I've only been playing a few days, 2 or 3 of those online with very little success in survival.

I find it very hard to decide what route to go for tech trees when starting a game.  Regardless of which one you want, you still need resources for it (which mainly comes down to crystals as far as i'm concerned, as i never have enough of those for some reason). 

So i basically have two questions: 

What do you normally do for a good econ start in each game?

At what point do you stop building on your economy to focus on other matters (offense, etc).

As Vasari, i typically build two Imperial centers so that i can research volcanic/ice world colonization first, and then fill out my metal/crystal extractors and about 5 skirmishers.  It's usually a great start, and if the planet has 2 more logical slots left, i build 2 War centers so that i can get the Assailant prototpye and start getting the Phase Missile and Regen line of buffs.

However, if i do that, then i can't develope the Logic/Tactic slots for the planet, upgrade it's populace, etc.  After the first 10 minutes, i'm extremely lost as to what to do.  More often than not, i end up eating a fleet within the first half hour.  Most of my partners say that the guy who killed me was being "fed" by his partner, who most likely went Economy-style to make a ton of resources, and just feed the 2nd player to build up a very large set of fleets.

However, i played a 1v1 today and got spanked the same way.

Any tips?  I know the situation can vary greatly, but am i doing something wrong?  I'm thinking of posting a reply this week to see if someone can help out with that.  Like i said, i play Vasari right now, but only because it's what random picked for me in my first game, so i kind of stuck with it.  What about the other races?