Welcome and enjoy! 

Welcome! CaptainYar is right. Also, there is already a lot of information about the game available. Do check out the GalCiv2 wiki:

https://www.galciv.wikia.com/wiki/Galactic_Civilizations_Wiki

I just got the game and cannot figure out how to play it.  I printed out the manual but it was of no help.  Could someone please tell me how to play it and move my ships.  I need HELP. 

I noticed a few non intuitive things (at least I think so) about movement. If you right click and tell a ship to go somewhere and it says auto move then you would think it would move at the beginning of the next move. It seems like it moves at the end of the next turn. You can still manually move it and I did for a long time thinking the auto move was not working. Eventually I realized it moves at the end of the next move. Also when I discovered how to use the rally point and the governors in the civilization tab it made things much easier for telling your ships to automatically go to a spot. I played on cakewalk to make sure I was at least doing the right things mechanically. I have won in all modes and now it is time for me to increase the diff. It seemed easiest and quickest to win a military victory at least in cakewalk diff. I only did 5 races and a small galaxy. 

So at that level of AI the other civ's will try to win with an influence victory and influence me to death? Just curious?

Welcome, been playing off and on since the first release.  Still enjoy it.  I think this has to be the most replayable game I've ever purchased, one of my all time favorites.  You didn't say what version you're playing, but with all the expansions, the depth of the game is almost endless.

Get familiar with all the options in the game setup.  There's a lot of them and you can really change the character of the games with those.  Again, adds more depth to it.

Well I played on cakewalk to get a feel for the victory conditions and the game mechanics. So after a few weeks I am ready for the big time.  I can't believe what a time suck this game is. 3 hours go by in a blink. Very weird. Anyway yesterday I tried playing as Torian and on normal diff. I went on a large galaxy for the first time with 10 civs. My goal was to turtle and try to win a scientific victory. I had just 3 planets and I did not want any confrontation. The Drengin started taking over the other civs and eventually go around to me. Although I saw it coming and tried to prepare by researching lasers and shields, they came with Frigates and I had fighters. They wiped me out and I never even got close to a scientific victory. I had a lot of trade routes with them and I hoped they would not want to lose them, but the Drengin did not care. They stomped on me, lol. I guess researching more in logistics and hull size is important. I am beginning to believe it is also important to get the military research done earlier, even if you don't plan on using it. BTW I am playing the combo version sold now with both upgrades included and I sand box in TOA, I guess.

Welcome to the game and this forum. I hope you'll ejoy it. Keep us posted about your experiences and post an AAR!

Cheers!

What is an AAR? I assume it is a game recording or something like that.

AAR's are written by the player to presumably describe a game.  Most here are literary in nature...some well written and I'm sure enjoyed by many.  A few are similiar to a field commander reporting post action which can be informative.