Don't neglect the asteroid mines.  In Crusade they contribute directly to your raw production, which in turn determines your base social and ship manufacturing, your research, and your income.  If you have the Mercenaries DLC, I recommend buying a fast scout, which will let you find new planets, resources, and anomalies much faster, and perhaps a merc survey ship like the Ysengard.  Your starting survey ship and the Ysengard can explore the lightly defended anomalies by themselves if you give them time to heal between battles.

I second the recommendation to start your game with fewer opponents to give yourself more room to expand, then later add more opponents when you have more experience.

Don't hesitate to create your own custom faction.  The Xenophobic attribute gives you greatly enhanced research and social construction at the cost of reduced ship production.  Intuitive gives you extra research to start with.  Wealthy starts with extra raw production on every planet.  Ancient gives you extra research on all your planets for every precursor artifact you control.  Try combinations of those, or others that look interesting to you.

Thanks for all the suggestions! Keep them coming!

I usually go with the Benevolent and pick the one that gives me 150 research point.

What should I research first? I'm kind of at a loss about what are the best things to research.

Thanks!

For developing planets I've been going with buying a Xeno farm first and then a city.

What do you usually buy first for your planets? Should I buy a space elevator first?

Personally i would go with silicon for this reason. You dont get food, but you have to spend an administation point or more on a duranthium starbase. This i would do no matter who i was. Duranthium is good for upgrading factories, and starbases, and growing if your silicon. The real advantage is more tiles for other stuff on the planet. The disadvantage is maybe a miniscule amount slower on upgrading. This would mean an unnoticable amount of less resources with less manufacturing.

Blondie, don't worry about being way behind.  Even experienced and capable players look from the graphs like they've spent the whole game losing.  The current game I've just about gotten wrapped up as the Yor have suddenly surrendered, and I've finally gotten up to 2nd place in something (in this case tech - and not from a big research base).

IMO, the most important thing you can spend your effort on is your relations with your fellow not-crazy races.  (Even the Drengin aren't totally crazy and will bow to the inevitable.)  Benevolent can cause you more problems that it solves, unless you're sandwiched in between Benevolent races (Altarian, Torian(?), Iconian).  Even those races will respect Pragmatic if you don't cross them.  Good relations benefits you in a number of ways: They will trade with you; they will give you money (later in the game); and most of all, they will trade techs with you.  I doubt that I've actually researched half the techs I have now. 

Anyway, there's no magic "starting formula" that will keep you from appearing to be way behind in the early game.  But the fact is that being way behind is no an indication of how things will turn out in the end.

BTW, I don't have Crusade, but for these purposes, it's essentially the same as the base game.

Usually, with my open borders treaties and diplomacy keeping the AIs from attacking too soon, I get medium hulls before I start building warships.  Then I build medium hulled Escorts (of my own design) with as many types of defenses as I have researched, one engine, no sensors, one life support, and fleet them up with medium hull capital ships with one engine, one life support, one sensor, and as many weapons as I can.  Although the AIs almost always view me as very weak (unless I've been lucky and found a bunch of ships in anomalies), my escort/capital fleets can almost always beat the tiny/small fleets they send.  I also use cargo hulls to design sensor ships with an engine, life support, and as many sensors as I can cram on them.  Then I can see the AI fleets coming, and since they rarely invest in engines I have time to get my fleets to them and am not surprised. 

In the early game I build colony and constructor ships, and hire the best mercenary scout and survey I can.

Put the space elevator in the middle untill you can build a city. Starbases are important. Duranthium, elerum, and anti matter are important at the start. Brindles observatory, and anti matter power plant. Promethium is important. Dont forgett to upgrade your planetary resources. 

Quoting DMF,

reply 15

BTW, the Designer in GCIII is easier to use in some ways, but not nearly as much fun as the one in GCII.  I still haven't figured out how to rotate a ship so I can place the components precisely.   I suspect that there is no way. 

Have you tried holding down the middle mouse button (in  my case that means pressing down on the wheel) and moving the mouse?  Doesn't have fine control but it does work.

Is there a way to tell your scout ships to go to one star and then another, and another, ie input a sequence of moves?

Quoting Publius of NV,

reply 16

Quoting DMF,

reply 15

 I still haven't figured out how to rotate a ship so I can place the components precisely.   I suspect that there is no way. 

Have you tried holding down the middle mouse button (in  my case that means pressing down on the wheel) and moving the mouse?  Doesn't have fine control but it does work.

Publius, that works a treat!   Thank you.

If your starsystem has 4 or more asteroids, you can start by:

turn 1) rush shipyard, rush constructor
turn 2) rush space elevator
turn 3+ remember to keep some money in reserve for potential future asteroid mines.

place the constructor next to at least two asteroids and build the mines as soon as possible.

If you make a custom civ, take 2 constructors as starting ships and get the asteroid mines that way.

If you find a star with 5+ asteroids it is worth spending an admin point on. Usually you also get a this way.

Asteroid mines help you to a fast start, which makes your life exponentially easier down the road.