This can still be done, but the whole strat revolves around a few things right from the start.
- Get whatever tech your race of choice has for boosting your population growth asap i.e. recruitment centers and rush buy them followed by a farm and nothing else untill the population can support the massive cost of going mass factorys (make sure you lower your taxes)
- Research Trade for econ capital and put it on your home world
- Research Sensors and build a few survey ships and if you havent already you should pickup the luck skill for this
- Research deplomacy all the way through
- Tech trade like mad and sell sell sell (one tech at a time to each race though) but dont give up any of your deplomacy tech ( you will live and die by this early game)
- All planets should be focused to research when you need to crunch out those techs
- Once you have your yellow techs in order start on the econ techs, but be careful adv. Marketcenters are just fine untill you can tech stright to stockmarkets later
- Keep an eye on the manufacturing techs, some factorys are not work the maintenance cost.
I find it useful to make a small military force right after I finnish teching to Adv. marketing centers, usually 3 defenders on each planet (dont make ships yet since the early game ships the comp makes you are better due to the bug), and last but not least keep the other races in a constant state of war, peace is a bad thing as it lets empires generate large fleets.
I hope this helps a little