I had negative influence from around turn 50 till 115 when I had to stop because nothing was working, I couldn't do anything with no influence.  I have no idea how it happen.  

I also had 2 "outposts" that I couldn't turn into a city or attach to anything because I didn't have enough influence and it seems every turn one of them would gain a population and one of them would lose a population every single turn, I don't understand population and why one kept gaining and one kept losing every turn, I also couldn't find a way to just delete the outpost, I wanted to get rid of it so maybe the rest of my cities would grow but I didn't see a way to do that.  I also have no clue why I was gaining or losing population on these outposts anyway.  I would like to know if it's possible to disband outposts or sell them or somehow get rid of them?  

Basically from turn 50 I was totally crippled - I have 3 cities and I tried to make food and put in infrastructures to help with food and stability even though my stability kept falling no matter what I did and my influence kept plummeting.  I build this religious site to help with stability but it really did nothing to help me, I had a few archers and warriors around the map I never could figure out how to get horses - how do you exploit resources using a city?  All I could see what using an outpost to exploit resources but then with no influence I was pretty much dead in the water the entire game 

I also never went into war with anyone, because honestly the AI would probably just destroy me instantly.  

I am going to start a new game and give it my best effort before the Closed Beta is over and hope I can learn what I am doing.  I tried to go slow when I started to get a handle on what I was doing but that didn't work well at all.

I attached a few screen shots so you can see that I am not lying about negative influence I am just that bad apparently :( I didn't think it was possible to get negative influence ugh lol - I also don't know how to make the screen shots full screen so you can't really see anything :(