DA, Crippling Level. I captured two uninhabitable planets that had been colonized by AI, a Class 18 and a Class 20, after AI had had them for a while.  The capture was by normal invasion so the invasions didn't reduce the quality of the planets.  Both colonies had nice arrays of buildings: manufacturing centers, research academies, fusion power plants etc..  Their tiles were colored, one green and one blue to signify their condition of being barren or aquatic or whatever.   When I first invaded them their populations were very low and they could not produce or research anything...all focus points were zeros.  Their economies were like 60bc income, 26 bc spending 26 bc maintenance.  As their populations grew and I had owned them for more turns I kept expecting them to start producing something, but still all three...shipbuilding, social and research stayed at zero.  Finally, after they got close to 6B population one showed 2 flasks and the other 11 flasks of research capacity.  That's where it stands now.  Can someone explain how that works?  Why all those nice factories and research buildings, for which I was paying maintenance costs,  can't produce anything?   Is it because I don't have the tech for colonizing uninhabitable colonies that the AI had to have to colonize them?

Thanks for your replies.