Already tthree times now, I started a game of Twilight Imperium with people not knowing the rules. Both times they were overwhelmed by the rules and lost interest in the game very quickly since they did not understand what everything is good for and lost the overview.
Therefore I came up with an idea of letting the rules grow while playing the game. In the first rounds for example, I would leave the strategy cards, the races special abilities and therefor also the technical advancement and cards out of the game and first start learning "to move around", produce, fight a little and so on. Some Distant-Suns-Tokens may help here and ther should be a maximum level of exploration from the home-system. Maybe even every player just builds his own ring of systems (maybe 2 empty, 1 red and 3 planet cards) around his home system and the galaxy is not created yet.
In the second or third round it is time to introduce objective cards and action cards.
Two or three turns later, the races special abilities kick in, as far as they are applicable at this time. Also, the leaders show up.
Later on, when everybody moves secure inside the rules, you could build a large map out of the small 7-system-sectors and start with introducing the strategy-cards and playing the game with all other rules.
Do you think, this could work?