Howdy Y'all. Noob Needs Serious Help!

If you want to be a research freak, then start out with being in the Technologist party (20% research bonus), and go for a Neutral Alignment as soon as possible to get the Neutrality Learning Centers - which are the most powerful research buildings in the game. Then build lots of them.

Omega Research Center (available once Discovery Sphere is researched) will help on your main research world, and Nano Recorders (available with Sensors Mark III) and Hyper Computers (available with Aereon Missile Defense) will help overall. And of course, snag and improve as many research resources as you can.

This is an awful tough question. There are so many ways to play that trying to give someone a cookbook strategy is almost impossible. Hopefully you'll get a lot more response than just mine and most of them will probably have some more specific information than I'm going to give you.

You need to take all the advice with a grain of salt. People will tell you what works for them. This may or may not work for you. Use what you can, but if it doesn't work go on to the next thing. Also you'e going to get a lot of good advice but much of it will conflict with other good advice. Take care that the strategy you try to implement makes sense as a unified whole.

Play small, short games trying out what works for you. The AI at the lower levels doesn't do much but drool. Playing beneath your level can be instructive but it can also develop bad habits that you'll need to unlearn as you progress. You don't need to finish or win every game that you start at the begining. Once it's clear that a level is no longer challenging move up in difficulty. At some point around tough you'll get a big shock, mainly in the speed at which the AI colonizes planets.

You need to at least keep on par with the AI's colonization rate. But you'll also need to cut off your colonization rush prior to when the AI cuts their's off. The AI's won't spend much effort on military until all planets are colonized, but once they're done you need to be ready. If a more powerful civ comes along and asks for money to not kill you, pay them but take it as warning that you need to prepare for war ASAP.

No one is going to be able to "give" you a strategy, you're going to hear some very reasonable sounding ideas but they'll be difficult to actually implement. Just work on it and once you have some good things going you can ask more specific, less open ended questions that are easier to answer. Anyway, learning is probably more than half the fun.

There are alot of strategies you can use to achieve victory in this game. Its not quite like other games in which there is only one way to win. Just pick a strategy that works for you and stick with it. You could win by research, military, or by creating alliances, or even by having your cultural influence large enough to take over the map. If your a beginner, start at the easier levels such as below "normal" intelligence. I'm still trying to learn how to play the game myself and so I can't really give you any detailed strategies as of yet, but I have found some strategies that work for me.

I'm going to stick to the bare bones of the way you describe your preferred playing style, and try to keep this short. If you like to build up considerably before you get involved in any conflicts, there are two key factors (there are others, but these are the main ones) to keeping AI factions off of your back.

The first is your Diplomacy rating; having a high Diplomacy will make your relations with the AI factions more favorable. Take some of your starting racial ability points in Diplomacy and research the diplomacy, government, trade, and alignment techs heavily. Also build the Diplomatic Translators as soon as you can. Your diplomacy rating also affects how favorably AI factions will trade techs with you.

The second key factor to keep AI factions from attacking is your military rating. No matter how good your diplomacy is, if you appear militarily weak they will attack eventually. At the beginning of the game, it helps to build a tiny ship with a weapon on each of your planets. A particle beam is fine for this. It guards each planet from simple transport invasion and gives you a respectable (for early game) military rating. Even if you feel it gets in the way of what you really want to be doing, keep researching or trading for new weapon techs as you go along and keep building warships. Try to keep your military rating at least in the middle of the chart.

That's enough for now - best of luck!

Mess with abilities a lot. Make sure to get the maximum research and morale boost. That'll make it easier for a research style of play. Any points after that should go to economy, then luck, then whatever you feel like.

At least in my opinion. Play a couple games on your own before using any advice here. It'll give you a feel for what works for you.

Re keeping the AIs off your back as long as possible while you're playing a research-oriented game, once you pull well enough ahead in techs you can use your lower level techs as gifts or trade with the AIs.

