You don't really get -that- much more cash so it doesn't make things much easier. TEC is a good choice because having dual Dunovs will go a long way towards making sure you don't lose any cap ships. Once you start building up experience on your ships, it should be a cake walk. Advent have several good abilities, and I don't particularly like the Vasari cap ships.

Also your probally going to want to get the colonizer cap ship first, otherwise you have to use a frigate. (Thus failing the achivement)Or pay the high cost to allow for a second cap ship.

Advent by far. The Clairvoyance ability on the Revelation cruiser is priceless for scouting if you can't build scouts to do the job.

Well I did it with TEC. I set up 3 fleets of Cap ships. I also accomplished the TEC capital ship one(hadn't done that one) researched just the Civilian tree and got the Achievement for using no Tactical slots as well.

I also picked up some black market Achievements I hadn't accomplished yet. Was very fun and took me just under 5:30hrs. I used a custom map with no pirate raids. I pretty much used Culture to lead me to victory. Became quite simple once I nailed my income down. Then the last 2 hrs. of game time was just methodically moving through the galaxy exterminating all Vasari pigs and Advent evangelists.

Anyway thanks for the suggestions all and I do agree I think with the Advent it would be even easier, especially with their culture dominance they can attain.

I did it with TEC while doing the No civilian research, only military. In retrospect, it would've been better to do no military, and to use Advent, because scouting with Cap ships is a royal PITA, so using clairvoyanve would be much easier. And having trade is really nice when you need to build capital ships.