Insane map, 10 majors, all minors, abundant stars/worlds, common most everything else, Challenging difficulty
Turn 100
Ran into pirates (set to common) almost immediately. By the time I had just 14 colonies, I had to start creating early warships and arming ships. I LOVE IT! (This is challenging.) And, the pirate fleet AI is working very well. The fighter fleets attacked my unarmed scouts and eventually killed all three that I had built. These early pirates do not attack my shipyards (smart). And, I created an armed scout with 4 beam and 8 shield and the 2-fighter pirate fleet (8 beam) attacked. They lost, but I took damage on my ship. Again, so far, this is working very well.
I have 20 colonies, Thalans have 55. Uh, what? That is definitely challenging, though I'm not sure if it's a bit much. We'll see how this goes as the game progresses.
20 colonies = -4 penalty to approval = 0% global approval. That is a bit much, especially as it doesn't seem to be slowing the Thalans. However, a bigger issue: Why should I care? My colonies are still producing, I only send .5 pop on a colony ship (I have the Benevolent perk that boosts initial colony pop). So I don't really care if my pop growth is slower. I will spam colony ships now until I complete the Benevolent approval tree, and I already got the Malevolent Intimidation Center (just haven't built any yet).
Off to bed. Play more tomorrow.