Impossible is ... very hard.

[Psillycyber]

Hey, it's a game, so however you want to play so that you have fun is up to you. Personally, I feel like my time is in short supply, and I like to feel like I have at least a shot at winning a game if I'm gonna put a lot of time into it. But others might like the challenge of a seemingly truly impossible setup.

In any case, here is a recent save that I abandoned due to hopelessness. I don't have the 2300 save, but I feel like I played the opening as reasonably well as I could have. The AI (the Silicoids and Meklar in particular) just expanded insanely fast, and I could only claim 4 starting planets (1 of which was ultra-poor). Plus, no engine tech choices up to at least fusion engines was depressing. I'll tip my hat to anyone who can salvage this into a win.

[Zalson]

Update for you all:

Taking Sirian's advice, I decided to play out a game I rolled randomly (used random.org to pick my race and got the Klackons which was very nice). I think the biggest change I made in my play style was adapting my play to the map: in this case, I had a fairly isolated start with a few habitable worlds, all around size 60 - 70. That allowed me to use the Klackon's sizeable production bonus to push expansion to these local habitable worlds, without needing propulsion tech.

The game played out pretty well, despite the presence of a rampant Silicoid expansion and a semi-contained Psilon presence. The poor Bulrathi and Alkari were 1 planet empires within 3 parsecs of each other. I didn't meet the Mrrshan's until the end of the game, when they met me, declared war, and then voted a Council loss in ... not sure when (this is the one time that a hall of fame feature would be useful).

I made a few strategic errors that cost me the game:

1. I had a serious missile tech advantage over the Silicoids, Bulrathi, and Alkari. I used it not to press the Bulrathi and Alkari homeworlds and or the Silicoid core. Instead, I tussled over some size 15 inferno worlds. That weren't even rich.
2. I stopped to build a useless Auto Repair special, just because I was so excited to build something with blasters. I actually turned off research (unintentionally) -- when I was going for pulson missiles. Instead of investing in the autorepair juggernaut, 200+ Pulson Missile boats would have been much better for ripping up the silicoid core.
3. I kept wars going just because. I tend to try to sign peace either immediately and constantly or not at all. Some moderation there may have helped. For instance, I could have found out who the silicoids were at war with (Mrrshan) and bombed them out to cultivate that friendship.

Oh well: more knowledge for next time. A new game as the Meklar is going much better. I'll let you know how it shapes up.

Thanks for the comments; Psillycyber, I definitely used your suggestion of letting the AI fleet hover over one of my larger worlds for a while. They had about 0 groppo tech so I devoted all resources to pop development while building fleets in adjacent worlds. Once I had a superior fleet, I cut them down to size.