I filled my tiles with factories and labs and farms
You should be careful not to overextend yourself in the beginning. To many factories and labs early on can wreck your economy. Also, don't build to many farms or you will have problems with approval eventually and lose population. One or two per planet is enough.
More to this, on your homeworld, no farms are actually needed, since the native pop cap on a HW is 16B, one entertainment facility (always max this line of tech out to gain the Virtual Reality Center) is all one will ever need on a HW. For other planets, 1 farm, 1 morale is the key. Avoid using farm bonus tiles, but do use morale ones!
There are certainly plenty of ways to go beyond this, but you never want your population too high. anything above 13B (your initial colony pop + 1 Xeno Farm III) and then you will require two morale structures. For larger planets this is fine, i do this for anything class 20 and above, but the more pop u have the more morale you need and the less econ structures you can place, so it becomes cost prohibitive, cash wise. Also the size of a planet will also affect population. Anything under a class 12 i will never take beyond 13B, your morale will suffer, since the planet is too small to support a greater population.
As you progress you will start to familiarize your self with planet focus. Here is where you can mess with your production quite an amount. I don't want to overwhelm you with information your not ready to grasp just yet, but building both factories and labs is often counter productive. With planet focus you can use your research points to focus on manufacturing, and vis-verca, though it is at a reduced rate, Sole Soul knows the math, but i'm sure you lose at least 25% of the output.
Take advantage of bonus tiles early on, but do pace yourself with your planet improvements, but focusing on labs will net you a higher gain, though cost more, but you can make that up by selling the extra tech you have to the AI.
A very popular strategy, especially, and in fact specifically in high scoring games is All Labs.
The title implies all one needs to know about the strategy, nothing but Labs, and using planet focus to a high degree. (though i wouldn't recommend jumping into this right now, it's for the experienced GC2 player)
Also, should I attempt first contact as soon as possible or not?
Yes you should. The Terrans strong suit is in Diplomacy, so to make full use of your race abilities, dealing with the AI is a must. The Terrans ability in negations with the AI is fantastic, and only grows in Dark Avatar.
Using your diplo advantage you can sell tech for a higher price, or gain tech at lower prices.
One thing of note, you said you took Pacifists and that war is a last resort. what you need to make sure is that you do not neglect your military. The AI will go after the weakest, and fast. It's not at all surprising that if you are behind in military, then every AI will declare war on you. This won't be so appraent on the difficulty levels you are at, but it's best to be aware of it from the get go.
To check your military score against the AI, go to your colony Management screen and in the bottom right there will be the Military score vs which AI you have selected. Try and be in the top 3, and always above 100.
It would have made more sense, if there were only the slider for overall production and the two for social and military.
Yup, that was called for in the Beta i believe and was debated here on the forums from very early on. Hardcoded too, so no modding can help...
