Perfecting the tech trade for planets strategy

The tech trade for planets strategy involves using 100% research spending with focused on social and never building a single ship. Although occassionally, you trade for enemy transport ships and upgrade them to colony ships. You just trade for(in the following priority):

1. Enemy Planets
2. Research Treaties
3. BCs
4. Troop Transports
5. Enemy techs
6. Enemy combat vessals

This is what I know are already optimal parts of the strategy.

Best race:

Humans-Super Diplomat, 30% Diplomacy, 30%econ, 10% morale.

Ethos must be neutral. You'll never be able to build Orbital Terraformers and AMC.
9 AI opponents. The lower the difficulty the worse this strategy is. The smaller the galaxy the worse this strategy is. 8 minor races.
You need to research straight for the economic techs that give bonuses for free. Neutrality, the government, morale techs, terraforming after neutrality, some econ techs, pop growth techs. Just trade these to the minor races to get their techs and then trade the techs to the AI for planets and once you're done with this then do the "worthless" techs to get planets.
Don't trade diplomacy techs!

What I don't know is:

Should there be a limited colonization at the beginning before you meet a major race? I always tear the starport down and build all econ.
Should the space miner be upgraded at the beginning? The space miner is a decent explorer and increases your influence.
Should you build labs on lab bonus squares?
Should you switch between 100% social and 100% research to get those markets built faster? Usually the only place that markets get built at a decent place is where the AI usually already has labs built. And a lot of the time they built RCC first which doesn't help you at all. Mostly nothing ever gets built except on places with labs built already or a homeworld but switching focus to production and deleting the AI factories and starports saves a lot of money so I still have to micromanage every planet.

Other notes:

Morale managing is the same as any other strategy
You can't trade for the AI's last three planets
The more planets you have the more population growth you buy per tax rate, so planets above all else
Wars between the AI are good. Lower AI planetary pop easier to trade for planets.
To win keep flipping planets and once your economy has stabilized build spys to enable the flipping of those hard to get planets
Once you're ahead of the game you can do whatever you want to win

strategies

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Interesting take on one of my preferred strategies. Personally, I like the heavy tech trading combined with an all-factory build. Basically, spamming colony ships all over the map means that I need to trade for less planets. I don't really think taking Diplomacy to such an extreme as 25+30 (+10% Populist party?) is needed. I'd rather put +30 Econ, +20 Morale, +3 points in something else with Populist party as Terran, or +30 Diplo, +30 Econ, +20 Morale, +3 points in something else as a Custom Super Diplomat. Actually, the Super Diplomat isn't THAT necessary unless you really want to trade planets to an extreme - I've traded for enough planets to have a big enough advantage to crush my enemies both as a Super Breeder and Manipulator.
Neutrality is indeed my preferred alignment for the tech trading strat too, although I played Evil as the diplo-breeder race.

Since our strategies do differ quite a bit, most of what I say probably doesn't exactly apply to your game, but I'm still enjoying this, so I'm going to keep rambling.

I'd probably put my trading priorities as Research Treaties > Planets > Tech > Money. Commonly, I'll research the techs that boost my production and research first, then Xeno Economics unless I've traded for it, then straight to Republic, then Stock Markets. (of course, choice techs tend to get interspersed here. The first Morale tech, for instance.) From there, it's a pretty open field depending on what the AIs have to offer me. I notice you'd research Ethics and all Terraforming techs around here, or even earlier. It's a pretty interesting choice that I should probably explore for myself. Personally, however, unless I get myself involved in an early war here and need to research military tech, this is where I start my extreme colonization phase. Since I only play on Tough, and tend to get into a very commanding tech lead early on, even with all-factories, this'll usually be far earlier than the AIs start going for extreme planets (excepting super abilities).
The main reason I tend to have for not researching Ethics before now is that I get a lot of colonization events this way, which further boosts my empire. It's probably just a misperception, but I think I'm starting to get worsened relations by picking the evil choice over and over when my alignment already is at 0. Further reason to try going for Ethics early, I suppose.

And wow, I'm just rambling here. I'll try wrapping it up by trying to answer your posed questions from my personal point of view.

-Colonizing before you meet others? Definitely. Although I can see it being a problem if you insist on building really nothing but econ buildings. I always put nothing but factories and a morale building on my homeworld (and any other civ capital I take over), although later on there'll also be a powerplant, and the original homeworld gets the Political Capital. Anyway, too much digression.
This is probably my most important and intensive part of the game - the only time I really fiddle extensively with the sliders is before my homeworld is fully built with Factories.

-Space miner? I always keep it as a miner/explorer, at least if I play on Large or bigger, which is where I feel at home.

-Labs on bonus tiles? While I have near-zero experience here, I'd say yes, at least on 300/700 tiles. With as many stock markets and as little expense as you seem to have, the obvious part to put it is in getting more tech. You can't always rush-buy the tech you want from the AI.

-Switching sliders? Definitely no experience here. Play all-factories and we'll talk.

I hope this reply is as helpful for you as it was for me writing it,
Xei.

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