Question about new colonies

[deadboy]

ok I got Moo3 and I love it and even though I have not played it to long yet I think that I got the basics down but I can't seem to figure out one thing. When I colonize a new planet the population grows until it says that I have a new colony then right after that it starts to drop very fast and within 10 or so turns I have no colony. I don't know what I am doing wrong I have tried colonizing around 5 planets and they have all died. My home planets pop is growing very fast and doing very good. I even populated a planet with 8000 darlocks on it (for some reason I didn't need to take them over as they were just there not doing anything) and 5 turns after I got a fully running colony there were only 4000 left. I am playing the slictoids (I don't think that’s the right spelling) in a small cluster map on easy (my first game I start off easy) any Ideas as to what I could be doing wrong?

[JonahFalcon]

Sounds like you keep colonizing yellow and red planets.

[Vince278]

That sounds right. I wish we could see the "green, yellow, red" without having to highlight/select the planet.

[deadboy]

oh I though that you could colonize a red or yellow planet and it would just be less productive than a green planet. it is just that there are almost no green planets there all red 2 with a few yellow 2 planets here and there.

[Jamski]

Thats because you're playing as the sillicoids. Try playing with some lizards to get lots of green planets.

-Jam

[JonahFalcon]

You can almost predict which planets will be good for your race just by looking at them.

If you play Humans, for example, look for planets that LOOK like Earth - most of them will be Green, though those without any cloud cover at all could be Yellow.

Plus, the Planets tab is there for a reason.

[nicesky]

How about starvation? If you're the silicons you eat MINERALS but the Darlok need real food. So built a food DEA on your home planet just to feed magnate planets.

You can actually see what you're people died of in the planetary screen population I thought..

[Jamski]

Yes, its the "Demographics" tab in the centre bottom of the planet screen. Also good for finding out the cause of unrest.

-Jam

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by deadboy
oh I though that you could colonize a red or yellow planet and it would just be less productive than a green planet. it is just that there are almost no green planets there all red 2 with a few yellow 2 planets here and there.

You can, but you need to create shelter or dome. I forget what it is called, as I have not made any yet.

[Crostoneman]

You need to build outposts for those red and yellow planets. Unlike a colony, they only carry military personals in biodomes to keep track of other empires on the frontier.

[canamrock]

Biodomes. The trick is that you can colonize Sweet Spot, Green 1, Green 2, and Yellow 1 planets without biodomes. Yellow 2 and Red planets will require that you have the Biodome technology (acquired fairly early), and usually also a net excess of food empire-wide to supply the growing colony.

Try to build an industry, two bioharvest, two mining, and a gov't DEA for each colony... this helps your mid-level development. Scrap them later if you prefer a purely capitalist production system.