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.