So I played my first game (of GC ever btw) as Yor and rocked a game at "challenging". Felt like Yor was a bit of a powerhouse, with being able to build population and not spending any planet space on food, so I thought I'd give humans a try. I'm on my 4th try now... I also play on large or huge maps with 'occasional' habitable planets and all AI opponents in the game. So not a whole lot of elbow-room. Not really on topic, but is that perhaps more crowded than the game is supposed to be?
I find it really hard to find space on planets for anything outside of production. I need at least 2 spaces for population, preferably 3 (growth + food), I need at least 1 space for happinness, at least 3 for production, preferably 4. That is 6-8 spaces, before I can find room for science or money. I do need some heavy production worlds to be able to build any ships, so my 12+ worlds go to shipyards and production, leaving my ~8 size worlds for science and wealth, of which I tend to end up with neither, due to the aforementioned space requirements for a basic society.
I'm wondering how you set up worlds, both small worlds and bigger planets. Do you specialize heavily? How much production do you aim for on non-prod. worlds? Do you have a rough ratio for science/wealth/prod worlds? Do you have small worlds go all production since they can't do anything else anyway, and leave the other things to the big ones? How on earth does anyone play anything outside of synthetics? Why do I suddenly feel like Cybermen actually SHOULD rule the galaxy?
Basic strategy insights welcome!
Thanks! 