What should I concentrate on?

[Cryten]

Im finding myself with an influx of early resources of food and minerals. Should I be demolishing districts and building advanced job buildings? As a militaristic authoritarian spiritualist should I be building research or alloy foundries? (or consumer goods?). Have I spoiled my game by building the nobles residences and temple instead of these advanced resources straight away?

Also lastly should I be shipping pops from my home planet too my first colony to overcome the new colony penalty despite the fact this will leave alot of jobs open on my home planet for years to come? This would probably also impact any said advanced resource production.

[HugsAndSnuggles]

You can do whatever, really. But if you're asking what game is balanced around: you heavily prioritize fleet (alloys), maybe add some tech (2 labs adjusted for sprawl tends to be enough) with everything else being an afterthought (meaning neglecting unity, using lowest living standards possible, etc - as long as you keep pops from rioting). You do need pop growth, though; especially at the beginning.

Resettling is more efficient, but depends on basic resource production, since that is what mostly suffers.

[StevieSedai]

If you have a surplus of resources, that’s a good thing. You can use those resource surplus to float your economy when your facing other crucial shortages like consumer goods/Energy shortages, or if you need to buy alloys on the fly. I would avoid decommissioning districts and such in an effort to reallocate. Be patient and play the long game, your populations on your colonies will catch up in terms of growth. I would say that you may see some Consumer Goods shortages because Temples and Nobles Estates provide benefits but they do eat up Consumer Goods, I normally face a lot of those shortages, hence using the market to sell surplus resources to shore up demand while I build civilian industries to meet demand. I would also recommend specializing your worlds if you already haven’t, I.e. making a world and Agri-world by building mostly farming districts and so in with mining and generator worlds, so on and so forth.

As long as you shore up and resource deficits that result from the buildings that you want to build on your worlds you should be good.

I hope this helps!

[Schanez]

Depends what you are planning to do with your Empire.

If you want to go Wide, as in capture lots of systems and colonize lots of planets, you want to focus heavily on Minerals and Alloys to fuel your Fleets and expansion needs. Secondly Consumer Goods and Rare Resources. You will need the former for your planets and the latter for all sorts of advanced buildings as well as more technologically advanced ship modules.

If you wish to go Tall, as in expand up to your Administrative Capacity limit with few planets, you might want to focus more on Consumer Goods and Research. Early on I would still build a second Alloy Foundry for quick fleet replenishment, as you will still lack the technological edge. Later on, I push Consumer Goods to fuel my Research Labolatories. Alloys are still important, as they are the resource for construction of all of the Megastructures as well as needed to upgrade your fleet. But in this gameplay you can go much lower on Minerals, as you won't be needing them to construct Mining and Research Stations as you push your boundries out.

Overall, the starting strategy I have:
- use the first building slot for the Autochton Monument
- use the second building slot for a second Alloy Foundry
- keep expanding the systems to capture key chokepoints into my space
- build districts based on what I need and what systems I have in proximity, to cover the areas I am lacking in

Surplus food can be sold, but better yet, you can change your food policy to "Nutritious Plentitude" as well as use the planetary Decision "Encourage Planetary Growth". They will boost your Pop Growth Speed by 20% total.

TLDR:
Wide - Minerals & Alloys > Food & Consumer Goods
Tall - Alloys & Research > Consumer Goods & Food > Minerals