Yes, please. Damned Thalans. There should be an over-extension mechanic to limit the amount of planets you can just gobble up at once. The early colony rush/phase is okay, but there needs to be a limit so that I don't get the Thalan Empire just spamming colony ships in all directions and being the giant, pink blob (although fighting against the giant pink blob was a bit grindy at times, it made for some great "small empire takes on the big, evil empire" storytelling). 

So yeah, some over-extension mechanics would be good; and it would make sense. 

Well put by both sides of the issue. I think there is merit for some outside pressure to expand but there needs to be balance so that rapid expansion is not the over whelming main focus of the game. It all comes down to balance, which by the way I think was done remarkably well in the past with both Gal I and Gal II. Can't wait to see what the team comes up with.

If you recall there were strategies in GC2 that allowed you to have all the planets in the game (bar 1) within year zero without colonizing more than 1 other planet. Obviously these were extreme game mechanics tested out to the nth degree, but even dialed down, one could be in the top 3 in DA/ToA in year 1 by only colonizing a few worlds.
It's all about how you structure your game play.

I agree the AI were a machine in the colony rush phase, but on the lesser difficulties, i think painful and below, they were quite sedate. At suicidal i believe the AI knew the location of every planet.

I think the fact GC3 is being coded specifically for 64bit machines will allow for sufficiently large maps that even with 9 AI (assuming its the same as GC2) you will be able to net yourself a decent enough slice of the pie.

I was able to beat the AI to a lot of good colonies in GC2 by giving my colony ships lots of engines.  Same with constructors for building outposts on resources.

Outcolonizing a single one, beating the worst?  Piece of cake.  Outcolonizing each one individually, beating the best?  No sweat.  Outcolonizing more than one, combined?  Eminently doable.  Outcolonizing all of them, combined?  Now that required a bit more advanced strategy

Being as the colony rush was the main portion of the game I enjoyed, I'd hate to see it be toned down too drastically, but I can see some of the points that are being made.

Good to see you, Mag.

Now, now.  Let's not make Neilo feel too bad!  

As did I.  Why bother letting the AI colonize the planets, when I can do it faster?    Actually rather enjoyed Hive for such a game, but Breeder's pop growth is almost too overpowered not to use.

Very satisfying, you mean.

I think EU IV dealt with the spam approach in an interesting way by assigning 'overextension' penalties according to distance from home countries, whether or not the province was a core, etc. You can lower the overextension naturally over time or by assigning resources against it or by events. But perhaps some ways of dealing with the spam without global prohibitions 

That much is true, but that's no reason to make the colony rush worse for the player.  What we need, as always, is to make the AI better.  As you said, anything below Painful is comparatively a cakewalk (pun intended) once one has played the game for a while.  For instance, I enjoyed DL greatly, and enjoyed DA even more once I got used to it, but there's no denying that almost all of the changes when going from DL to DA were designed to make it harder on the player (see: engine nerf), because it was deemed too difficult to get the AI to use everything properly.  Nor will I deny that at least some of those changes were good for the game as a whole-but I still take issue with the design philosophy.

Well, in reply #3312 in the ToE thread (link will only work if you're not logged in-just reported problem here), Mumble begs to differ  But whether I'm first or second, Mag's rush was always the bar to beat, for me.  It's one of the things that pushed me as far as I went, mechanics wise-so credit where credit is due.

As for your question of why to straight-up colonize yourself, the reason is rather simple: The AI is bad at building  I'd much rather get the planet myself, build it up myself, make more money, and have pop maxed much earlier, thank you very much.    But then again that's how I've always played, from the start, because that's what's fun for me, haha.

The "colony rush" is a main core of Galactic Civilizations. It's even part of the story.

KP!!!!! Greetings sir!!!

Good to see old faces here.  Yes you could out do the AI push those colony ships out and grab those goody huts and hope you balance your econ. Your on edge until OH YA LOTTERY WOOT MORE SHIPS NOW! MY COLONY MINE!

See this is the weird part, I enjoyed the colony rush of GCII use up Colony ships and colony stage was a game of its own but I also like the Sots games ie you establish colonies and its your choice to support them or move on but don't over extend yourself or this happens- well shit captain hands scientists pocket change for research and shipyards gather dust and randoms ruin your day. And the neighbors beat you to death.

I like them both...

The colony rush made sense given the game's lore.

One weird solution off the top of my head-  powerful mid-game buildings that have a drawback of adding unrest of other planets in your empire when you build them (maybe even distance based).  Maybe economic/military capitals could work like this.  So tall empires would benefit from the buildings, wide empires would have a drawbacks.

Another alternative would be to have capitals provide their bonuses, but provide penalties to other planets based on how far they are from a capital.  

The downside is this system might mimic Civ 3's inefficiency, but Elemental-style unrest was worse.