[h1]8. Galaxy and Colonization[/h1]


[b]Establishing Outposts[/b]
First, you need to establish an Outpost. Those are free, you just need to click on a planet and set "Claim the planet" button and eventually an Outpost will be established (if it's possible). You can establish an Outpost only on planets adjacent to imperial planets.


[b]Colonization[/b]
When you have an outpost on the planet, it's considered yours and can be used for further expansion and for warfare, but no resources are gathered yet. To do so, you need to colonize the planet.

Colonization, similarly to outpost, is done automatically, but this time those use limited Colonization ships capacity. So it's much slower than building outposts.

You can click "Encourage colonization" if you really want to prioritize a certain planet to be colonized before others, but it does not speed things up, it merely says the colonization AI that you want this planet badly.


[b]How planets are prioritized by the auto colonization AI[/b]
The colonization AI is pretty smart and takes into account minerals, food, habitability, rare resources, proximity to core planets, proximity to dangerous borders, etc. So usually it will select one of the best planets to colonize. Of course your manual imperial order (Encourage colonization) takes a precedence and overrides all those (but note that if you encourage colonization on several planets the colonizer AI will prioritize among those using the usual criteria).
