The Great Research Race

Did you remember to go to the "Govern" screen, and reset your resource allocation to be more resource heavy?

For the most part, it's not hard to be ahead in the research race if you've got the research component set to 40%+ of total use.

Personally, I tend to set the allocation wheel to 10% income, 50% production, 40% research in the early game (during when I'm pumping out colony ships), then swap the research & production allocations in mid-game to get ahead on research.

If you want to Micro, picking a couple of planets that have high research bonuses, set the planetary Govern screen to 80% Research, 20% production after you've built a couple of research buildings, then go away.

I have done all of the above except for adjusting individual planet sliders.

Not really understanding how all of these races without my bonuses are pulling ahead with tech.

Research in the game is too easy. Here's how to ensure you are #1 by a very long way. Its not even close to perfectly efficient, but you will substantially out-research the AI.

Turn 1:

Check out your homeworld. Go into colony management screen. Set slider to 100% production. Build factories on exactly half of your squares - normally about 5-7 depending on the class of your homeworld. They should pump out at 1 per turn. As you build them, scale back the slider to research, researching xeno factories/labs. 

Turn 7 (ish):

Fill the remaining tiles with labs. By now xeno factories/labs should be done - build the factories first and then continue with the labs. You should be done researching farms. Keep scaling back that slider to more research - or start pumping colony ships with remaining production. Farms should finish soon after.

Turn 20 (ish): 

Research the next level of factories and labs. When you reach tier 3 of labs, you should have unlocked the research project. Bingo. Go to your homeworld, move the slider all the way to production, and 100% social production. Now build the research project. This should easily produce 200-300 research.

From here on out techs should flow in at 1 per turn. Make sure you are ALWAYS researching 1 new tech per turn - as much as possible, try to avoid even 2 turn techs unless you need to beeline for something (there's typically a couple of things you want that will make you do this - ie medium hull, weapons, approval, etc). 

The trick is not to value research buildings too highly. 

50% factories, 50% labs with 100% social production and research project is currently WAYYYY better than 100% labs with 100% research. Silly I know.

From there on, you probably want a second and maybe third research world, using the same build order etc. 

The reason for this is because the one weakness of the above strategy is that every time you gain access to a new building your tech will stop entirely while your world upgrades. If you bring a second or third research world online, then every time you research a building upgrade, upgrade 1 planet first (while manually forcing the other to not upgrade and continue with research project). 

Make sure you pick a reasonably high planet class for your second/third research worlds. 3 should be more than enough for the entire rest of the game. 

I normally build homeworld research, next world factory, next world research, next world factory, next world money (money worlds work same way as research worlds), next world research. 

You'll need the money world or otherwise you will go broke.

I also forgot to mention - you will need farms at some point too.

Just remove 1 factory and 1 lab, replace with farms. 

Generally you want to cluster your buildings next to one another for the bonuses, so plan out where you want your labs, factories and farms to go.

So if have, lets say 10 research facilities and I research a tech that upgrades research facilities all of the facilities on that planet stop researching until upgraded?

If you go down the "research project" route yes.

If you just build using the obvious strategy, no.