And then possibly military production. You don't need anything else.
This strategy is insanely powerful. Go and try it. BENEVOLENCE is the beast. In late game, you just culture flip everyone and crush without building a single warship.
