This guide is decent and the player plays Incredible as do I and probably wins as do I. However, the guide is rather dated, but certainly worth a careful read. One certainly can set the global slider to 100% research now or much is lost to coercion. However, you can set the starting slider all the way to the bottom center as Icemania does in this nice guide, and have decent starting production and research.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=622615551
My start is very similar to Icemania's start but I don't do his deep diplo research since I am not planning to win that way. I also move my starting colony ship to my HW and upgrade it to the best sensor ship I can make. This is cheaper than buying an empty hull and then upgrading and I get my sensor ship next turn. I want to find that bazaar instantly or asap so I can buy an additional and fast survey ship. The Ysengard is best since it will pay for itself with the 100 credit bonus, but lacking that ship, the Prospector will do. Of course, I buy a rather minimal CS each turn.
I find that building on my HW and buying CS til I run out of cash results in a clearly better start than Sullla's method of buying factories and building CS.
http://www.sullla.com/GC3/landgrab-1.html
My custom race is similar to the one in the Steam guide that Brad linked to but I don't have quite as many +2/-2 combos as the author does, but probably could add a couple more to my race. I play with Thalan tech tree and Intuitive and Zealots. I want that free early tech which when playing L/8/I (Large/8 players/Incred) gives me free Hive tech and Interstellar travel and enough extra to be able to finish Interstellar specialization in one turn so I get 1 more range. My HW is also like Thalan and is alone in its system and class 16. I start the Hive immediately in a hopefully good spot. I will most usually build some factories around it early on, but this depends on overall planned layout.
I want Zealots since I plan to ATTACK and early and want the 15 Ideology points from each conquest. My goal is to quickly finish the Intimidation line of Malevolent for it's production bonuses and Ideology buildings.
At the moment I lean towards taking the 1 Pragmatic trait for 3 free constructors and upgrading them for little cost to bare colony ships. This might depend on how close decent planets are. Then I switch into Malevolent. The 3 CS will be 30 quick Mal ideology points, but once I get further into Malevolent, my total spent on traits will be more than the free 30 when compared to opening Mal instantly.
More later..gotta a train to catch.
