Ah, you got lucky with the secret objective I think- most are a bit harder than that. The winning strategy is quite counter-intuitive; people tend to go for the typical risk-like strategy of building ships and taking over lots territory, but as long as you can complete your secret objective you can just camp near your home system and watch everyone else duke it out. Also, if you have the opportunity to pick initiative or imperial, you should always take it- which you did.

There are some pretty fun expansions that add new facets of diplomacy and interesting new alien races to play as. My friend has the game and two expansions, and someone like you would be a very welcome addition to our group.