Fleshpile,
You are going to get many differing suggestions from those of us that have been involved with the beta, so you will need to pick and choose from our advice and figure out what works from you. Here are some guidlines I can offer to help you get started:
1). Your complaint about your treasury seems to be the first key. Cari's advice is sound. Watch your treasury, be careful of buying ships and social projects too quickly (watch that your expenses do not get too great for your income - you want to keep some of your income for your spending rate). Check out the domestic policy screen for where all of this is shown.
2). Midnight louie's advice gives you some good starting points to use while learning the behavior of the game. I would modify his advice only by saying that it is more important to set your tax rate at a level that allows you to maintain population growth on most of your planets (that is, keeping your morale level on newly colonized planets above 50%). And I have not found any reason to delay changing governments as soon as I have researched them, but perhaps as a strategy while learning the game's behavior it would be a good idea. I just hate to pass up the improved production and economy the government advances provide.
3). For now, when you load up a colony ship, load them with only 100M people. When you colonize a class 15 planet you will be able to see what tax rate will give you 50% or better morale on a class 15 planet with 100M people. (NOTE: Your bonus settings will have an affect on this.) This is one of my early checkpoints for tax rate. The planet's population won't grow until it finishes the "soil enhancement" project, but it is the lowest class planet I colonize at the start of a game, and it soon catches up as a class 16. (I do colonize lower class planets later in the game, but by then I have a lot of galaxy wide morale enhancements established.)
4). Set your spending rate at max until your treasury drops to about 100bc during the early part of your game then decrease your spending rate to maintain that balance or just a slight increase to your treasury. Don't let it drop below that level. As your game progresses, increase your minimum treasury level to provide a buffer for some of the unexpected events you might run into.
5). Try to locate other races, bot major and minor, as quickly as you can. Try to have some trade goods to trade with them as early as possible and demand the highest price you can get. This will help your caxh flow breafly allowing you to maximize your spending rate again, until your treasury drops to your minimum. Techs can be traded as well, but be careful not to give the other party undue advantage - if you trade "basic environment control" before you have built "love mushrooms" the other race could build the trade good before you do and you lose an oportunity to trade them for significant increase to your treasury.
These are only a few ideas, but start with them and see how you do. We are all here and will help you as you discover other aspects of the game you need help with.
And have fun.
Stardock Forums
