OK, I'm completely new to the Galciv series but not to strategy games in general. I've played a few games with the AI set to Normal and I did alright there, but at that level the AI is pretty apathetic when it comes to actually building ships and attacking you. I decided to move the AI up to Bright and see if at that level it would start surprising me, I also switched over to playing the Yor at this point, albiet I had customized them to start with a 30% economic bonus. The game was set up in a gigantic galaxy, tight clusters with abundant stars and planets, I had about 5 good class 11+ worlds that I settled almost immediately and I could not for the life of me get my economy out of the toilet! The only way to insure even a reasonably small negative cash flow was to turn my industrial capacity down to a ridiculously low level, needless to say I retired from the game and came here.

Can some of the veterans here share step-by-step how they build a good, solid economy from the ground up? Since I've read the AI becomes very aggressive as you ramp the difficulty levels up, I'd like to be able to build strong, solid economies capable of pumping out many ships, but only for defense, of course Any help in doing this would be greatly appreciated.