Part of the reason for this is the ship speed which really is way to slow for at the end of the game even for such a small map it takes 25 turns to cross.
That's what Cheapgates are for - since their labor cost is zero, you can just spam them everywhere.
So as soon as you have a colony near the ...

I have also just played through for the first time with the default settings.
I would not want to play on a lager map as it does devolve in to a grind.
Part of the reason for this is the ship speed which really is way to slow for at the end of the game even for such a small map it takes 25 turns to ...