Do you settle your "Mars" immediately?

I usually wait. Land-grabbing the other star systems is the priority. Although, you can design your own colony ship and slap on an extra hyperdrive, which can render your initial colony ship obsolete. You can also design a cheapo colony ship with no life support or hyperdrive, which you can colonize Mars with.

As a tech rush player, I grab it first turn, buy a factory (same on Earth) pump out a few labs with a Social Focus, then Research Focus once they are built. While this is going on, I am looking for a good planet to specialize for research. I usually find and colonize one around the time Mars starts aching under my taxes.

I then "Upgrade" my factory to an entertainment building (you keep the manufacturing bonus right up until it switches) and flat out purchase all future upgrades (bankrolled by tech whoring). On the next game that gives Mars a yellow square, I am going to scrap it as a research planet at this stage and build a farm, entertainment and economic structures and see how it fares as a tax cow.

(EDIT: I choose custom starting techs, and go with good drives, so all I sacrifice is some early early (first 5 turns) Earth improvements and can still do the interstellar land grab)

I usually leave it to the AI. I let my influence cause a rebellion or trade them for it, so I get it all nice and built up.

I leave one colony ship byevery 'poor' planet when I can afford to. Wait till the AI will get there one th enext turn then nab it. Just a little game of evil I like to play.

Depends on your race- for the Korx- it's Class 8, so it's more useful to grab it first turn...

I tend to let the AI grab it. I'd rather spend my quick-build starting capital on better planets -- and I certainly end up with my 'Mars' in my possession very soon anyway. (Usually, I'll end up just attacking the civ that grabbed it.)

I don't usually grab it first. I've got better planets to colonize! I'll get to it eventually, or the AI will. It's not very useful anyway, so no skin off my nose. I'll just conquer it later.

I grab better planets first then try to get to it before my friendly neighborhood space aliens do. Then I make like calrissian42 and add a couple of labs and a media center (I like to call them happy factories, is that weird?) and purchase upgrades.

If there is nothing better within maybe two turns travel time, then yes. Having a factory and a few labs jumpstarts research. Research begets technology. Technology begets research. The sooner you start, the faster it grows.

Google "miracle of compound interest" for the theory.

I usually leave it for later as their are almost certainly better worlds elsewhere. I usually mentally note to settle it later, and always forget and become surprised when I see the ai has colonized it.

I grab it with my initial colony ship and create my own custom colony ships with extra engines on them to colonize outlying worlds. I tend to make colony ships with a speed of 6 so I can beat the AI to them.

I leave it for later. In all the games I have played, I have ended up owning it by colonizing later on or flipping it.

Earth usually has such high influence it is suicide for another race to grab little ole Mars. They just can't hold on to it.

Dctrjons:

I leave one colony ship byevery 'poor' planet when I can afford to. Wait till the AI will get there one th enext turn then nab it. Just a little game of evil I like to play.

that's actually quite clever. that mars planet will suck enemy colony ships to it, if you leave it alone as long as possible, you deprive them of valuable turns and allows you to grab more planets

I leave it for later. Mars suxorz on the PQ scale. I wholly agree and use the strategy posted in #2. I think its best to get that 10-12 in the next system over and have an early manu planet in addition to your homeworld.

Heh. I was spoiled, as my first games were as the Korx. Korx II, their "Mars", is Class 8. Much more useful than the class 4's and 3's I usually see as the second planet in the starting system. Now I need to stop myself from right-off-the-bat colonizing those pitiful little worlds until I've nabbed a nearby decent one or two...so I'm sort of in the "depends" camp.

Since the intial colony ship is insufferably slow, I use it on mars. Then I build a new colony ship with around 3 ion drives that goes at twice the speed, and I use THAT to colonise.

(I get ion drive by choosing a custom tech)

I usually look around a bit first, if there isn't a good planet nearby, then I colonize it and just buy a few more colony ships to keep the colonization ocnstant, and also to make sure I don't get stuck with just the one world (which has happened).

Just last game I got spoiled with a giant expanse of space that was next to my civ, while every one else had to either go through me, or travel a long way out of their system (which their range was not likely to sustain). I wound up with about 6 worlds that all ended up over class 20 once I terraformed them (one was even a class 44, I got an ethical choice to sacrifice population for planet quality, and took the evil path to increase it by 50%, plus the green thumb ability for an extra 10%... it was amazing), as well as a few class 12 or so, and whichever planets culture flipped to me (including Mars, which I was too busy colonizing good worlds to get). A culture victory was all too easy with the taxes I was getting from them. I shudder to think of the games where I am literally stuck in the Sol system.

I would never let an alien race get my "Mars" because then they can get deeper into my territory without using life support modules. Every life support module an enemy has to put on to attack my main planets is one less gun they can attack with. The one time I did let it get colonized, it was the dang Yor, and I couldn't ever get it back cause it doesn't flip and I was too much of a chicken to attack them (they were the most powerful race in the galaxy at the time.)

-Dewar