This is my first foray into GalCiv, but not 4X; I've beaten Master of Orion 1-2, Civ 1-5, Alpha Centauri and Civ: BE on normal or harder difficulties.
I beat the tutorial and have been playing on normal or easy with the Terrans ever since, with default settings - except for making the 3 other races in the galaxy random, because I like not knowing what's going to be out there.
What's going to be out there is death.
My last game was on easy and by turn 5 the Snathi (who were right next to me.. again) already had 2 class 19 Progenitor planets. This sort of thing happens virtually every time with the map generation for me, and with nothing around me except for a class 12 (and Mars, of course) I knew where this was going.
I've read some posts on these forums and watched YouTube videos and read the manual. I've tried many tactics; colony ship spam, economy star base spam (to mitigate the enormous spending I'm doing for improvements, ships, etc.), I specialize my planets (research planet, manufacturing planet, economy planet..), I use the ship designer and cut parts/costs when it seems to make sense to, I've tried spamming ships early on and upgrading as technology improves, I've tried holding back until I can build decent ships in the first place, I've tried diplomacy to stop races from killing me, I've tried tech trading to stay ahead.. you get the idea.
I always lose. I'm either outgunned, out moneyed, out teched (or sometimes all 3). Now, I don't mind losing occasionally and I like learning new systems (and this game seems fun; like a spiritual successor to Master of Orion), but 60 hours and no wins on normal or easy..? What am I missing here?
So, if someone kind on here would please explain to me like I'm a 5 year-old what to do. Because I clearly don't get it.