Well the whole space stage needs a bit of dedication and i understand that may frustrate thousands of players so i do agree that the easy level should be easy not hard
for me all the difficulty levels didnt make much difference though.
heres some tips for your gameplay > the cash is not important so you have to decide if 1) you wanna have 11250 HP and every single weapon you use will deal more damage and the pirates raid your home planet less often < then be carnivore and military all red goals. thats the easiest to finish the game and includes lots of action and agression
OR
2) you want to be 10% more liked by all races and have some ecological bonuses
for peaceful space stage < then be herbivore and try to ally throughout all stages instead of fighting all green goal . this option is best for peaceful trading and planetbuilding.
either way you gotta stick to the green line from beginning to the end or the red line from beginning to the end , i played it through 3 times and i failed to keep steady blue line but seems as cash has no meaning later on its seems useless option anyways.
!!! IF you find the game overwhelming - then dont do any missions , dont steal artifacts from habitated planets , make frequent gifts and use happy ray and embassy on agressive empires around you even if you dont like them just bear with it and wait til you have better ship and lots of money , using passive strategy may lead being isolated into tiny spot and its tough to get to center of theuniverse also < against being "wrapped" by tens of empires buy their capitals (10 mil ) or other good resource planets T2= about 5 mil and others 3mil , im not sure but you prolly wont get any planets for less cash.
when you have enough cash to start wrangling around with terraforming and so then find closest free system with nice resources terraform it into T3 and use the monolith to let it evolve to space stage, when they are ready make trade route and buy them for 10 mil - and you get REALLY nice income with 10 city T3 good resource planet
i managed to make all 6 resources planets in one fly range and all with 10 cities
superfast income ! then you buy hundreds of energy and repair packs (remember the AOE seems good but are useless when trying to fly into the center , so use the normal ones with healing sign not with wrench sign)
i hope this post helps you guys to enjoy this great game