Reading through a few guides and watching the guides Martok recommended and I'm really getting into this game but realized I need to start a new game as I've made some noob mistakes that will hurt as I get closer to the mid game. But for now I'm going to use this failed game to just mess around and learn the systems and pull some levels and push buttons to see what happens 
That's always what I've done when learning a new game as well. I often find those can be the most fun.
Also, after watching the ASpec videos for noobs I find it interesting how he categorized players of Stellaris as either Min/Maxers or Roleplayers in their approach to the game. How woudl y'all say you approach the game?
I'm definitely more of a role-player. I mean, I'm still trying to win, of course (or at least become successful in-game), but I'm not so ruthless about the process that I allow it to ruin my sense of immersion.
Unfortunately, I don't get any immersion at all when playing Stellaris (it's like playing a good looking Excel sheet), so no role-playing for me. I try to maximise my game but i usually fail as the AI seems to always have higher caps for it's fleets. I really dislike games where the AI is cheating on normal setting.
Yeah, I don't like it when the AI cheats on normal difficulty settings, either. What bothers me even more, though, is when the AI is so obvious about it.
If the AI needs to cheat in some fashion in order to keep up, then fine. (I mean, it's not *really* "fine", but we all know that in most games it's unavoidable, even if we don't like it.) But when a game doesn't even bother to hide the fact that the AI is cheating -- when it's blatantly obvious that it's doing so -- then the game has failed in a major way, as that damages (if not outright destroys) a player's sense of immersion.
I've been fortunate in that while playing v2.1, I've not really noticed much blatant AI cheating. It's going to be interesting, however, to see whether I still find that to be the case when I move to v2.9 (once the update drops).
