I decided to explain a bit how the food and growth system on the planets work. This includes the food transporting system which was done already many months ago but I haven’t explained it yet. Also in the end of the video you can see how the AI expands in the map. It tries to take the best planets first, depending on the situation.
In short, each planet has multipliers on how much food, minerals and research the planet produces. Each unit of population also eats one unit of food each turn. Planets can also transport food to other planets. It would be a laborious task for the player to set these food transport routes manually and check if they are profitable, so that is done automatically. The player just has to set what is the desired food amount on each planet and the rest is optimized automatically.
YrdVaab 