There's a link on the home page to a beginner's guide (by Brad Wardell, I think).

The GalCiv Wiki is growing slowly but steadily and is a good place to look for answers.

And I could swear a volunteer wrote a decent guide of some sort and pitched it here on the forums, but I can't quickly find that post.

If you haven't already done it, try entering some terms you're interested in at your favorite search engine and end the query with (excluding the quotes) "site:forums.galciv2.com"

Once you research trade, you can create ships with a trade module (or use stock trading ships) then send them to alien planets. Once one gets there, the trade route is automatically set up and you get the creds, that's it. Trade is always available to research once you get through the prerequisite techs. Routes make differing amounts of money depending on distance and economy of the alien planet. Economy starbases can be placed on routes and upgraded with trade modules to increase the route's value. The number of routes you can set up is limited by the level of trade tech you've researched.

Another type of trade is done through the foreign policy manager. By default, races become available once you come across them in space. Or, you can set options to allow relations from the start. You need the universal translater tech to understand what they're saying. Once a relation is established, you can open that race in the foreign policy manager and trade stuff with them. Diplomacy techs improve your advantage and make positive race relations easier to achieve.

To move ships to a "common spot" in space, use a rally point. There a little arrow in the bottom left of the screen that opens the rally point window. Create your rally point from there. Select a ship then press T to open the rally point window. Select the rally point you created and the ship will move there on autopilot.

Okay, hope that helps and enjoy the game!

My primary question remains after 30 minutes of browsing the net. I might have missed "it" because Im in a rush and have to leave this until later (for real life)

However if someone could explain the following, please

I have "this" planet and millions of people living there. I want to make soldiers out of some of them to use in attacks on other civs but also in defence of my planets. I want to be able to upgrade their equipment and defence stats. I cannot find any good information on this anywhere... How to manage soldiers as attack/defence and how to manage their weapons and other stats?

Perhaps its limited to building a transport ship and as many as you choose from the planet become soldiers? But in that case how do I build my defence down on the planet. I need to know

You can also build the Galactic Achievement Tir-Quan Training to boost your soldiering skill empire-wide. I'm pretty obssessed with building that one--I want any invaders to pay as much as possible for setting foot, claw, or pseudopod on my worlds.

Some soldiering techs also give you options to boost your chances even further by spending money when you invade. Most cause some damage to infrastructure or planet quality, or at least have a chance to do that. Unfortunately, there is no way to do that sort of spending for defense--all you have there is your population size, your soldiering skill, and any Planetary Defense improvements you've built.

Yea, I always build Tri-Quan Training ASAP as well. The other races will get that one pretty quick if you neglect it. For invasions, I seem to go for Tidal Disruption a lot, it's fairly effective and doesn't degrade planet quality.

To the OP, for defense against invasions, the best thing is build up planet populations with farms and morale buildings. Soldiering techs are important as well. There isn't a designation as far as population goes. They're all soldiers during an invasion or when stocking troop transports. They're all colonists when stocking colony ships.

The numbers are the straight up rate that soldeirs are killed on both sides. So 20/7 means take twenty away from one side and seven from the other, until one side runs out.

All soldiering bonuses are immediately applied. Including to in route transports.

I'd rather have a few tactical choices instead of the lotto click; I know chance is involved, don't see any value in a little "RTS" moment.

In my experience, you most often get a good value if you try to click the instant the window appears. Watching for a good number and trying to catch it never seems to do as well, for me anyway.