GC Noob needs a little advice

1&2 Hmm... This is where everyones strategy differ's. Wish I could give you a best of the best play by play, but I can't. But I'd be happy to tell you what I do. I rush buy two factory's, 1 regular colony ship, finish researching impulse drive (right after ion drive, some races get it some don't) and then about 3 or 4 regular colony ships. What I've been meaning to do is send additional colony ships to transfer population to high grade planets to speed reproduction and give the colony a jumpstart. But sure, I've heard of plenty of people that just buy colony ships like crazy, though I recomend doing custom ones with better engines.

3. Ummm. Yes & No. Certain technologies are more important than others, and at certain difficulties. Diplomacy and trade are great to research, the AI values them highly and you can trade them to every other AI for every other technology. Except weapons and defenses, usually. If a civ has a military lead it'll try to keep it.

4. Completely and totally dependent on what you want to do with that colony. A couple of entertainment centers on high quality planets will help tremendously though.

5. I've seen differing approaches. Mainly 3, though I think I made one up . One, EVERYTHING! Two, Everything of quality 6-10 minimum. Three. Everything except planets next to another high quality planet that you can probably culture flip to your side. 3 is kinda made up. Its based on the idea of letting the aliens colonize mars to culture flip them.

6. Custom ships. Custom ships. Custom ships. Try to get to know all the other cultures as fast as possible before initiating trading. Trade with everyone, usually. You'll know when not to, when you have a gameplan. Economy starbases are your friends. Build them anywhere where they can hit multiple decent quality planets, and anywhere were they can hit either your trade routes or a few others. Yes, I just found out that your income goes up for hitting other's trade routes.

Anyone else wanna help him out?

Skew the game to your favor at the start. Set all the other Races to "Fool" lvl Inteligence. you probably knew that.
Set some to be ally's at the game start. one or two should be enough. If you really need help, set your auto-allys to a higher intellegence lvl. you might also reduse the total numer of races.

1) Start off homebase with one factory... makes production faster afterwards. Depending on your racial bonuses or how you want to play, develop the home planet to either research, economy or factories. Try to specialize a bit because your home planet is going to be the strongest planet you own until you find/conquer a better PQ planet in the early middle game (dependant on galaxy size and number of planets, etc)

2) I pump out colony ships and 2 scouts in the early game for the planet rush. Then after the initial 5K runs out, I build them as needed.

3) Technology is important in most stages of the game. In the early part, it's for trade so you can get more techs without too much researching. In the middle part, you need to get enough diplomacy for trading or conquering, depending on playing style. In the ending game, techs aren't as big as you're either winning by now, so keep it up, or the AI is kicking your tail all over the stars.

4) I build 1 factory as a rule to make production faster. Everything else is based on what I want the planet to do, i.e. research, economy, or production.

5) Grab anything you can that is 4 and up quickly. At PQ4, there are only 3 or 4 squares free and you won't be able to do much with it at all. However, leave your home system's "mini-planet" alone until you have your ships out colonizing the reachable star systems. Nobody will come in and snatch that planet away from you that quickly.

6) Listen to Citizen agnostangel. That ship customizer isn't there for a side game, no matter what Stardock claims. (No offense there Stardockers! ) Customize EVERYTHING, even if you don't want to make your ships look cool. Put the engines/weapons/defense/modules that you need as stock ships are not made to defend against the AI's adaptive attacks.

Starbases... build'em, love'em, and spam'em. These rather powerful little buggers (perhaps a bit too strong at
higher levels) make a big difference between a struggle for victory or an easy victory.

Diplomacy is a must. If you have no friends trading with you in the universe, you better have the strongest fleet, or you're playiing a losing game.

Last but not least, play how YOU like to play. There are a quite few victory conditions in the non-campaign mode, so make it a point to try for each one and see how each playing style suit you. Good luck.

Learn the tech tree. Certain technologies can cause a big boost at certain points, especially the military ones. Lasers 1-4 just make them smaller, but when you jump to Phasers, damage goes from 1 to 2. So do your techs in "clumps", then switch back to another "clump" on a different tree. Learning lasers 4 withouth going to phasers is a waste (except in the case of point 3 below).

Keep an eye on the production queues on your planets. Due to the governor, I will often find myself making unnecessary upgrades ahead of things I really need (i.e. soil enhancements ahead of other thing when I have free tiles on the planet. Entertainment complex upgrades on planets where morale is 80%). Move things up and down in the queue to give maximum benefit.