Just wondering how many colony ships people usually make in a game. It seems like colonizing and recolonizing is one of the major speed bumps slowing the game down for me. With such single purpose I rarely make more than 2 or 3 colony ships in a system, and never bring them in until after I am sure I am about to secure the planet. The problem is that I keep them away from the frontlines when my empire is stable, so I am always faced with waiting a few minutes for them to multijump there and then waiting a few more minutes for them to have the antimatter to colonize.

Anyone else get frustrated with this a lot? I know the answer is to better micro my colony ships, make sure they are nearby at all times, etc, but the ship search feature even has a special category for colony so surely others must be like me and only build a few/forget where they left them. And it seems strange that more micro is the answer.

The best luck I have had is with picking a colonizing cap as my second early in the game, but my economies have been suffering from it, and in low pop confrontations it feels like a bit of a wasted cap.

Anyone have some winning strategies out there? Because right now I am really wishing that the colonize ability was merely on a cooldown times and antimatter free.