Help... dont know what im doing

Plop,

Building farms on tiles with food bonus is a bad idea (it's not stupid if you don't know). One farm without bonus is more than enough in 99.99% of the cases. Too many inhabitants on a planet decrease the moral (and so decrease the tax revenue from that planet) (there are some threads about the optimum population per planet)

A newly colonized planet won't produce any positive income until some months, so stacking many fresh colonies will hurt your income pretty badly. Don't over-rush . Plus when your income reach -500cr, you block your ship&buildings production and research, so buying labs may slow you down more than speeding your research.

Need leave money in bank so can run economy at minus for a while . Id leave 1500-2000 in bank and lower taxes to grow people. IF lots of places are at 100% they get population growth bonus. I tend to build a troop transport early and taxi people off the home world to get new colonys started . I dont know what community thinks of this. Recruitment centres are also good to build. Eventually want to have some high population centres with many market centres\banking things .

good luck 

I'm far from an expert. But I'd recommend producing a couple of scouts as soon as possible to go with your flagship. The money you get from the anomalties will be very helpful as well as the increased exploration. 

You will need financial buildings to make money for your labs, building maintenance and ship maintenance. Make financial research a priority and adjust your domestic spending alider (I go all research since I use the all-lab strategy.) Morale research is nice too since it allows a higher tax rate. There is early research that gives passive bonuses to different things which can be picked up quickly.

Yeah, you'll be running a negative income for a while, just try not to run a negative credit total.

Oh, and about rush building...I rush my first lab, and a colony ship. Rushing too much stuff will get you broke quick. It has already been mentioned to go for 100% moral early on to increase your population growth.

I play with no tech brokering but tech trading enabled. You can trade some stuff like sensors that won't hurt you. Trade of money or tech as you need.

Oh, and of course some races and picks are better for emphasising research than others.

And don't go overboard building on new planets until they get a decent population. I'll start a lab for each colony when it is founded, but not rush it. Then keep an eye on its growth (thus tax income) to see when to start other buildings. If I happen to be rolling in the dough all bets are off and I'll build like crazy.

Oh yeah, and hang in there! The economic aspect of the game became harder with the last patch and takes some getting used to.

As you increase the difficulty level in the game, the number of winning paths drop.  Still, up to the level just above Tough (max CPU), I have found that there are many general courses that lead to wins.  At those lower levels, one can even set up one's race to use a certain strategy and then change one's mind and take a path counter to the one for which the race had been optimized.

For example, one can intend to head for a military win, get a home world or first colony with lots of research tiles, and go get a research vioctory, instead.  Once, I intended to try for an Alliance victory, had the Drengi declare war on me early, I got two early Lucky Rangers, and I just decided to kick butt.

If one has set the game up for Abundant Anomalies, then getting Sensors early and building a few survey ships is worthwhile.  I would not use the Homeworld for that, though.  Instead, use the first colony you make that has a Manufacturing bonus tile or two on it.  That lets that world's population grow and lets you keep harvesting the Homeworld's population.  Otherwise, I have found Mumblefratz' suggestion not to build things on new colonies a good one, waiting instead until the population grows enough to keep the cash flow not too negative.  I use 1 billion as a rule of thumb.

Generally, i rush build little except very early, convert my miner to a colony ship as soon as the fields right next to the Homeworld are done - sooner if there is a juicy planet nearby, tax just enough to keep 100% approval, and let the treasury slowly drift down while at 100% spending.  Every early rush purchase means a couple turns sooner loss of full spending, so I do it very little.  Eventually, I have to bite the bullet and yank up taxes and throttle spending, but just when and for how long is different every game.  Soon, the government, green base, and other economic bonuses combine with higher population to let me get back to full spending and slowly drop the tax rate again.

Wow, Pollock2 really hates pronouns and articles... sounded like a text message... (I'm not trying to be mean, I just have a Jeff Ross-esque sense of humor)

Anyway, don't build farms or labs early unless you get a bonus research tile on the homeworld. I almost always make my homeworld the economic capital. Build a bunch of markets on the homeworld after the initial colony rush, or during it if you have the 8x industry bonus. Your homeworld is the only one that will have a sizeble (sizable? sizeable?) tax base for quite some time.

Some more advise:

1) First get some production up at your home planet so you can produce colony ships fast enough. Consider rush-buying some but don't spend too much on those ships either: rush-buying early in the production process is extremely expensive.

2) Then go for some economy buildings (to avoid plunging into debt too soon) and a bit of research (to get to some nice 10% bonuses for social / military production / economy / morale early on)

3) When you've colonized several planets, do NOT build anything on them except labs if you have bonus tiles for research. In the case of great production bonus tiles you may consider building factories to reap the production benefits early, but be warned that this bonus will also multiply the maintenance cost of those factories!You'll need to wait until the population of a planet has grown enough so it generates some income; only then can you consider building more, as most buildings come with a maintenance cost.

4) You often mention "buying". Do you mean you produce/build those, or do you mean you rush-buy a lot? Rush-buying is only necessary for those initial colony ships and a few initial factories on your homeworld. To save cash it's better to simply construct the other buildings and ships without rush-buying. In the case of labs, getting your labs up a few weeks earlier will not make the huge difference while it eats away from your initial 3000 bc cash.

P.S. those weren't stupid questions, most if not all players have been faced with those at some point. Some innovative minds have found solutions, the other mere mortals (including me) simply ask and pick their brains for some easy answers