Idk if it's the same but the play-style that's gotten me the farthest is building up a lot of economy and military, and using diplomacy and the clarity community to absolutely crush them.
I won't pretend to know how economy works beyond building trade posts and keeping them protected (and i have NO clue how tech actually works) but damn if I don't know diplomacy. I managed to become permanent galactic custodian as egalitarian pacifist xenophile free trader corp. I did it by building up my military, turning my fleets into mercenary companies, continuing to build it, and building economy.
I created a federation with two neighbors and proceeded to force everyone around into the federation while consolidating my own diplomatic power through voting for galactic laws that gave higher percentages of DP for fleet power and economy. It should be noted that forcing them into the federation was done five ways.
For countries I did not like, I entered into to ideological and subjugation wars against them (was not fanatic pacifist) and forced them to change ideology. i hired back my own mercenary fleets (which i upgraded every chance I go), which with maxed out favor is much cheaper and requires less overhead that continually upgrading and maintains a larger standing navy. I hired the khanate mercenaries and always makes sure to keep them on so they couldn't be used against me, same with any other mercenary companies I got my hands on. Even if I had to end the war early, even if I couldn't outright win those wars with an inferior military (in some cases), it still worked out, because i had enough force and the right tactics to take enough of their empires that, should they surrender, they created a vassal state with my ideology.
I would make sure to have communications with the vassals of other empires, 'd put a lot of trade deals and opinion into powerful vassals of the main players, so that if when they rebelled they'd be mine. Using sabotage to sour their relations with their overlord also helped.
I would also keep communications up with as much people as possible, keeping a lookout for empires born of rebellions and civil war, the small ones. I'd scoop them up as vassals quickly due to the power imbalance. The combined power of my federation meant that the states they defected from were NOT willing to go to war to get it back.
When my empire's borders felt like they had gotten too large for me to manage- slemtimes you end up in wars in distant parts of the galaxy (purifiers, slavers, exterminators, and my federation member's wars), other times you find open stars- and had new territories/sectors cut off from my main empire, I would always build up the defenses of the wormhole systems or the ones i had access to, and turned the nearby sectors into current vassals.
There were empires I did like of sufficient power, my equals in the galactic stage. For those that weren't in federations, I put all my effort into favors and diplomacy, borders and modifiers, so that I could get them into my fold. For those that did have federations, I would do my best to get them to work with me on basically everything so that they basically were in my fed anyway.
The combination of these led to the majority of the galaxy absolutely adoring me. I got onto the galactic council, and the other two members were my most powerful allies, one in my federation and one with its own. I was able to push law after law into existence to continually increase my power. There were a few powerful remaining factions that held no love for me, but they were outnumbered and outgunned. around past midgame when I'd activated the L gates and defeated the builders in a really nasty war, I'd also maneuvered so that I and my allies had permanent council seats, and I became galactic custodian.
By the time the unbidden came, around 65% of the galaxy was more or less under my rule. My federation had 53 members, 30 of which were my client states, with all the ones not matching my ideology in the process of assimilation. We had literally every type of empire except for slavers, purifiers, exterminators, and devouring swarms, but my diplomatic power was enough that it had no effect on cohesion and we were still level 5. Removing the term limits of my custodianship and establishing all my , and there were only three groups left- my biggest ally and their three client states federation, a theocratic monarchy and their subject, and a criminal syndicate that refused to die. My federation, my league, was bar none the most powerful force in the galaxy, and it was mine.
by the end of that war, I think there were like, six empires left, total.
There was me and my almost 40 vassals.
The Azantian Democratic Provinces, my oldest ally, the first empire i'd met that wasn't a hive mind, xenophobe, or fanatic authoritarian. seriously, I met and subjugated 12 smaller empires before I met them, and when we founded a federation I brought in 12 minor subjects and they brought in four big ones.
There was Charity, a ridiculously powerful fanatic pacifist empire, my oldest non-federation ally by that point, and their vassal (they assimilated one and I'd actually ended going to war and assimilating the other, but somehow we ended up allies again).
There was the theocratic monarchy i'd mentioned earlier, but we'd managed to ally with them after outlawing organic slavery and succeeding in imposing ideology on them so they weren't xenophobic.
And then there were two fallen empires, because I had the misfortune to spawn in a galaxy with all four.
And then the game ended, with my victory.
It should be noted that, while I did have to engage in some wars, by the time i'd reached midgame I hadn't been at war for some time. With my subjects (i've been saying vassals but since i was a megacorp it was majority subjects), my economic power from them and my obsessive management of trade routes, trade deals, and planets, and the standing military i did have (which was already impressive by that point and augmented by my three mercenary companies) , I was basically able to force the majority of the empires I met to do whatever I wanted. After mid game, the only people left were the few empires that had vassals (there was literally no one left that wasn't a vassal or an overlord), and then it became a diplomacy game.
So um. yeah
