I will start this.

First of all, I highly recommend adding the mods which enhance ai difficulty. No matter how good/low your skill is in vanilla games, the ai does need those mods to function at least somewhat properly with primitive settings.

1. Setup

You begin with the galaxy settings. If you plan to give ais any starting option but the vanilla start (meaning you want ais to start either with total primitve technologies or normal technologies but the ftl drive) than you really need to set the ai difficulty higher than you usually play. So if you want the ai to have 0 tech upon starting, just as you do, set the ai 3 difficulties higher, than you do in the vanilla, aka instead of Ensign, you put Admiral. Yes, the ai needs that help. Otherwise you will be dominate the galaxy, with all ais sitting on their single system. If you plan to give ai all tech but the ftl, you should set the ai 2 levels higher, aka commodore instead of ensign.
Should you be already playing on Grand Admiral, I recommend you getting the DYNAMIC DIFFICULTIES mod, and increase the ai bonuses beyond 100%.


The next important option you need to choose is the tech cost. If you leave it on 1x, you will have to wait something like 30-40 years until you get your hyperdrive and start your expansion. If you have just a normal computer, i would recommend using this setting, no matter the galaxy size, just because otherwise the game will be ultimativly boring even on the first run, where you explore all those fancy features.
If you have somewhat a better pc setting game speed to 2x could be intersting for one purpose. Before you discover the actual hyperdrive, there will be a technology of an experimental hyperdrive having it's speed reduced by 99%.On 1x speed, you will barely make 5 jumps with your science ship, until you invent the actual hyperdrive, neglecting all the fun with role play around distant colonies and travel speeds of several years.
However if you play with 2x research cost, you will have something like 40 years of sublight exploration (do not forget to get the customizable civilian ships mod). And this is really breathtaking, if you have imagination. Though you do need fast pc, to fast forward the boring parts which will happen time to time.


So we are all setup and start generating the galaxy. Upon entering the game you will be able to choose the ai start, as mentioned before. Both the primitive start and no ftl start for the ai can be tricky. Even with super bonuses there is a big luck modifier, to the question if the ai will get hyperdrive early enough to compete with you. Since the ai ignores the experimental hyperdrive (-99% speed), it will utilize only normal hyperdrive, which is a rare technology. So at the end you may see some ais becoming vast empires, while others have just few systems, because they invented the hyperdrive several years later. Truly an arms race.
You could also give the ai vanilla start, but i personally think that this option sucks, since even on 1x research cost, it will take you at least 30 years to leave your system. While even easier ai would expand to mega empires by that time.Feels to cheaty to me. (Yes more cheaty than +200% resource bonus)


2. Game start

Your nation will have food malus straight away, giving you something like several years to manage this food crisis, either by getting more food production (not always possible) or installing the mod "food rationing", and sign edicts to reduce food consumption.

First thing you should notice, are the tile blockers. They are no usual tile blockers, but "hostile nations, which have adjancency bonus and malus. It works similar to the capital production bonus. Surrounding tiles get -1 to minerals/energy/food production but +1 to all science (meaning you get a boost of 1/1/1 on your science lab).
Sometimes it may be better to demolish existing farm if it is near to more than 1 blocker, since the primitive farm gives you 1 bonus food for 0.5 energy upkeep, but you lose up to -4 food, depending on how many "hostile nations" are around.
And here comes the trick about "hostile nations". They reduce the income of buildings, but not normal tile yields. So you could have a tile with 4 minerals on it, surrounded by 4 "hostile nations", but as lon as you have no mineral facility, you will be able to mine the said 4 minerals.

Further strategy about hostile nations is not to clear the blockers around your science labs. Early into the game it is all about researching new techs, not minerals. If you focus too much on minerals, you will pretty soon find yourself at 10k maximum, without techs to spend them. So forget about rushing minerals. Rush for science, to leave your homesystem as soon as possible. (This is also a thing, why you need to increase ai difficulty)

Unless you really need that food tile, or a hostile nation conects to 3 food tiles and only 1 science tile, do not clean it. Better build a science lab and research stuff. Also if there is a tile surrounded by several or even 4 hostile nations, but has a tile deposit of minerals/energy/food, ignore the base resource and build a science lab. You will get an output of 5/5/5 science on a lab lvl 1. Pretty impressive right?

3. First steps

After you figured out which hostile nations benefit you, and which do not, where you can get more food and where you get the minerals, it is time to unpress the pause button.

First of all technologies you need is the "Planetary Government" technology, found in society tech tree. This one will allow you to clear all the nasty hostile nations and provided you have enough minerals, upgrade your capital to boost surrounding buildings yields. The tricky part about this one, is that you do need 10 unity to clear hostile nation, and your unity income will be near 0, until you research said technology, because of a 100% malus you get at the start of the game. (Though if you have some nasty ruler, he may give you something like 0.1 unity per month. Which does not sound alot, but believe me, it is a life saver.)

First buildings are labs. You get as much as you can. Afterwards it is up to you, to decide if you wish to go for minerals or food dirst. But I recommend going for food, since minerals tend to get to the maximum of your pool pretty fast. Now you can clean the hostile nations, which you do not want to have. There are 3 options how to clean them. I personally prefer choosing the war option, just for fun, and more actions early into the game (but do not forget to build armies first!).


4. Early priorities

Logically get the labs tech, cause it increases the research speed by 25% as soon as you see it. Also i recommend getting the constructor ship tech as soon as possible. If you manage to get it early, it will double your income, but even later on, it will make a significant bonus to your production. After you build all stations in your system, scuttle the constructor ship, to save the upkeep.

About a decade later, you should get the colonization tech. You should colonize 2 planets at the same time. The energy malus should not be too much, to deplete your saved energy until now. On your newly build colonies you need to immediatly build habitability boosters and place a pop there. Otherwise you will lose the colony.

The planets themselves have no tile bonuses, so you should get only the biggest planets. Also keep in mind, that you should spend 3 tiles on habitability boosters, to avoid production malus, because of low habitabilities. On avarage 9 tiles of your home system colony, will go only to maintain all expenses. So think twice before colonizing a 10 tile planet.

5. Hyper drive

I highly recommend reading how to get the research option of experimental hyperdrive. I am not posting it hear, to avoid spoilers. But the knowledge of how to get the experimental version of hyperdrive is important to make any use of it.

I personally did not want to spoiler myself, and ended up researching hyperdrive 1 earlier than experimental drive loosing a portion of fun of this mod.

Also if you do want to use experimental hyperdrive, it gets stuck all the time, so you will have to stop the ship manually by pressing stop button, and resetting destination. Somewhat annoying, but since there is not much to do, it is okayish.

And final note on experimental drive. Be careful arming your military ships with it! They will get damaged time to time. On avarage you may lose 5% of your navy for 1 jump. Also, I am not sure if it intended to be so, but your colony ships may explode as well. But this happened to me only once, so i am not sure, if it did not bug out.

Thanks, this is great. I hope you'll update it once I update the mod for 2.2