From my limited experience, all games of this nature require an out of the gate strategy. That strategy is, from my limited experience, a mandatory one.



In Sins of a Solar Empire you HAVE to build a colony capital ship first. That is your only option. If you do not do that, you can not win. If you build it second, you lose. Must build first.



So, I was wondering what the out of the gate necessity is here. The only strategy that seems viable to me is rapid growth. This is, apparently, incorrect. I'm sitting at 89 points while first place sits at 145. I'm not sure how the point thing functions, but they're killing me.



Any advice?

First off, send your scout to the most likely star to find a tier one or two planet. Always build the food improvement on your home planet. Later build your faction unique improvements. Then after you have explored some, send your colony ship to the best available system/planet. You should always have some time to prepare in which neither you nor the AI possess the wormhole tech. In this time try to follow the standard playstyle of your chosen faction. Some extra advice though, always make a custom faction that suits your playstyle rather than just the vanilla ones. Good Luck!

89 vs 145 is not a problem, something like 1000 vs 2000 could be a problem. And of course AI cheating on higher difficulties, so you will never be able to overcome him at the start of the game on endless difficulty.

I think ES is not as closed as you describe Sins of a Solar Empire is (I don't know the game). If you do a couple of different things at the beginning, you can still win. Of course if you don't explore, don't colonize, don't grow your population, and only build warships for 25 turns, you will soon be in trouble lol