[geoschmo]

Basically though to take advantage of this fast early expansion you have to do some things before the game. For one thing you have to spend some racial points raising your construction rate. I figured it out and it requires something like 32%. You can get 5 from picking the engineer culture, but you will need to get the other 28 from either the hardy industrialists and a little added to your construction characteristic, or adding a lot to your construction characteristic only.

Without doing this you cannnot get colony ships on one turn, even on emergency. IIRC the emergency used to be 175% or maybe even 200, and you could get a colony ship in one turn without going so heavy into construction on your racial setup.

Without this you only get your colony ships in two turns, and that means you are only getting 5 colony ships the first year, instead of ten. Does this change the equation do you think?

Geoschmo