I'm guessing you should NEVER colonize a planet with 0 food. Because your population can never grow, right?



And NEVER colonize a planet with 0 industry because you can never built anything, right?



Any circumstances under which this is not true?

Never say never!



Use heroes.

Heroes can create food on a '0' food planet?



I'll have to try that..

I assume your talking about the first planet in a system you colonize, yes? If so, its not a great idea, but you can still make it work (like settling on a gas giant with no industry or food).



There is an automatic improvement that the colonists have as soon as you colonize, and it give +5 and +5 for every planet in the system you have colonized. So that stops your citizens from starving out before you set up a food exploitation. And, if you have no industry, you can save some dust and buy improvements out

All the planets are useful in the end, but indeed in which order you colonize them is a very important strategic decision in this game. In general the worst planets also have lots of unhappiness so it's a big penalty to take them early on (unless you play Harmony faction), because your whole system becomes inefficient. And yes, heroes can help a lot!

It doesnt matter really, in the early game all colonizable planets will have a decent amount of FIDS. Then from the middle onwards, you will accumulate new improvements to make up for any planetary lack of FIDS.

It is always worth it to colonize every planet not just for the expansion victory, but just with space coverage. More land = higher chance to win. Even if has no food, it could still have science and ind and dust, and the littlest amount of and FIDS can be game changing. Colonize everything dude!

A planet with 0 food or 0 industry can acquire those through buildings, which you will have to purchase with dust. it is costly to set up initially so be aware of that.

A planet with only 1 pop can't colonize the rest of the system until you research and then build a +pop building. since you need a minimum of 1 pop per planet and thus can't reassign that last pop and can't build colonizers if you don't have enough.



You want to, eventually, colonize everything. but initially you want to start out by colonizing the best planets you can get.

You should also keep in mind your people's happiness. High happiness gives a small fids bonus, 0 happiness gives a large malus. Every system you colonize gives a happiness malus. Every planet that isn't top tier (terran, ocean, or jungle) gives a happiness penalty to the system (-5, -10, -15, -20 depending on its quality, or rather lack thereof)

You should research happiness providing structures (found in left quarter of the research trees) as you grow. And for equal priced upgrades in the colonization tree, the ones that give happiness come first (that is, terraforming, expansion disapproval reduction, and anomaly reductions).



Personally I like to, while skipping over useless tech, balance my research out equally between all the non military branches. where my priorities are (for equal priced research):

0. Get expansion disapproval reducer

1. Get anomaly reduction/terraforming tech

2. get +science buildings in science tree

3. get strategic resources (local bonus to all planets containing them)

4. get +industry building

5. get +happiness building

6. get +colonization tech (unlock new planet types)

7. get +population size tech



As I said, those for the same priced ones. So if you have an expansion disapproval that costs 4 turns to research and a +pop size tech that costs 2 turns, get the pop size one first.

This generally keeps the empire balanced and growing healthily.

Exceptions can be made based on my specific condition