[raynor]

The players with the scores in the hundreds of millions have 500 planets full of Monolith III facilities that bring in all three resources. In addition, they have improved their planets so that many planets are maxed out at 250% for all three resources. There are facilities which improve the resource output at a planet by 30% and a system by 30%. You also get a nice production bonus if your populations is maxed out. On ringworlds, the pop. bonus is 100% at a certain population level. The top players will have converted all asteroids to planets and put a ringworld around every start. They'll get 50 million points alone from having 2000 starbases.

Also, when playing for score, they are eliminating all 10-15 computer opponents using the AI surrender domino effect which lets you assimilate all of them in about 20-25 turns.