Well I got this game Wednesday, and for the past two days I've tried, failed and quit repeatedly every night for probably 6-8 hours straight. Not sure what my problem is. I always play as the Altarians, and set them up to have +60 Economy, +45 Research, +25 Luck, +25 Creativity, leave their Morale bonus alone, and choose Technologists as their political party. Sometimes I'll even get set up well, but I always fall into this stupid pattern where I claim about... 5 or 6 planets. At first I put 100% into Technology and buy my buildings, but then I grow broke and set Social and Technology to 50% each. I do this every time, but things move so slowly, it doesn't seem to matter what I do. The population grows so pathetically slow, the planets I claim are costing me around -30 bc each, the improvements are going too slowly even with 3 factories on each planet, I never bother to build ships, etc. A disaster. I suck.

I'm beginning to wonder if it's better not to build any improvements on a planet until the population grows to a reasonable rate. But regardless, a planet needs... what, 12 bc per turn in maintainance? It's ridiculous. I still have yet to see combat in this game because I get so tired of wondering if I'm wasting my time...