How to create an empire?

So, just to make it clear, your question is "How do I win?"

It has nothing to do with Metaverse empires, correct?

Yes pretty much but I can ask about metaverse's and stuff on this thread

I never played at the Beginner level, but I think I recall posters saying that the AI has a tough time doing invasions at that level.

If that's right, then any planets you invade and conquer are likely to stay yours.  Just keep an eye out for the rare enemy transports, and be sure to intercept them if any show up and before they reach any of your planets.

More generally, use diplo bonuses and bribe one enemy to attack another.  I try to get the others into multiple wars and keep the entire galaxy at war, except for my own empire.  As soon as one makes a peace treaty, I re-bribe the stronger one to attack the weaker one.  At higher difficulty levels, an AI will declare war on the human within a turn or two of reaching peace treaties with other AIs. 

Even more generally, the wiki is a great source of info.

You can get good at the game by reading more here and, of course, through experience. 29 planets is no small empire, so you should be able to turn that into a base to conquer the galaxy.  Turn some worlds into economic giants with nothing but economic bonus buildings.  Turn others into shipyards with nothing but factories and manufacturing bonus buildings.  Fill a couple planets with labs.  Now you should really be powerful.

Decide how you want to win and go for it.  Want to conquer?  Pick the nearest race that you don't have treaties/good relations with and target them.  Research weapons, miniaturization, planetary invasion, and build a military.  Then go to war.  Didn't work?  Learn from your mistakes and try again.

Superpowers  holding you down? Find the most powerful one (highest military rating) and pay them to go to war with the others.  Get everyone fighting with everyone else.  Keep your rivals fighting each other to keep the heat off of you.  Cultivate a few friends and send out freighters from your homeworld to their homeworld.  Get economic and research treaties from the minors and as many majors as you can - but don't pay too much for them!  Only give your treaties to your closest friends.

Well, there are a few suggestions.  Also know your tech tree.  See what you can research and plan ahead.

At beginner level the AI is at a big disadvantage both for intelligence and money. You should have room to experiment and not be crushed.  Have fun!

Yeah the drath legion have a pitifull army so I think it will be easy for me to invade them.

And also how do I rotate the camra map in the battlescreen when my fleets engage? I heard somewhere you can do that so I was wondering where can I do that if it is possible?

There are buttons with viewing choices at the bottom of the battle screen and also the one that tells you the battle outcome.   You can even replay the visual part over and over, to see it from different vantages.

Ok but I was wondering if there was a option where you can freely rotate the camra in a battle.

Use the "Free Cam" viewing option. It's directly after "Cinematic" if you cycle through all the options.

Ok thanks. Does anyone know how to colonise planets early on? I try to but then my money keeps on going down and I get really nervious that I am going bankrupt in the game. That happens to me when I try to do a colony rush in teh early game.

Early on the greatest enemy of your growing economy is maintenance.  Every factory or lab that you build, even the basic colony tile that exists after colonisation, cost money just being there.  You can raise taxes to pay for this maintenance, but early on you want to grow your population by giving them tax breaks so their approval stays green.  When populations on your colonies have maxed out, then you get no real benefit from low taxes, so raise them as high as you can go without losing population from low approval.

As you acquire new colonies you may need to lower taxes to get those to grow.  If you've built up a lot of funds from high taxes, you can afford to do this (and run at a loss) for a while.  Or you can provide entertainment by building those kind of buildings and by mining morale (yellow) resources.

But in the meantime, build up just a few planets with only the infrastructure you need to progress.  Dedicate some worlds to producing just money, by placing economic buildings.

The advantage to rebounding from the expense colony rush early is that you can afford to buy planets from other empires sooner, when the populations have barely started to grow.  And of course you can flip them with culture or invade them later on.  So don't worry about not snagging everything in sight, but be concerned about how you're going to develop the tiles you do have.

And Is it just me or am I the only one knowticeing this but the races on Galactic civlizations 2 behave like the Goauld system Lords almost. Like if one gets to powerfull  they want an alliance agianst him. Kind of like the goauld in stargate SG1 if anyone has seen that show. I think the game plays alot like the goauld sytstem Lords.

Also I was wondering what is the Ownership option I see on the map? Is that like a territory map of all the things that you own or is that your culture spreading? Because I think that is your border but I was not sure but I clicked on it and it showed what the area around it was like and it showed every territory in the game so I know where each civlization was so I would not have to scout it.

And Why is it when I turn in some Senarios like the Dread lords returning I hit play and the screen goes black? Why does that happen?

Why is it that some of my planets say that when they are building something that it pops up with the message that if will Never build? It happens to me sometimes but Idon't know why. It also happens when I colonise a world that needs some advanced world colonization. But Even if I have all the world colonization it still pops up with building Never message.

Also how can I build my stuff faster? I have a hard time with that and I want to quickly build my ships.

Ships often will show "Never" when there is a building/improvement also in the queue.  Only when that other improvement is almost done, will a ship also show a completion time.

You can use focus to tune those times, somewhat, though in TA there is a penalty.

To build ships faster, one needs more factories, higher % on ship slider, more race/party bonuses on building stuff.

How do I keep my people happy so that they will not rebell on my planets?

Note that happiness and influence "flipping" are not the same thing.  I suggest reading the galciv2 wiki entries under "approval" and/or "morale."

Morale/Approval factors:

- race points put in morale or base happiness in race setup at game start

- PQ of planet, with those above some # (PQ11?) begin to get bonuses

- tax level

- planet population, happiness goes down as pop increases

- happiness research

- happiness buildings

- if you have run a negative treasury balance for a while, you may get a report of extra morale hit

Is it possible in the map editor that you can make your maps larger than imense?  want to make the map size Galactic which is alot bigger than Imense it will have 1000 by 1000 sectors in the game. I was wondering if it is possible to make the map size larger.

How do I get more ship classes? I only have a few but I cant get like frigates or battleships and I don't know what the technology requirement is. I would like to know how can I get diffrent ship classes quickly? Does anyone know how to do that? What can I do to get more ship classes?