I'm a newbie so take this advice with a grain of salt. I am playing huge & gigantic galaxy, Challenging, random races, random race AI. You didn't say what you're playing, so if its like masochistic or something, skip my post

The 1st stage of the game is Expansion. You gotta get out there and find the cherries (artifacts), resources, and planets.

I always research in this order: Xeno Research, Star Cartography, Sensors. Then I alternate between good engine techs or Economics. Once you get Sensors and decent engines, design a faster Surveyor, Colonizer, and Constructor. Send out at least 6-10 fast Surveyors in different directions & put 'em on Auto-Survey.

Once you find good habitable planets (or, if the games on Habitable being rare, ANY habitable planet) immediately send a fast Colonizer after it. When I colonize a planet, I :

1. Buy the first Factory
2. Focus it on Social production
3. Set a Stardock to be immediately built
4. Once its built, the new planet (and they get farther and farther away) begins building Colonizers.

If there's more than one planet in a solar system and the one I'm colonizing is crappy, I often won't build a starbase, but I always try to if I can.

When you meet & greet other races, note which direction they are expanding in, and try to beat them to it. Flank their expansion efforts. I like to plunk a scout or something along their major planets. Once I see a Colonizer of theirs, I click on it to see where its going, and then immediately try to get my Colonizer there first. Note you'll probably need good espionage on them to do this (another thing I do, immediately budget espionage money on all races I meet, even "friendlies").

Best buildings to have are Economy-based. Money is the #1 thing to focus on in the game. Try to put at least two markets on every planet.

Good luck!

This plan of yours, what are the results you gotten from it? You filthy rich and holding out or are you in a straggle somewhat?

Evolved. Diplomacy is key for begining players. Keep the AI at 'cool' or better. You want them to let you decide when the right time for war is.

There is plenty of good strat stuff in the strat thread. have a read when you have a bit of time to spare to browse through it. You will find that you game will get better.

When you click on everything on the left side(GCII site) scroll down and you'll see the forum categories.

I also have another question. When it comes down to Economic Forts, what do they really effect? I build them like crazy sometimes but I see no difference in my economy. I can understand that if you build them on trade routes, they will flourish in stats. I also defend them like crazy with numberless amounts of defenses.

You know that you have to upgrade Starbases by moving other Constructors to them. To get the production modules you need to research the Industry techs. And they are really good aids to boost your production.

Economy Starbses don't increase the ammount of money you get (apart from the trade modules increasing the trade routes), they increase the Military, Social and Research production of your worlds within their range.

That's incorrect. That's one benefit among many. Yes, they (supposedly) increase trade revenue, and you can also upgrade their scanners, give them offensive and defensive capability, and the production boost also has several levels of bonuses. For starbases mining galactic resources, you can also improve their mining.

Many of the improvements are reliant upon researching the appropriate techs

H have found that on challenging on medium maps and below I always lose the colonization race. I'll guess I'll have to try the larger maps.