Stardust and CP strategy
So the strategy from what I've been reading is to save your stardusts and evolve pokemon first. What is the strategy after that? Pokemon who have reached the end of their evolution, would it be wise to keep using stardust and upgrading its CP? Like, it seems like a waste to use my stardust to power up my beedrill right? Just to say that it has reached its max. What's the point? But which pokemon is worth it and should be prioritizing to upgrade CP for those pokemon first?
Answers
The only downside to powering up pokemon is losing the candies that go with it - after all, Stardust exists solely for power pokemon up. You've got to ration that of course, but generally it's not as unfortunate a loss.
Candies are invaluable for powerleveling via lucky egg evolution spam. Therefore, I would recommend powering up only strong pokemon, who you actually intend to use for gyms. Powering up a Beedrill indeed has little merit, Weedle has low evolution requirements, meaning that each candy is more valuable than candies of other evolutions. Beedrill also has a low CP cap, and generally isn't very effective.
You're likely hearing that you should evolve before powering up because it's hard to get the moves you want on pokemon in this game. Evolution can throw the height, weight, and moves of good IV pokemon into wack (height and weight seemingly not mattering).
In the case of Weedle/Kakuna/Beedrill, I would preserve and/or evolve the species with the best IVs, hoping that at least some of these have the move combinations you want. Otherwise, as a matter of course, you want to a) catch anything and everything anyway, so hopefully you're still catching every Weedle you see, and b) evolve strategically, as evolving Weedle to Kakuna is relatively cheap to do but still gives you 500 XP same as any other evolution (barring one into a new species which gives its own one-off +500 XP), and 1000 XP if you do so under the blessing of a Lucky Egg. If you choose to do all your evolutions at once under the benefit of a Lucky Egg, well, as Ryik said, that's relatively smart.
