This forum? It's so someone that doesn't know what they're doing can get some input from more experienced players on what to do.
In this case, decide what strat you want to run. There's farmer, casher, techer and indi (also oiler and Military Base Reseller but those aren't good for beginners). Look at the wiki, specifically this page...
http://wiki.earthempires.com/index.php/Strategies and decide what you want to do. Each strat has advantages and disadvantages and some are trickier to play than others.
Raise your BPT (buildings per turn) to a decent amount (depends on strat but I'd say that 50-60 is about the minimum you'd want).
Military - troops and tanks are not very useful unless you are going to be warring. stick to jets and turrets. If you're going to explore only to gain land, then just have turrets.
Do not mix buildings. This is really important. Each strat should have about 5-10% of land devoted to making spies. There may probably be up to 300 construction sites, depending on how high you want your bpt to be (though some may want more at certain points in the set) and the rest of your land should be devoted to the building type that suits your strategy. Techers will only have labs, farmers have farms, indies have industrial complexes and cashers have a mix of enterprise zones and residences.
There are 4 types of buildings that increase "production" in a straight line according to the number of buildings you have. These are residences, farms, oil rigs and industrial complexes. You could conceivably mix these types to produce a good mix of where you derive your income (really you wouldn't want to mix residences in here), however it will not be optimal as you would have to buy too much tech to max out production from indi and farms.
Tech is also very important as it raises your production per acre, raises your networth per acre and doesn't (substantially) increase costs per acre of land that you have. This makes you more efficient and less of a target for others that will want to grab your land.
Tax rate - stick to 35%. It is the most efficient rate unless food costs rise to greater than about $45/bushel.
Do some background reading on some of the other threads in this forum and from the wiki. Also check out the strategy forum.
Most of all, have fun and don't take it to heart when someone grabs you.