Absolute Beginner

As other posters mentioned, you're probably getting to the point of your game (or already there) where the AI has acquired air units.

This is when you need to begin paying close attention to your close friends who may have bases near your own. All it takes is one turn for a friend to turn around and sign and alliance with one of your enemies.

You do not want the Pirates for example, dumping tons of copters into your former friends bases.

You do not want a worried Hive stacking Never Gas Copters nearby either!

The fanatical factions are not afraid to use a first strike planet buster capability!

It is important that you begin establishing neutral zones. No bases within 12 squares of your own to avoid air assaults in the Fission Era.

It is imperative you do not allow the AI to establish an air force! The Cloudbase Academy is absolutely off the table. Any attempt by the AI to build it should be dealt with the deadliest force!

Yay, SMAC! I miss it, having been deprived of real civ for so long. Wish I didn't lose my HD.

1 ) Manual terraforming is definitely the way to go. While auto-terraform is generally smarter than it is in Civ5/BE and has more options, manual terraforming is useful for turn advantage.
Forest planting is preferred on higher difficulties due to the low cap on content citizens, but farms+solar collectors work okay. Forests have advantages and disadvantages, the worst being that hostile infantry in your territory gain a defensive bonus... unless you have psi units.
Forests have a flat yield of 1/2/1 on non-bonus tiles, while a tile's productivity is normally based on raininess and rockiness. Additionally, without a bonus resource, tiles are limited to 2 food/2 nut/2 energy, so farms on rainy tiles don't perform as well as on would hope.

Generally, if I'm on high-altitude moist (over 1000m) or any altitude rainy, I'll go with solar collectors and farms, even though Forests are the "right" way to play for a lot of reasons. Arid has to go with Forests unless it is at a high altitude.

Later on there are more options, both for forests and other terraforming improvements like Boreholes and Condensers. The in-game encyclopedia is a fairly reliable resource for information on those enhancements when they are available. The Forests option reduces eco-damage and has strong production by mid-game, but once you have hab complexes and drone control, you will want bigger bases with or without crawlers.

2 )Yellow civvies are content, blue are "happy", red are "unhappy", and there are specialists are considered content (not sure if drones can be used for specialists, I think they can though). Specialists are normally there to offset temporary drone issues with Doctors, but can also be set to Librarians for science. There are improved specialist types later in the tree, with Empaths being the earliest for most tech paths.
Anyway if you have more red civvies than blue, your cities will revolt (no production/tech/income). Yellow don't count for either.
If you have no red and more blue than yellow, the city enters a golden age which confers some useful bonuses. This only happens with luxury spending.
Most drone control buildings will only prevent red civvies from appearing, and you would prefer not to have any red drones. Same with military police.
You will get red civvies from having too much population in a base, having lots of bases (where drones will randomly pop up), conquering a base (the occupied base will have extra drones), and having military units out of your territory while operating a free market economy. The latter of these is the most devastating, because drones from military units can not be negated by anti-drone buildings.

There are some alternatives to drone control / luxuries for dealing with drone riots. One is nightmare fuel and not a good idea, and another comes early-mid game and has similar penalties (except one is an atrocity and the other somehow isn't? Planet logic...) Late-game there is a wonder which suppresses drone riots outright with none of the negative effects.

3 )Cities get free energy based on your Economy rating in Social Engineering, and buildings. By default I think bases get 1 energy, +1 Economy gets +1 energy per base and +2 Economy gets +1 energy per tile worked. Higher Econ ratings give more energy per base, while negative economy ratings remove the free energy per base at -2, and remove the HQ's extra energy at -1.

If you are playing a faction capable of it, look up pop-booming to set up your early game economy - Democratic, Planned and a Childrens' Creche (or a Golden age in place of any of those, but that is expensive and stalls once you start getting drones; also Eudaimonia but that is way too late in the game). +6 growth puts your cities in population boom and they'll grow every turn. So long as you have drone control ability and food, this will swell your population to levels where you can really accelerate your game, and the AI doesn't do this often due to their SE preferences.

When I build a new colony, it automatically starts to build a 1-3-1 infantry garrison. Because of high industry, the build extends into the second row, and when I change the build to a cheap police unit (needed because the first citizen will already be a drone), I lose minerals for changing.

