What's your normal planet build?

For my opening planet, I build two Xeno Labs frst (buy them), then three-4 factories (depending on space and bonuses, if there are production bonuses, less), then two entertainment things (by late game I'm taxing at 80%, so I start early), market, tehn what ever.

I like the research early since they can really help out the initial techs, and since I research 'research labs" first, by the time my home world builds up, they are ready to upgrade.

For a new planet, I usually will build three to four factories minimum first, then a star base, so I can beign ship production quickly.

I play normal, everything common-abundant, tech very fast. Typically, i buy 1 factory, build 1 morale, 2 more factories, 1 research, then after that i go on bonuses and what i need rigt now. Starports usually come fairly late (or nto at all) because i play peacefully.

I never understood why the AI puts a Starport on every planet.

Low PQ planets (<=9) get one factory and the rest filled with research centers.

Medium PQ planets are my manufacturing base. They get all factories and a starport.

High PQ planets are my economic base. They get 6 factories, 3 farms, enough entertainment to keep them happy, and the rest stock markets. I replace the factories with stock markets after the stock markets are built.

factory
if(pq >= 9) factory
if(pq >= 10) factory
if(pq >= 11) starport
lab
lab
market
farm
entertainment
embassy
if(pq >= 12) fill the rest with labs

and I always use the best bonus tile available for a given improvement

I never understood why the AI puts a Starport on every planet.

I don't know about the AI's but there are a couple of reasons why I do it:

1. I like having the flexibility to rush-build a ship from any planet in my empire.

2. With lots and lots of starports, I can use the Governor feature combined with rally points to launch a full-scale invasion or even a multi-front war. And because the ships come from all over the map, it's automatically set up for a multi-wave attack. If the conflict ends before all of the ships arrive, I can just point them at the next target and keep going.

Anything 10 or above gets a farm, a morale building, starport, 4-6 factories (8-10 if the planet is big or it is later in the game), and the rest filled in with economy buildings. Research is crammed on extra planets and a tech capitol. Small ones get wonders rush buyed on them, especially the morale ones because they are so cheap and the AI generally ignores them.

I tend to go military/diplomatic

I like to specialize my large planets and for the small ones they get some entertainment and pay taxes. If i had 10 planets about 5 or 6 planets would be mainly military and the remainder would be reasearch and economy, but tends to lean more to the research side

For domestic policy I keep taxes high and never let the approval rating drop below 60-65 at first i kept it above 70 but things moved to slowly so I had to push the people harder. I also make sure i have lots of trade going on.

I tend to focus my planets. First I take a look at what the planet has and what I need. If it has farming +% tiles, I make it an influence/economy planet. Research +%? Research planet. And so on and so forth. I always first put down 4 factories, and then start on the other buildings. I never build starports on planets that I don't intend to use them on, and I normally end up with 3-4 high PQ construction planets with 250+ Military Production. My military never hurts for it, because I can churn out ships fast enough for my needs. I also always make a single-engine small fighter craft, and spread it across my planets to protect me from surprise attacks. Does anyone actually use tiny hulls?

PQ>=10: factory, starbase, factory, then usually a blend of mostly market/trade centers, an entertainment, and one or more farms

PQ<10: factory, then mostly research centers. For 9-10 I may build a farm and entertainment building depending on how I feel.

For PQ>15 I build with 3 factories

My manufacturing planets are the ones with multiple 100% bonus tiles or a 300%/700% bonus tile. Ditto with research planets. Regardless of PQ.

Home planet is special since at the start it is the colony building king and needs at least 4 factories to pump out colonies every 3 turns.

I use my home planet as an industrial planet. I dont put any labs or influence items on it. Only things that have to do with industry and military. (and of course one farm and entertainment center just so i get some money). Then i colonize two more planets and one of them is my money maker having only farms, entertainment, and influence items. The other has labs and the like. Then I make a massive military force and destroy everything and use captured planets to make a variety of things.

I always go with this...

Factory (purchase)
Farm
Factory
Starport
Lab
Lab
Entertainment
Bank
Influence

After the planet finishes that, I'll go with more factories (buy 1) and what ever bonuses remain on planet. IF I stil have room, I'll purchase wonders and the like...

