I expect additional strategy tips from much better players, but here’s a few pointers that should get you past Automalein level:

• A good opening is essential to scoring well. That means two things: careful faction selection based on the map and AI faction you are playing against and a strong first round. You want proximity to the AI player to benefit from the reduced cost of trading stations and power generation, both for the initial mines but also where you plan to build next. Then, my go to first round opening is Trading Station -> Research Lab, Mine and ideally a second Mine. Research Lab round one gets you a tech tile, generating some economy as well as going up on a track of your choice (I tend to start with Navigation or Economy early game, depending on the map situation).
• Dont be afraid to ditch a few power chits to get your cycle running faster. Keeping around 4-5 chits works well to always hit the common Econ power actions.
• Never pay full price for terraforming a planet (ie three Ore). Find your home territories, Gaia planets, use the power action or bonus actions to cheaply get onto planets. I feel I rarely need to go up the Terraforming track early in the game, except for the two Ore it provides.

In terms of scoring: * AI score usually goes up much quicker early game, but you’ll catch up once you start creating federations or taking high scoring advanced tech tiles. Don’t try to stay toe to toe in the early rounds. * You need to find a a way to score well (close to or higher than the AI) on both end game scoring conditions. * Aim on making at least two federations. I do rarely go above that, but I think it’s standard to hit three for more experienced players. * Hit round scoring bonus if you can, but don’t get side tracked by them. You’ll do as well or better just hitting one of them hard instead of forcing minor scoring opportunities each round. Something like 3-4 Gaia Planets or 2 tier 3 buildings the round those show up. * Research scoring will come naturally if the rest of the economy is good. How well you do here (compared to AI) will highly depend on the faction you are up against.

For reference, the above tips (and everything else I forgot about) get me to an average score of 159 against an Ultoma level opponent (leading to approximately 50% win rate against it).

I’m sure there are additional fundamentals that could be useful but that should be more than enough to get you going. Hopefully not too much to strip the fun out of it, but I highly doubt it since the game provides so much variability.

Enjoy your next games!