Boris da Blade

Hi all I'm new to this game and I only played a couple of hours with vanilla Sins before I found out about Requiem (tnx a lot Jason for your work! :) ) So my questions are; is there a BEGINNERS GUIDE for Requiem because I have tons of questions like: How do I build the biggest Mon Cals like the Maria (don't have the prerequisite for it)?? More in general, should I colonize as much as planets I conquer/find? I read pl