I'm glad this thread got resurrected. Though there's variation here there is pretty much one common theme and that's starting with one or more factories sometimes bought sometimes not.

I think the size of galaxy and number of opponents makes a big difference in effective build strategies. If you're looking to at least keep parity with the AI's colonization at crippling and above, in a huge or gigantic galaxy, I find that buying or even building a factory first limits my colonization rush because I run out of money too quickly.

I'ved sucessfully used the following build sequence; adv market, farm, factory, factory, then variations based on the planets PQ. I also never buy the market or farm though I will often buy the factory once it starts to build on it's own. I skip the farm on anything less than PQ7, though I also usually avoid colonizing anything less than PQ7 until my economy is on a stronger footing.

The reason I use this sequence is that the adv market and farm have no support cost whereas the factory does. This sequence allows time for the pop to build up (increasing income) on the planet so by the time I add the factory the planet can pretty much support itself without being a drag on my economy. I find that this allows me to colonize more planets at a faster rate. There is some downside in that my production lags somewhat with respect to building a factory first.

I've found that when I've used a sequence starting with a factory what ends up happening is once I get the planet built up a bit I end up setting the focus on it to research anyway so why was I in such a rush to build a factory?

I turn taxes for military all the way down to zero. (50/50 on research and social)
Buy several colony ships
Build factory, entertainment, market, research, starports..

I try to pump of population and happyness so that I can max taxes. As well as try to max research as soon as possible.
I usually play half of the game with military spending at 0. (rarely build ships, I load up on cash and buy most ships)

I prefer to specialise my planets, depending on the game parameters, and if I've just "acquired" alot of planets. There are 3 main area's I focus worlds on:-

Industry: Starports and lots of factories.
Research: Many research labs.
Credits: Lots of farms, entertainment and trade centres/banks/stock markets/etc. I prefer to call these Hive worlds were the population can be huge.

The hive world means I can concentrate my money improvements on a few worlds. The industry and research worlds don't benefit from them much as the populations are relatively small.

The advantage is high efficiency.

The key disadvantage of this is worlds can become critical to your empire, and, as they lack large populations, need heavy protection.

Oh, and keeping the hive world happy can be a pain

The thing I have found out that in 1.3 things have changed drastically. I can no longer on Challenging use my old strat of Special Planets. So now I might have to try a few of the ones in this thread. The thing with special planets is that you are so limited in game. (IE building ships, along with the tough economy now)

Played 2 games so far and by mid game I cannont keep up with AI military. And if I go to war its pretty much over for me. Guess now I will try to build Planets, with most of them having Starport.

I try and keep a mixture. I'll have a few economic planets, but most of my planets with a PQ of 8 or higher will be split between industry and economy. Larger planets will have about 3 stock markets, a trade good/galactic achievement, a starport, and a mix between research and industry. Very low quality planets are almost always research/trade goods. I usually include an orbital fleet defense on the highest quality planets of each system, and I place defense boosters on other high quality planets. Farms are occassional. Never more than one though.

A lot of people like to make planets single purpose, but I like to have it so that I cannot be crippled as easily by the loss of one. I also like to have planets building constructors almost all of the time they aren't busy elsewhere.

Let's say I've got a fair quality planet.

Factory (purchase)
Factory (purchase)
Starport
Research
Research
Market
Market
Farm
Factory
Research
Market
Factory
Research

Note this do not count special ressources. I usually try to get planets with same pop so it is easier to manage. I also build 1 or 2 supermanufacturing powers.

Usually:
Factory(Purshase)
Factory
Factory (if PQ >8)
Factory(If PQ > 10)
Factory (if PQ > 15)
Starport (If PQ > 9)
if i have extra pop available (ie i can move population from other colonies)
Marker
Farm
Market
Market

if it is a research planet
Research (if this is a research planet).
Research
Research
Farm

Specialization.
I only put research on planets which would have access to 3-4 economic starbases. Since this reasearch and production are 2 times cheaper i should get as much of it as i can.

Note i still play the easy crippling mode large map with 9 civs (ie easy). The strat may change if i move to bigger maps and on harder difficulty.