Technology Tree Overwhelming

[Kin-Chan]

Well, I just got SE4, and I've been fiddling around with it for two days... surprisingly enough, out of those two days, about 30 hours or so were play time. Heh ^_^

Anyways, I was wallowing in the game (yes, wallowing, more like completely lost) and mainly the technology tree is tripping me up. Is there any access Online or in-game to see what I am going with the tree? There's things I can research, but I don't really know where I'm going, just randomly picking things that sound neat (Temporal Weaponary? Yay!!)

Also, how can you expand at the beginning? This is my first game in the SE series, but I am not new to 4X genre. But once again, I find it's very surprisingly difficult - even on low difficulty setting, I can't expand to a sufficient size before my enemy comes and smashes all my planets with force. And even they refuse to agree to my treaties, or will break it one or two turns later!

Finally, how come the planet will die in like one or two shots from the enemy ship (even without planet bomb type weapon) - however, when I attack with my ships, I am unable to even attack the planet unless I am having a bomber?