Am I right in understanding that the optimal growth strategy with this mod (in addition obviously to grabbing all bonus pop/assembly buildings/traditions/techs/etc) is still to colonise as many worlds as possible as quickly as possible? but then for *long-term* growth it's important to shift focus to high capacity ringworlds/ecumenopoli/etc?

and I guess abductions/slave-market/annexation-resettlement become an alternative to just having more colonies

have you ever thought about adding pop/growth costs to building colony ships? can't remember which games I'm thinking of which had that mechanic (may even have been an earlier version of Stellaris lol) but seemed like a useful balancing & preventing colony spam from being the obvious choice