Puke and Dragonlord,
I will answer to your Posts about the Hall of Fame in a new thread, so we don't get off-topic here.
My pieces of (limited) wisdom for PBW:
1. Advanced Storage trait. Consider taking it. All your (home)worlds will have 20% more facilities. Very valuable for a good start. Besides that you can ship population from your homeworlds without losing the production bonus, because there will be 4800 instead of 4000M people.
2. If you find a player with the same planet type/atmosphere nearby, attack and glass his homeworlds ASAP, you can't find any better planets than this
. (Might not make you very popular, though).
3. Combat bonuses. The extra 20% you can get from racial modifications can really turn a battle around at all stages of the game. I consider good combat bonuses from race/sensors/ECM/training much more important than weapon choice. What good is a PPB that doesn't hit compared to a DUC in the hands of an expert? (see also the "Are battles always one sided" topic)
4. Trade tech, especially colonization tech.
5. most importantly: Have fun! And if you lose, remember: it is only a game.
Rollo