As of the time of this writing, the current version of Cardalaxy is Alpha 0.6.2.
Having played the current version about a dozen times, now, I've noticed that the difficulty in the game is somewhat frontloaded into the early game. By Turn 3, the combat system starts putting pressure on the player to address the combat system. This isn't necessarily a bad thing in and of itself, but it can be difficult to manage if the "Tactical Systems" technology (+2 Combat if already producing Combat this turn) is 3 or 4 steps deep into the randomly-generated Technology Tree or is missing from the tree completely.
Defeating Combat threats gives bonus points in all areas except Combat; this is a nice touch, but comes with a side-effect: some of these points randomly go into Wellness. Once the first Wellness bonus is triggered, the Unwellness drain activates and doesn't ever stop. (This wasn't the case in the previous version of Cardalaxy, so I'm wondering if this is a bug; I've posted on the Bug Report thread about this.) This now means that the player is getting pressured on two fronts: Combat and Wellness, and the player might not yet have access to the Tier 2 buildings needed to easily address this.
The first Crisis happens around Turn 10 or so, which then means that the player is under pressure from three fronts simultaneously. This is a little tricky to juggle without the appropriate Tier 2 buildings.
If the player gets past this phase, then the game gets easier.
The only suggestion I have at the moment to take some of the pressure off the early game is to disable the Unwellness drain if all Wellness bonuses are deactivated.