So I was playing a medium map and due to having a high concentration of species present I started next to the Insect who immediately settled a crap lvl 4-6 planet right next to my home world. Obviously not willing to stand for this I developed my home world and initial colonies with a greater lean towards influence than I normally would but I'm only talking about 3 buildings per world with bonuses boasted by a culture star base. So I was playing for a few hours and I had (not a huge number of turns as I'm pretty slow and the games still freezing a lot for me about 40ish I'd guess) by which time I had completely absorbed the Insects empire of 5 planets and was causing the terrains all kinds of issues. Anyway I saved it thought this was seriously over powered to be honest as that was a stupid rate of influence but thought no more of it. I logged back in an hour ago to continue, pressed end turn and got the holy mother of lags but eventually a pop up saying I'd gained an ideology cool I though I wonder what as I'd only unlocked 5 so far... oh I've unlocked all the ideology paths completely wtf, then I look a my colony list and I've suddenly gone from having 20% of the Galaxy to 86% in one turn, in the process unlocking every ideology in the game having completely absorbed more than half the races in the game. Honestly I stopped really trying to figure out what's going on as the lagging just went on overload and it was taking far too long to care.. I had Overlords (which being as I'd only recently unlocked small ships was interesting!), Frigates, constructors, Starbases, cutters, gunships, colony ships, about a dozen loaded Troop Transports all waiting orders because of the ideologies multiple empires needing planetary governing, countless starbase modules to upgrade and I wasn't past the first age of technology!!

So did my game just utterly break or is this an intended design feature because seriously regardless of the lag I don't want ti win the game in the first age of technology without trying too. Honestly I'm shocked at what happened! I had only just built my first trade ship, I was just getting started. Anyway I assume its some bug and not an intentional sequence that I triggered with a pretty balanced development!

So WTF happened?  If needed I can include logs...