Getting Butt Kicked Need Help

You need to give us a few details...like what aspect of the game is troubling you. There is no "walk-thru." Different situations call for different strategies. Let us know HOW your getting whacked about and we can guide you. Are you having morale problems? Money problems? War problems? Just plain "cant figure out how to do XXX" problems? Work with us here buckaroo! We'll have you up and runnin in no time.

My POP doesn't grow. I soon hit the -500 limit so everything slows down. Eventually several civs declare war on me. Before I can produce defenders thay take down mt planets.

Population:

Pop growth is tied pretty tightly to morale; e.g. below 54% it doesn't grow at all, and taxes (they don't DIE, they just hide from the government ). Planet quality also proves crucial for maintaining morale, e.g. a PQ20+ world can take a large population far better than a PQ15, and anything less than PQ14 you should probably think about skipping unless you've got PQ bonuses or you need the planet for range purposes.

Budget -- don't expect to keep spending at 100% unless you're exploiting diplomacy and turning low-level AIs into cash cows through what can become extremely lucrative trading, or you create a lot of starbases to boost trade routes. And be careful about that 'Purchase' button; long-term payments add up really quickly... as does ship maintenance if you go berserk with that.

Oh, and be careful what you build. Don't play this like Civ where you might want every structure at every colony. Improvement maintenance cost can really add up.

Foreign relations --
- Diplomacy helps. In particular, with recent patches diplomacy became quite powerful. Even small gifts can improve relations significantly esp. technology, and if you have a good diplomatic ability advantage.
- Trade routes give both sides income and helps keep 'em friendly.
- Having the same alignment helps.
- Keeping 'em weak helps, e.g. by bribing them to go to war against each other, they're less likely to be strong enough to see you as a victim.

Don't be so sure

~SDC~

Some general early game strat tips that I use:

Set spending to around 50/50 for military & research, don't worry about social yet. Gov't Spending @ 100%, and taxes at 40-45%.

First research Comm Theory and Uni Translator so you can immediately begin trading/selling tech once you make contact.

Personal opinion is that on smaller maps it's better to skip defenders and the defensive tree at first and go straight for Corvettes. 4 vettes in each system will keep the AI off your back indefinitely on Beginner and costs almost no maintenance.

Once you can see that the expansion phase is nearing its end, pump social spending up to 25%: get things like Soil Improvement and Habitat Improvement before anything else as higher PQ means higher taxes and better production for free.

Trade is paramount to both get your income flowing and to keep AIs happier with you. If someone beats you to trade, buy it off of them and then turn around and sell it to everyone else. Choose one planet to be your econ base and pump your freighters out from there (this makes it better for pumping the trade income later on with starbases).

Think about an early war as soon as transports become available. The AI is very bad about defending planets in the early game. What I often do is as soon as I can start building Battleaxes is use those soon to be obsolete vettes to invade whoever my weakest neighbor is. The AI isn't so hot about defending planets early game, this lets you get an edge in territory over the other AIs which is a huge help.

Just keep plugging at it, you'll get better.

Research strategies will vary from map size to map size...but here are a couple samples I use.

On tiny:
Comm Theory->Univ Translator->Diplo->Trade (iffy on this one)

Weapons Theory->Phasers (start building star fighters)

Indust Theory -> (etc)

On Huge:

Comm Theory->Univ Translator->Diplo->Trade (iffy on this one)

Propulsion->Art. Gravity->Controlled Gravity (for grav accel)

Weapons Theory->Phasers (start building star fighters)

Basic Medical->Enivorment control? (the one that leads to aphrodisiacs)

When you initially set your sliders, set your taxes ~50 percent (make sure you dont drop your morale too low)

I start spending at 70-0-30 until I turn the corner from colony/military to social phase where I switch to 40-30-30. After researching trade, I start chucking out a couple freighters to open a couple trade routes.

This and code monkey's advice should give you a starting point to work with.

JW: see above posts. Couldnt have given better advice myself.