Planet build priorities for machine intelligence empires?

[BigSexy]

I'm starting to experiment with a machine empire, but I'm not sure what the starting build(s) should be for planet slots in order of priority. The usual focus on minerals and energy doesn't seem to have changed, but not sure I need much food or (any?) consumer goods?

They are 'driven assimilator' so I will need some food, but I have only been colonizing with my machine species as I think that is best?

Any advice on starting tips for a machine intelligence empire would be much appreciated!

[yuzhonglu]

Hydroponic bays for food. Otherwise 70% minerals, no energy, and 30% industrial districts.

[Danny]

If you are not a driven assimilator/rogue servitor with cyborg pops/biotrophies that need food, you don't need to produce food.
Otherwise, just enough to support those pops

Research, energy, alloys and minerals are your priorities in that order.
You can switch research and alloys if you're next to particularly hostile empire and war is imminent.

[BigSexy]

Originally posted by yuzhonglu:

Hydroponic bays for food. Otherwise 70% minerals, no energy, and 30% industrial districts.

Why no energy? That seems that could be a problematic route in the future? Or do you just sell other categories for energy?

[yuzhonglu]

Just get zero energy and all of your research and upkeep and uplink is "free." Just sell 100 food every month manually and there's no malus.

[Half Phased]

Ignore the exploity strategy described.

Firstly, basic economic stability, make sure that your empire is positive on the 3 basic resources.

Then, on your Homeworld, focus on research and manufacturing. It has the highest stability, so it is the most productive planet you have.

Robot assembly plants. They are essential for the pop growth they provide. Don’t bother getting simulation site, take the civic that makes maintenance drones produce unity, or assimilate pops.

Then, as the game progresses, looks to create machine worlds and manufacturing planets.

[Sea Base]

The exploit is the worst thing to do for economic strategy for machines since they get so much energy, so much so that you can support more tech/alloy/unity production than "cheesing".
Basically you want to go all out on energy, maintaining around +200 which is easy enough, with a roughly 1 energy planet to 4 others producing tech/alloys ect ect. You can largely just buy minerals as you need them from the market, which isn't very often since machines only use minerals for alloys and building construction. So you can net +0 minerals with roughly 1 in 15-20 planets focusing on minerals.
This is mostly down to how your generator jobs should be producing 35+ energy per job by mid game. No other empire comes close to that in any of the categories.