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Family

Let's first look at your family. Do this by clicking on the "Family" button in the left frame. This takes you to a list of the empires that are part of your family. You can get information about the different empires by clicking on them, or send messages.
A nice place to check out is the forum or the chat. Here you can exchange information with your family and plan strategies. Introduce yourself to the family in the forum and ask for help if you want. There are probably members in the family that can help you with answers to questions you might have and give you tips.

Map, System and Planet

Now might be a good idea to take a where your home planet is located. To do this first click on "Planets" in the left frame. In the left view you will be presented with your first planet. When you get more planets in the future those will also be listed here. To view a planet you can simply click on it from this list, but we want to pinpoint it on the galaxy map. Take a note, what coordinates your planet has. Press the "Map" button on the left frame, which will give you a overview of the sectors of the galaxy you are in. Select the sector, your planet is located in. (You can see from your coordinates).
Now you should see a great number of stars, each star is a solar system, some populated others not. The system your planet is located in will have red circle around it, and it will also have the word "Home" written under it. Find it and click on it.
You have now zoomed in on the system and will see numerous planets, you see the name of the empire who controls the planet under it. The other empires in this system are part of your family that you earlier introduced yourself to. Access your own planet simply by clicking on it.

Construct buildings

Now it's time to start building your empire. You can do this from the planet view. Select the "Construct" button. This gives you a list of the different buildings you can build.
From the start you should have 10 Hydroponic Farms, these support your population with food. As you want a lot of cash really fast so you can expand your empire, a good plan is to use most of your initial resources to build Cash Factories. Those are not the buildings that will give you the highest income in the long run, but they have a short building time and they will give you a steady income of 8 galactic coins for each Cash Factory every week. (Note that that it passes one week in the game in one hour real life.) But don't spend all your resources in this, save enough to order the construction of some Iron Mines also as you need iron to build your empire. A iron mine produces 1 unit of iron each week.

Next...

After a few weeks you might want to start building Living Quarters and other buildings. And even as your home planet is protected against any attacks you will soon have to get more land, either by exploring or attacking. For exploration, you need to build an exploration ship and find an unoccupied planet in the map. For attacking, you need a fleet including transports. In the beginning of the round, its recommended to start with exploration.

And last

Hopefully you and your empire will get a nice start. Now you should explore the rest functions in the game. Also be sure to read trough the rest of the guide and the FAQ as they will give you valuable information about the game and it's formulas.
And most importantly, have fun!