Beginner Question: My first colonies

As far as I know, that means you haven't added anything to the social or military production queues for that planet. You need to have a starport to use the military production at all, and you need to choose improvements to build to use your social production capacity.

GW Swicord is correct.  A Starport and something queued for shipbuilding will do it.

But then, some unsolicited advice, if I may be so bold.  Unlike your social spending. the production assigned to the military is being recycled back to you in the form of economy.  BCs are pretty important to balance, so not all planets really have to use up all of their spending.  You might find it advantageous to only build ships on those planets where a tactical reason exists.  The rest of the BCs can go back into your empire and be used elsewhere.

Actually, unused funded social as well as military is returned to your treasury (with the caveat that unused funded social is directed to military first, so long as military is funded, at which point if it is still unused, it is returned to the treasury).

Of course, if you're always building something, you'll never notice this...

Assuming you are using DA, I usually put five factories on a planet, a lab, and (if needed) a star port to build ships.

I do a colony rush, but to keep my economy in balance, I focus on economic improvements and build survey ships to look for anomalies with money.  I play on a huge galaxy with 2 opponents.  Later I build stuff to keep people happy which helps population which helps with the money.

If you are doing a military win, what ultimately makes you win is by having a larger production amount than you opponents.  I don't do military til I need it and that is after I have a clear advantage in planets and production.

I play with Drengin set to Godlike, and i prefer them to have a massive production advantage to me! I win because i build ships with the right equipment, not because i build allot of ships.

Finances in this game are so pitiful i build just markets on all my planets (along with a farm, a morale building and a starport). Only if there is a bonus will i build something else on a planet. Then when i am conquoring worlds i will have to demolish most factories and labs i encounter - once again because funds are so pitiful. I will usually have at least two planets dedicated with labs and 1 planet dedicated with factories (my manufacturing capital). Finances are too pitiful to support much more than that, especially once i have lots of starbases around!

Just remember.... markets, markets, markets, markets and more markets. This game should be called market civilisations, not galactic civilisations!

Good equipment is essential to a happy life.  Finances are pitiful. 

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Nice screenshot! I don't think i would vote for you tho!!