Apollo is not that hard

[Agent Miles]

I just won on Apollo as Hutama in 296 turns.
The AI factions do not use air power effectively. Always load your cities up with 3 air units. When these are out of range, then build carriers that hold 3 units as well.
The Diplomacy screen is your real intelligence source. A faction can only build their Victory Wonder with the appropriate Affinity level, so target the ones that are a threat.
I chose Harmony, so I eventually had Poseidon cruisers with range 3 attack upgrade. Artillery units should also have this and movement 3 upgrade to keep up with the hover tank Cobra. It is pretty easy to eliminate a Victory Wonder if you have positioned forces accordingly.
To defend your area, use Marauder infantry. These should have the upgrades that give them +40% when not next to other friendly units, +30% in Miasma and +5 healing when not embarked. Fortify them at bottlenecks. So that is +120% in defense (+ 30, 40 & 50 percent). A hill or forest adds another +25%. Get the tech that allows your workers to add Miasma if none is present.
Here's a saved game.

 

[vorlon_mi]

What size/type of planet? Just curious ...

Like many civ games, the difficulties scale up by giving the CPU players more bonuses, such as starting with more than one colonist. Thus, the human player is working from behind and needs to catch up and surpass the initial bonus.

I agree with many of your points:
1) Yes, the AI / CPU players don't use air power effectively. They don't build enough; they don't strike at your forces as they approach. Most importantly, they keep on attacking with their planes until the planes are dead. Setting up even one or two of your planes (whether on a carrier or in your city) as interceptors will damage or destroy the AI's planes.
2) Yes, getting range 3 on cruisers (and even on subs) is wonderful. It lets me one-turn conquer CPU player coastal or aquatic cities.
3) You probably already know this, but some observations to share about destroying victory wonders
- you can seriously damage the wonder with air power or artillery, but you need a tank or infantry (or melee ship) to actually destroy it.
- after you destroy it, reach the end of that turn and save your game. Reload using that save. I've observed weird bugs if I keep playing, where the victory screen still sorta/kinda thinks that the wonder is still there. Save/reload clears that up
4) Range of my aircraft: by the time I'm building my own victory wonder, I usually have upgraded my planes to level 3 for max range. If I can get lucky to get "Sky Chitin" from the artifacts, that's even better. Most of the planets I play make it possible to use carriers and get within range of an AI victory wonder. In the rare case where the AI capital is deep inland, I have been known to build an Aquilon or two as capacity 2 carriers. Most of the time, I am conquering the AI's cities (because they objected to *my* victory wonder) so I can just rebase my planes into the conquered cities.

Thanks for posting!

 

[Agent Miles]

Fungal Terran/Standard/Apollo/Standard

Thanks for your comment. Feel free to DL the saved game and check it out in detail. This was my first game at Apollo, so it was not perfect. I probably should have built the Mind Flower two tiles to the east for better defense and I could have got the Tier III Synergy Bonus, but It did not really matter. I tried to get the highest score, too, but missed by a few points. I did notice the glitch where Arishka still was listed as progressing with the Exodus Gate...that I had destroyed. Thanks for the tip. Overall, I believe BERT is an interesting game that deserves more credit.

 

[vorlon_mi]

Overall, I prefer to play at Soyuz difficulty. I've played a few Apollo games, one to get the achievement, and I noticed that the AI do progress to building victory wonders at Apollo. Soyuz gives me a challenge to overcome, while still being fun. I'm in the middle of a campaign to win every victory type with every leader. Earlier this year, I finished all the affinity victories with each leader. I'm not going through to win a Contact victory with those leaders that I haven't yet won with.

Getting a high score -- that's an interesting challenge in BERT. In Civ3 (my most-played) and Civ4, the player gets a bonus to their score by winning sooner. Winning on turn 250 is better than winning on turn 300. In Civ5 and BERT (and Civ6, FWIW), the player does not get a score bonus for winning sooner. The final score is boosted by controlling more cities, learning more techs, acquiring more virtues, and growing your empire. When I'm working to win with Harmony / Mind Flower or Contact / Beacon, I've sometimes set my smaller cities to just produce Food and grow, to boost the score.
The objectors to my victory wonder -- (Yoda voice) always two, there are -- usually need to be wiped out. So the score for their cities/population move to my side of the ledger.

 

[Agent Miles]

Smart play is this.
I agree that it's more fun on Soyuz. One thing that I do to increase my score is to buy up every tile that my cities do not own yet. Even after you win the game, you can add to your score this way. I once had highest score by just 2 points.