Salutations.
While I fire-up my next game, I figured I'd also start off one of these threads to follow it along. I'm a new guy (both to the forums and the game), so I'm sure that I'll learn more from any feedback (and even looking at my play in hindsight) than any reader will be able to glean from here - but I'll do my best to make things interesting, if nothing else.
This is just a 'normie' game (no 'MEGA INSANEZORZ WINZ!' strategy here, I'm afraid) - Normal Difficulty, 9 other guys, a Random number of Minors, Large Galaxy, Common Planets/Habitability/Stars, Loose Clusters, Abundant Anomolies/Asteroids, Normal Tech. The AI races are set to random.
I then set-up my guys:

If this were MoO, the 8-point +2 Speed Advantage would be my Tolerant pick. I just couldn't imagine playing without it. There's so much bang for your buck in that (admittedly hefty) 8 points that I could go on for ages. I can forget about needing to go down the Propulsion path for the immediate future. I can outrun everyone else while the whole colonization thing is running (and without putting those expensive 'engine' things on my ships, to boot!), and while I'm at it, gobble-up far more anomolies. I can save space and cash on my early combat vessels. I can to get Resources and Asteroids quicker.
...It's just freakin' fantastic, IMHO.
The rest of the picks, well, I'm not really sure of. They just sort of jump at me. Extra research is always nice, Luck (I think) will help me out when I'm grabbing those anomolies, Weapons... I'm not sure if that's a firepower bonus or an accuracy bonus, but either sound nice when I want to mix it up early and solidly with my opponents (re: everyone else on the map). Universalists helps me out with the luck bonus, gives me a solid economy pump, gives the only Pop growth bonus of any party and throws-in a defense bonus too. That sounds like an alright (if less specialized) package to get some fighting done with.
Lastly, my Superability. Super Warrior is the only one that strikes me as appropriate for a bunch of war-mongering space mustalids (though I'm dubious that 'First Strike' is as helpful in the long run as Exponential Population Growth or the ability to colonize extra types of planets. We'll see how much mileage I can get out of it at any rate).
So, I get the galaxy all fired-up:

Not such a bad location (in fact, that's pretty good. Not cramped into a corner, but also offset from the center so I'm not a prime target for beating the crap out of). I'll have to see what the neighboring stars have to offer for planets, and what I can wrangle-up with my flagship.
I kick things off by queuing-up half of Den's tiles with Factories, the other half with Markets (I also got a small manufacturing bonus tile, which is nifty):

...And I leave my Sliders looking like this (...I tend to leave Research at 0, just using the 'focus' buttons on my planets to build-up research for my instead. I'm sure this isn't as efficient as building actual Research buildings, but I see it as freeing-up a branch on the tech tree (I don't have to grab research improvements) and streamlining my economy). I've tried going the other way, but it seems to be prohibitively expensive (if better at absolutely KILLING the tech tree) and not as cooperative when it comes to building your ships (colony ships at this stage of the game, in particular):

Lastly, I decide on my research path. This game I want to be all about military dominance and conquest, so I decide to focus on these three branches to start:
1) Military branch -> Invasion technologies
2) Logistics technologies
3) Military branch -> Weapon technologies
First strike likely means that I don't need to worry much about defense or hull size (if it computes First Strike like I'd hope it does, regarding fleet combats), so those shouldn't need to come into the picture until later.
I imagine I'll want the Economy branch after my initial sorties are done with to keep the pace and maintain my war machine after I've stolen some planets and cut apart a some starships, so that'll be my focus after I've researched all but the best of the best guns for my ships.
Then I'll go for miniaturization, then big bad hulls.
...Not sure if all this planning is necessary, or such a great idea, but it's how I did well at MoO - and a lot of MoO translates pretty directly to GalCiv (like Production > Anything Else).
So, I'm to bed for the night, but I'll run through a few turns tomorrow before work and post what progress (or lack thereof) I manage to make.