Is it possible to change the first automatic build unit?

Raaf said:

When I build a new colony, it automatically starts to build a 1-3-1 infantry garrison. Because of high industry, the build extends into the second row, and when I change the build to a cheap police unit (needed because the first citizen will already be a drone), I lose minerals for changing.

Is it possible to change the first automatic build unit?

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Turn off always build last unit in preferences or alternatively ask for a prompt to whenever a unit is built. Or you can set your build queue appropriately beforehand.

Recon Rover said:

Turn off always build last unit in preferences or alternatively ask for a prompt to whenever a unit is built. Or you can set your build queue appropriately beforehand.

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But does that influence the first build for a new colony?

Anyway, I started a new game on Librarian difficulty, small world, as Yang.
I reached the phase where limits on resources are lifted, and Eco-damage threatens. So I want this first fungal pop and then start building Centauri Forests to be able to grow.

What is the best approach to getting this first pop: a bit of eco damage in several bases, or a lot of eco damage in a single base? Or just a little damage in one base?

And then, after that first pop, turn down production to safe levels again?

I think that your first build for a new base will almost always be the best available garrison unit. If you want to build something else, you have to change it manually.

To get my first pop, I usually have one base generate around 40 ED. According to the manual, the ED represents the probability that a base will generate a pop on a given turn. You can usually generate two pops before native life shows up. After your first pop, the following facilities all will reduce ED at all bases: Tree Farm, Hybrid Forest, Centauri Preserve and Temple of Planet (each such facility reduces ED by one).

Petek said:

I think that your first build for a new base will almost always be the best available garrison unit. If you want to build something else, you have to change it manually.

To get my first pop, I usually have one base generate around 40 ED. According to the manual, the ED represents the probability that a base will generate a pop on a given turn. You can usually generate two pops before native life shows up. After your first pop, the following facilities all will reduce ED at all bases: Tree Farm, Hybrid Forest, Centauri Preserve and Temple of Planet (each such facility reduces ED by one).

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40 Ecological Damage from one base? That is massive!
My maximum ED is 12, with a total of 30 ED from all bases, but more than 10 turns I haven't got a single pop (or I missed it?).

I guess it is a waste to start building Centauri Forests before the first pop?

In my previous game (Zakharov on Talent on a large map) I got a pop while I only ran a little bit of ED. Was that just 'lucky'?

Fungal pops are random - one can happen at as low as 1 over the mineral limit. It's just not very likely on any given turn.

So yes, I rebased a lot of crawlers and produced 50 ED in one base, and that created the pop.

Now I can build all those Centauri forests, and rebase those crawlers until the problem we can turn up the production again.

So, missing the first fungus pop is not a risk, because there is a cut scene when it happens.

I found the advanced topic on eco-damage in the F1 network library, and I wondered about that formula: how is a terraform construction connected to a base; a base has an area, but those areas can be overlapping, and there is terraforming outside the bases' area that may or may not be exploited by crawlers.

Is the ownership of the former deciding? What if the former changes home-base? Or is it the closest base, with ties resolved pseudo-randomly?

I think that ED from a tile goes to the base that works the tile. I wouldn't worry too much about that aspect of ED, however. The most important cause of ED is the gross number of minerals that the base produces. The definitive guide to ED (which is more accurate that what's found from the F1 key) may be found here.

Petek said:

I think that ED from a tile goes to the base that works the tile. I wouldn't worry too much about that aspect of ED, however. The most important cause of ED is the gross number of minerals that the base produces. The definitive guide to ED (which is more accurate that what's found from the F1 key) may be found here.

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Get one pop then start spamming tree farms in every city. They make your forests better in any event.

By the way, if you've played Civ 5, in this game it is almost always a good idea to go as wide as possible. Which means you will have a lot of cities to build tree farms.

Btw, a good way to get ahead in science is to make a solar farm. Echelon mirrors and solar panels on the highest possible elevation + crawlers = GG against the AI (though, build far enough away that the AI can't demolish it with air).

The AI will not car much about ED but it is best not to have it as it does screw up terraforming to an annoying extent. You even lose roads sometimes. Even the meteor crater and other bonus tiles vanish (for some reason).