Newbie military question

Ok I got this game several months ago, played it off and on, and now I'm back to trying it again. One thing that has me really confused is "Military production". I've never gotten it above 0. I get my colonies stomped left and right because it says I have 0 military.

What am I doing wrong? My research is giving me space weapons and space military but why is it saying I have 0? How do I train soldiers or whatever to keep my colonies safe?

Thanks!

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I would recommend setting the difficulty to as low as possible. Just play around with the game like that for a while until you can figure things out.

Set all your economic slider bars equally and put Gov spending on about 30 - 40% from the start. Do not rush buy anything.

Your empire should hum along slowly but surely on those settings untill you are sure you have enough money to bump up gov spending. Set at the lowest difficulty level, you shouldn't have too much trouble from the computer players.

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You need ARMED ships to get a military rating. Research either Beam, Missile or Mass Driven Weapons.

Then
Click the button to the left of the "Find Button". This takes you to the shipyard. There you can build a new custumized ship. Choose a hull and stuff it with weapons of 1 type only (forget about defense for now).
Save your ship and build it in your colonies - and enjoy a military rating>0.

Soldiers are only needed for envading other planets, which is not really necessary if you start on an easy level. Go for a tech or culture victory - it's easier.

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