Well, I really don't like specializing planets but based on what many here say and even what the devs say, it gives me the impression that it is the best strategy. All of the re-naming planets and deciding what the planets should be doing becomes a huge bother to me as the game wears on. I will probably start playing a more balance strategy. As long as I can win fairly easy on normal, I am fine. I can always move up in difficulty if I want to work a little harder.
Curiosity about your strategy, You say you specialize the planets with a lot of tiles. It seems that those planets would be the easiest to build multiple improvement, while the lower quality planets don't have sufficient tiles to allow a full range of production. I have been only mixing production on huge PQ colonies
I would guess that if you are non-specializing small planets you are building only a couple of factory improvements and a couple or research improvements, along with onesies for military, influence, etc., then waiting for them to produce more in the later game
In the later game it becomes moot since all planets are producing a huge amount of mfg and research with no improvements.
My style is to take planets at 14 or better and make them either production, research, or wealth. Usually, the terrain bonuses suggest a type and I try to exploit their adjacencies. I put all my infrastructure on the sparse parts of the map and leave the big clumps for the payload. I put two to three factories down.
High PQ doesn't seem to make the same differences it did in GC2. I find population feuls the economy the most.
I start each planet with a base set of available infrastructure. My must have buildings are Hospital, Farm, Entertainment, Factory, and Missionary. Most important is the Hospital. I set the individual planet governor to all production. When the planet goes idle, I decide its specialty, re-adjust the governor, and set up a substantial build cue. Even if there are only one or two tiles left after infrastucture assignments, I make sure they are they the same type and that becomes that planet's "specialty". The planet takes care of itself for a long while. I consider it a lazy person's form of micromanagement. I'm still formulating a plan for late game. I am still figuring out terraforming and projects.
Two or three factories seems to keep the build cue pumping through all the upgrades and stuff. I have thought about replacing them with payload buildings, but I like my distributed manufacturing base for late war efforts. A few but not many planets will specialize in production with as many factories as I can stuff in there. For the rest, I try to split roughly evenly between Research and Wealth specialization, leaning towards research. My home planet will have a bunch of factories and late game wonders, so that is its specialty. One planet will be named Shrinker and be used for that purpose. I build three factories there and then cue up military adjacencies around the shrinker. I leave the planet governor on all social manufacturing until it finishes with that whole cue. I rush buy a couple of infrastructure buildings to keep it growing. It probably receives the most micromanagement of my planets except for the home world itself.
