I should preface this by saying that I have no past experience with "civ" games.

I bought this game a week or so ago from GOG and I am not having much fun with it yet, mostly because I tend to put the units on "auto", switch on the base governors and essentially watch the game play itself, occasionally dealing with the other faction duders.

The thing is, I want to do more stuff manually, but I don't know which parts are fun to micromanage by hand and which are just tedious -- there is so much going on, I simply don't know where to begin. Everything seems to have a load of functions and it is just a tad overwhelming.

How do you guys suggest playing the game to get the most out of it? Are there any good beginner tutorials out there?

This is something I've been having trouble with too. I know there's a fantastic game there somewhere, but it just seems like an uphill battle trying to work out how to best play the game.