This is especially helpful if your economy is struggling, but can also be a way of meddling with AI relations (e.g. helping a mid-ranked AI on the other side of the galaxy remain an attention-holding threat to its neighboring AIs).

Aye, I'll echo what has been said. There is no ONE winning strategy cause there can be several. Plus theres at least 4 ways to win. Keep that in mind when you make your race to play with. Pick a strategy based on how you primarily want to win. Military, Diplomacy, Reasearch, or Inluence. I'd choose some bonuses to help you achieve those ends. As well as some money makers, credits can buy you happiness or warships in a pinch. I'd also setup trade routes even if I am going military, I still trade with the other races while someone is getting the nebulae knocked out of them

I've read the beginner strategy guide (some good points),

looked over some of the strategies here (way past me)

read the manual (not greatly helpful).

I do have the collector's edition,

Have you upgraded your game to 1.4X? You stated you were new so I just wanted to point this out. This will make your game play experience that much more entertaining! If you have not, you should do so immediately! It makes for an entirely different game.

I started out playing a gigantic galaxy, all races, abundant everything, custom race, and set to cakewalk. Halfway through the game I had learned the basics and ended up quitting the game due to lack of an opponent... Just got really boring. Stay with it till you get an idea of what everything does and how you would like to run your tech.

Once you understand the basics ramp up the difficulty a few notches and test your skills on a small map. I did this and found I still crushed the AI. If this happens to you, ramp it up another notch or two. The reason why I am saying this quite frankly, is because the AI helps make the game, and keeps the game fun.

Building an Empire is fun and all, but will start to become redundant. Add some spice when you are ready, and the game becomes an entity of its own.

Good luck sir.

i think of GalCiv2 as a balancing act. it's not often possible to do everything you want to do when you want, and focusing on 1 part of the game will hurt you if you overlook others.

i find the most difficult part of the game the initial colony rush; but here are a few general principals i follow.

use planets differently, and don't try to balance them. i think low quality planets are best used soley for research and extra income. mid quality planets should be balanced and mainly produce "small" things like constructors. your highest quality planets should serve as your manufacturing, research and economic capitals. pay attention to bonus tiles when picking these, but a particular bonus tile doesn't necessarily mean that planet should be used for that end (for example, a +300% production tile can be just as useful on a research planet; think of it as freeing up 3 other tiles for research).

i think the best species for heavy research is the terran. their bonuses in diplomacy and trade help improve relations considerably.

galactic resources help a lot, but don't get too down if you can't get that many early on. for some reason the AI tends to periodically destroy their own mining bases. wars (between other players) are also a great way to snag new resources. station a single constructor on guard next to every resource, and check up on them every few turns.

i suggest using missles early on to defend yourself. they do a point more damage than their counterparts in beams and drivers. don't research past the last iteration of harpoons; the cost of missile research jumps considerably. i recommond switching to drivers after that. they have the nano ripper and the most cost efficient weapons too. plus, building up early defences in missles "fools" opponents into defending their ships against missles. if you switch to another weapons once you're more securely developed, it'll be a shock to any preparations they've made against you. you shouldn't start researching a second weapon type until you've started building higher end structures on your planets; if you're truely weapons oriented, all ships you build before that should simply be thought of deterrants rather than anything actually useful. focus on weapons, don't worry too much about speed or defense.

tech trading is good for catching up, but not so good for getting an extreme lead.

economic starbases will help your greatly.

Excellent points and opinions for all who replied. I have a lot to consider. I do have version 1.4x, so thanks to Quixen for that recommendation, it sure woould make a difference if I didn't have it, considering all the changes Stardock has made!

We seem to be on the same wavelength Quixen, because I am doing exactly what you did and expect to find what you stated, that the game gets boring doing so, so yes I will start over and ramp up the difficulty once I've mastered the game mechanics.
I like your follow up suggestion with a smaller galaxy and will either do that or add more opponents in a larger galaxy, but either way, I do plan to add back in the AI for more of a challenge.

Again, Thanks to everyone for your advice!

James.