Create (or Edit) a race and give them Colonization Trait (this gives you back Admins each time you colonize a planet). This is basically easy mode because you will have many more planets than any Civ that does not have it. Gives you a great production advantage.

Another thing I do (as I like bigger ships) is (while not at war): I will colonize a planet in a star system that has more than one planet and assign/create a shipyard. (repeat five times, assigning it to the same ship yard) so you have five planets assigned to a single shipyard, then you move a shipyard to each star system, and once the shipyard is within five spaces of the planet, anchor it and  create Colonyship and make landfall. This will allow you to easily assign more than five planets to a ship yard.  Note: this is a trade off for building bigger ships over smaller ships. AI seems to prefer smaller ships.

Always assign any planet to a shipyard that has space as ALL planets have ship constructions which is going to waste if not assigning it.

Hi cxp36,

The secret is to maximize your homeworld asap and I really mean asap. It depends on race and traits, but essentially you want to rush-buy key buildings like Manufacturing Capital (if you have 'intuitive' trait you can rush-buy this building on the 1st turn!), Technological Capital, Durantium Refinery, later you might want to add Thulium archyve/Hyp.Matrix as well. Grow population as quickly as you can to 25b++, send your initial colony ship to planet and cut 2b of population there. By turn 40-50 you should be rockin' medium ships popping out every 2-3 turns from a single planet. If you get your hands on Prototype Antimatter early you could snipe down AI shipyard with 3 small ships, this is basically game over for AI. Also, AI will remain neutral towards you until you research universal translator, delay this tech if you want to postpone war.

The best thing for you would be to hook up with someone for a multiplayer game. There's a whole bunch of people who play against godlike AI regularly,  that's where I learned how to properly play the game.

He literally stated that in the very first line of the post lol...r u drunk again

He stated Stardock youtube videos

I was taking about Macsen Let Play, Mal - YouTube, and Hadtian - YouTube.

1. Make sure you are customizing your race to benefit from bonus production, and pick up one of the abilities that aids in expansion by providing administrators. 

2. Are you assigning multiple planets to each shipyard?  You should aim to max out at 5 planets for each shipyard.  This will help getting out ships faster. 

3. ASTEROID MINING BASES!!!  I cannot emphasize how important these are.  They provide raw production points.  They are extremely powerful.  Mine these as fast as possible!

4. Improve relations with surrounding races through trade. if you are trading with a civ, they are less likely to attack you. 

5. Design ships efficiently!  You should almost never build the base ships provided, even the colonizer and starbase ones!  Redesign them, strip out the extra sensors and other modules, make them cheaper to produce.

6. Maximize production on your first few worlds.  Get production buildings up quickly and leverage adjacency bonuses. 

I have only played a handful of games for Galciv, but this stuff all jumped out at me as super important.  there are probably other optimization strategies that help as well. 

I agree with the Admiral about picking up one or two of the early game mercs, and I like the ones he mentions.  The only problem I have with Brindle's is that instead of revealing an unknown empty planet that you could colonize, it gives you one that has a population that far exceeds its population cap and thus it starts off with the population dying off and an approval of 20% if you're lucky.

If you were going to customize try aquatic, xenophobic, and inventive. This works good for me. I heard that the Arceans are the best on the game. Remember customize your ships. You don't necessary have to go wide if you settle your citizens on your home planet. I would go scientific. Remember laying down factories first gives you a build advantage. Pay attention to adjancencies remember them game to game. Some adjancencies work one way other's work both ways. Flat numbers are better than percents. PAY ATTENTION TO BUILDING TYPES. If you are not playing the Yor cities are good for adjancencies. If I was you I would pick Slyne for this reason I would rather give up a few starbase, and factory upgrades for the duranthium instead of a flat food amount. Duranthium still most important either way. Pick adjancencies  with as many surrounding tiles as possible. Asteroids are better for production than population. After I go for the Brindles I would use a colony ship to get rid the excess population, and research diplomats thEY Seem work well to help aVOID WAR. Pragmatic seems to have a nice option to avoid war for 50 turns I wait to be cooled first. Spies and leaders are good if you are going wide. All the above starbase advise are good. One thing to remember about ship construction is if you are not using it it's not like before it gets wasted instead of going to social. Keep an eye on your distance from starbases. Pragmatic have a good option for this to. Grab Duranthium Elurim, and anti matter as fast as possible. Duranthium grab as much as possible it comes in handy. Your going to need some promethium later on. Besides the hyperspace project anti matter makes good engines. Not all planetary resources seem helpful pay attention to what works for you. Lets see if this helps.

Now about diplomacy it is both a curse and a blessing. It matters how they feel ABOUT YOU. Open borders treaty be nice. Declare friendship as often as possible. Remember if they have a lot of a resource they will practically give it away. If they are almost out they will not reasonably trade it. About espionage do it to the most advanced guy. Try this and tell me if this helps. 

I think Arceans are the best in the game if you have Techapods.  Or double Xanthium.   Their starbase bonuses are just nuts, even without either.

Ditto the Xenophobic.  The Iconians are Xenophobic (not Arceans), but I like Xenophobic if you you pick Militaristic in a Custom race to partially offset it.  If you pick that and +10% raw production, you are only down -20% in shipyard production (-50% + 20% militaristic + 10% raw).   A few more bonuses and Malevolent 3 trait, and you won't even notice it's penalized.   I just rush-buy my first colony ship.

Now I've got a question:   where should the Aquatic Biospheres go?  Around the Antimatter plant?