1. A good starting position (bonus tiles in morale and production, nearby planets ect.)
2. Colony Rush: Build up some good production and turn the spending to 100% (50%M 10%S 40%R) A colony Ship should take about 3 turns
3. Research Econ buildings, Moral and up to star democracy for a good economic standing
4. If you don´t want to go to war in the early phase of the game just research some basic weapons and build some crappy ships (no engings ect.), so that your military rating is high enough, so that other races will not declare war.
5. Specialize your planets i.e. most planets should have some farms, morale buildings and mostly econ buildings only a few planets are dedicated to research and production

And most important hold the other races in constant war against each other (bribe them to go to war ect.)

Build and maintain a robust and competitive military. The AI preys upon you if you aren't keeping up or staying ahead.

I Agree, but there is such thing as a hopeless starting position ie in a three star cluster in the corner of a large galaxy.

Trevor, i would bear in mind that tesb who most solidly answered your question has his stlye and although i agree with most things he said that's only one style of play.

I tend to play pretty dynamically, ie, i rejig my economoy fairly often depending on the situation.
Typically this is how i start
i set my sliders to 90%M 1%S 9% research or whatever gets me the colony ship in the least amount of turns with the rest in research, rush-buying a couple of factories (2or3) and the terran +1 speed special building, also moral 100%.
This carries on for three or four colonizations (ignore the sister planet in your system until later), its not worth buying any buildings on these new planets yet except recruitment center, get this asap and focus the new planets on research.

If there are lots juicy planets nearby then continue to churn out colony pods bearing in mind your falling behind in tech and will eventually have to switch over to teching up for a while mostly to heal your economy. Now with this strategy there is a point where your economy is going down the khazi, if its realy bad like -100 a turn reduce moral to ~75% to curtail the fall,when you have less than 15 turns or so left of deficit is when i increase my taxes to the bare minimum to stabilize the fall and begin piling on the research into econ buildings first, then star democracy along with some social production. Oh and get those trade routes in when you can they really help.

Specialization of planets is key, but do this by situation, bear in mind the bonus asteroids can have, if there are a few or two sets near a planet it was born to be a producer of military hardware. PQ 5,6,7 with no bonuses its an economy planet, one farm rest econs, i dont tend to build moral buildings unless there's a real problem with it on one planet, later on i set one of my production monsters to building the race wide moral bonus buildings.
Also position of planets is key!!, near the border of an enemy you cant crush for a while, mabye not a good spot for an all research planet or a planet with unique buildings, but if its in a key place, just the spot for a military behemoth even if you have to fill in 10 factories with no bonuses.

Economy is king, you have to balance the number of economy planets to military and research ones (focus your planets accordingly) and you need money to support fleets, ultimately cash is derived from tax payers so keep em breeding!
Also dont be afraid to slacken off one side of your economy/prod/research for getting a key tech or planet or resource.

Also a handy tip for building ships is say you just got med hulls but you want phasers 1 not laser 5 or whatever on this new ship so it really kicks ass over everything else in the galaxy. Design the ship up with the latest parts you have and start building it, say its a biggie and takes 15 turns, you can build it on backburner for 12 or 13 turns then drop your sliders to focus massively on research and tech up to phasers in a few turns, then switch back to military and your new phaser equipped med hulled badboy will be finished a turn after you researched it. Dont let it be built without the upgrades!

This is what i normally do when there is trouble on the horizon with nearby aliens, have big ships coasting along with sluggish production then when trouble kicks off, research new weapons, switch em over and the then produce big ships just when they are needed.
This sort of switch up in your economy saves having to slowly build up hulking fleets which sit around eating credits, if i know there's a war coming maybe five or six planets with the next gen of warships are potential producers next few turns, and if there's no need for them divert money into researching ever more powerful weapons.

Phew well that's a small insight into my playing style, of course to someone else its probably wrong, but it works well enough for me up to crippling.

Alex