Just won my first game vs AI

Hello everyone!

Just wanted to share that after something like 10 games and probably more than 50 hour of game time, I've finally won my first one.

I played as inward perfection, rushed very early on the colonization of anything I could and maximized the reproduction rate. I then was stopped by other's frontiers. I took the spaceborn perk and made like 100 space habitat. Contingent popped and got murdered by other AIs. Sleeping AI waked up and forced me to submit to it. I then gathered a great specialized army (900 corvettes 600 destroyers) and took advantage of its war on another AI to snipe its army. It then surrendered and I was granted victory for owning 40% of the habitable planets and with 1500 pop in 2454.

That was a pretty boring and CPU intensive gameplay, and things went very easy for me as I the crisis was weak and I popped in a free area. It was also not iron mod and I used saves twice. But at least I won.

My other attempts involved more aggressive playstyle, including devouring swarms in iron mode, but without much success.

Please, share with me the story of your first success!