My ungrateful subjects

[dmm]

I am nearing the end of a long SEIV solo game in a huge galaxy. I am WAY ahead of the last remaining computer player, but he won't surrender. Unfortunately, I accidentally set the game up with a rather small max number of ships (doh!!), and because it's been such a long game, the computer player's ships are almost as good as mine. So, rather than slug it out, I am slowly crushing him with intel, getting his colonies to rebel. I succeed with 1 or 2 colonies every half a dozen turns or so. The problem is, that the PC then glasses the colonies (not always, but usually). I wouldn't care except that my ungrateful subjects apparently consider these to be military defeats. Now I am having to deal with entire systems rioting all at once. Most annoying is that they were "ecstatic", or whatever the term is, only one turn before, so I am getting no warning. I know that I can make them happy again by bringing in a war fleet, billeting soldiers in their homes, and building facilities to spread propaganda. (Sheesh, are they dumb, or what?!) But this is getting tiresome, and now I am running up against the unit limit (doh!! again).

Any other suggestions?