In the opening moments of the game, you need to:
- Grab rare high-value spots that will be in contention
- Produce resources that will be in high demand (= high value = high profit)
- Ensure you have enough of the right resources to quickly upgrade
You don't have enough claims to do all three. So you have to make some trade-offs and decisions.
Getting the resources to upgrade is the most important. Otherwise you'll get stuck without any new claims for a long time, and you'll fall badly behind. So to be safe, make what you need for your HQ upgrade - Steel/Carbon, Al, and Glass.
Alternately, you can go for something that you think will be more profitable - energy often spikes early on, or maybe there's lots of scavengers and not much carbon so you'll want to get into carbon even if you're not a scavenger yourself. Or maybe skip Al and double-up on Steel. If you get it right, you can sell your resources for cash and buy the upgrade materials you need, and thereby be able to upgrade even sooner. If you get it wrong, you'll be stuck with no profits, no cash, and no upgrades.
And finally, if there's only one geothermal, or very little water, you might want to spend a claim snapping them up before anyone else does. Both are hard to capitalize on quickly - geothermals are expensive to build, and water often gets dirt-cheap in the early game before becoming insanely expensive in the late game. So getting them right off the bat can lower your profits early on and delay your upgrade path. But if they are in fact rare, then beating everyone else to them can make a big difference later on.
Bottom line: the right starting moves - the "build orders" you're looking for - are going to be different every game. They'll depend on the resource distribution, the colony types the other players choose, and how much you want to make risky plays in hopes of getting a better payout.
