Let's presume there would be some deus ex machina solution to the problem of traveling interstellar distances, and we could achieve it somehow cost effectively and with reasonable travel times, but without reaching anything resembling a technological singularity. Let's presume we would find some way to do all this within the next 35 to 40 years.
Now let's presume we find an alien planet that is habitable or at least marginally habitable for humans and can sustain a native ecosystem of its own that is either suitable for humans or sustain a transplanted human ecosystem (read: we can eat the food and drink the water)
Let's also presume there is a pre information age, bronze to early industrial age civilization already existing on that planet.
Would we make direct contact or would we just observe and wait until that civilization reaches certain degree of technological development before we make contact?
Would we be repeating the sins of our past and attempt to "help" or "uplift" them by some form of benevolent colonialism? If they would be engaged in something like our Napoleonic Wars or World War 1 (which were the deadliest global wars before World War 2), would we intervene somehow to end it?
What if the morals of one faction would be recognizably benevolent while the other would be some sort of crazy supremacist genocidal group like our Nazi's, would we take sides?
We often ask the question what would happen if aliens make contact with us, but rarely how it would look like if we were the aliens?
Scenarios like James Cameron's Avatar are terribly simplistic and just reverse the roles in the typical Hollywood alien invasion movie, the invaders are magically beaten by some magical surprise solution, like in War of the Worlds, where an advanced alien race hasn't somehow discovered microbiology, or in Avatar where the "Living planet" rise up against the invaders.