Well, SotS had an elegant system to limit the spread of colonization. Obviously, "paradise worlds" were highly sought-after and grabbed ASAP, but most planets have strings attached to their colonization. Inhospitable worlds are costly to maintain; their harsh condition makes it hard to get an industry running and even harder to develop your population. It's a good way to make sure you limit your initial rush to a few key colonies (again, except if you find DA PARADISE)

Mostly because they AI already knows where all the good planets are and beelines straight for them.  I hope this changes in GC3.

There is a game mechanic to limit colony spam:  it's called a military.

Wow 4+ hours? What kind of settings were you playing on? It's been a while since I played GC2 but even on the larger map I can easily say I never had turns that took that long. A hour may have been my longest turn and even that is probably stretching it. I just can't think of what all you would need to check and why it would take that long.

More on topic of colony spam there is a lot of talk of different colony strategies but I will admit I have never been that active in the forums. Where are the details on these strategies mentioned as the links provided only seem to be topics discussing which strategy is better but not what those strategies actually in-tale.

I'm also intrigued by the mention of the not building any colony ships tactic and how that works?

As for Colony Rush I never played at the extremes some of the number crunchers play at. But I thought the economic hit of having undeveloped colonies was a good deterrent for just throwing out lots of colonies on any planet in range. As others have said already those who expand too fast have a very weak economy which often translates into a weak military.

The problem for most players who find over expansion of AI in 4x games to be an issue is their play style is to timid. If you just let the larger empire sit there unchallenged and build up it's economy then of course you will be faced with a disadvantage late game. Peace is not the path to victory.

The majority of 4x games are a land rush at the start. Those that aren't usually have territory already assign to specific groups so it's more of a preset scenario setup like the EU and TW series.

Overextension leading to revolt demands/revolt risk makes sense in a space game, much more than it did in Elemental.

That said, invaded planets that are occupied by troops should be immune to this, but planets ruled by an iron fist/military rule should suck for research/growth/development.

That's all part of the Game Balancing - to give a player the ability to up the PQ rating of a Planet without other counter-balancing factors, would sink the whole game balance in the long run.

You have to go find 'em, all part of the Fun -  not get them as a freebie

What he means about freebie is "what would prevent someone with a wide civilization from using those same techs to build a really tall, really wide civilization?"

If there's a tech that lets you add 10 tiles to each of your planets so your 20 planet civilization can compete with a 100 planet civilization, what is keeping that opposing 100 planet civilization from doing the same to all of its planets?

I think thouse penalties are totaly illogical and cannot be in real life, unless i do not see somthing so prove me i am wrong.

I think the key thing is to teach the AI the same tactics as the human player - to not overextend the economy so far by colony rushing that it is crippling for many turns to come.

Hold onto colony ships until the ebbing of funds slows down, rather than sending them out right away.  By all means plant a flag on an important world to get there first, but consider how the influence game is going to play out.  If someone else wants to colonise that Class 5 rock nearby, let them - it'll flip soon enough.

That, and stop spamming ships at every single colony, damn it.

It's not that you can't simply get good at colony rushing, but after playing so many games it becomes a bit of a rat race and you have to wonder how far behind you're lagging in the tech race and so on.  All because you had to gobble up the galactic real estate as quickly as possible.

My own exploration strategy for a scattered cluster galaxy:

Use the survey ship initially for scouting, use cheap scouts once you have a second colony to build them from.

Avoid going too far out - the bigger the search radius, the greater the chance that another race will get to one of the nearby planets before you've even seen it.  Also, the further you have to send a colony ship, the more chance you will not have a very contiguous empire.

If you encounter another race's territory, change direction.  You're going to have a hard time beating them to planets that are nearby to their existing colonies, so scout elsewhere.  A course change of 60 to 120 degrees should do.

Double back eventually to look at star systems nearer to homeworld that you haven't looked at yet.

I like the colony rush and stardock broke it up by adding the different planet types and the research needed to be able to colonise them.

For me the colony rush was simply carving my own space in the map (pun intended).

I confess, i think i'm a bit different player than most, because i like to play pacifistic style, i never start a war unless absolutely necessary. When AI declared on me I rushed ship after ship on production, lost my "buffer zone" intentionally and wiped them off the map. with the fleet i built in 10 turns (yes, it needs preparation).
Then i go back to my micromanaging of the empire and make some coffee.

I told that because colony rush is major part of that play style. You need to get your borders wide enough that you get ALL the goodies near your capital + buffer zone.
I found it annoying that you need to rush for those "useless" border zone planets, just because AI went crazy with expanding.
Then again, there's clear challenge getting the space you need so...

Its a two edged sword, but i rather take it as it is than make some artificial bonus thingie to prevent it. AI is gonna get to those planets anyway and because you cant know how fast someone is gonna grab that buffer zone planet you just need to get them first anyway.

Slowing the game down, helps with this a bit, because its easier to react in time when you see somethings up somewhere.

There were also times i had my quad engine colony ship next to the planet ready to colonize it if AI comes too close to that planet and if there was another planet i wanted and AI went there, i could zoooooom there with my colony ship and get that one (and laugh @ the confused AI Colony ship).

Ofc then i knew i need to get that new colony ship out asap for the another planet.

All in all, i think the colony rush is fine, it could be slower if anything.

If colony ships would have fixed minimum time to build and no hurry option, that would be good alternative. Messing with bonuses is not the way to go.