Cue up buildings on new planet or not?

If you are haveing money issues, then yes this is probably part of the problem.

Try building a few factories, starport, and some econ buildings (cueing these up) and then come back to the colony later to build the rest of your buildings.
The intial factory has no maintenance cost, so if you wait to research the factory line until you have some population to generate taxes, this can save you a lot of maintenance costs. morale buildings aren't really needed until your population gets above 6 billion so why build them early.
The other thing to consider is since your population is what gets you money, perhaps you should concentrate on the tech line that leads to "fertility acceleration" in the early game. Also don't ignore the intersteller gvt techs since each new gvt type gives you an economic bonus that is applied to all planets.


Hope this makes some sense.

I usually queue up only a copuple of building for each planet. Maybe alternate between factories and markets at first with a lab thrown in.

Queueing up only like 4 or 5 of the 10 (for example) usable tiles somewhat forces me to reveiew what im doing on that planet later., when i see the "nothing" in the queue on the GNN screen.

Picking all the improvements for all of your tiles won't have a bad effect on your economy as long as you have things build in the right order, ie, some economy buildings first.

Generally, I would agree, but if you are playing with a huge or gigantic map with lots of planets, you can get into a hole pretty quickly like this. If you are rapidly expanding and queing up a full slate on every planet, you can end up getting buildings faster than your population grows. I know that if you are playing with the super hive ability (Thalans for ex) you can overproduce VERY quickly. Then you do something foolish (and yeah I have done this) like invading a planet and getting a factory upgrade, and woosh, negative economy.   

And, yeah, a lab or two, especially on bonus tiles, really helps.

I spent a lot of time trying to figure out a complete build order so I could fill my queue for ever new world. But all the talk I read around here about building populations and econ buildings led me to a much shorter startup list, usually 2-4 factories (depending on how strong my economy is), 1 econ, 2 morale, and a farm (not necessarily in that order).



Whoosh, indeed. I've had to struggle with a lot of cleanup after moments like that!

At the beginning of the game I only build 1 thing at a time. My top 5 planets are the only ones I concentrate on. All other newly colonized planets get 1 factory and 3 econ buildings, and let them sit there until they have a positive cash flow. Then I'll build whatever I can afford, and deem appropriate for the situation at hand. I never build a farm on a food bonus tile, or on my home world (it will grow to 16B on it's own), since I never let them grow over 13B (with 1 Advanced Farm of course). I never build a farm until the population cap is reached. I never build morale buildings, ever. I instead, build 1 embassy or cultural center on just about every planet. Starports are only built on my top 5 planets. After my economy gets stabilized, my building strategy is more flexible.

Great advice guys. thanks. I think I'm going to go along with Ferrel's way to start with. since it will give a better grasp of what is happening to my planets and econ if I do it one step at a time. - build up to doing more at once.

I've also done stuff like building a starport on every planet etc...oh well, I'm finding that you can get away with that on easy levels but not when it gets harder. I think I'll stick with this game I've got going now. will be interesting to see if I can redeem it.

thanks again for the help.