Just to let you know, I have an insane map going on 280 turns. I have 92 colonies and I am running at 98 approval with actually all my planets at 100. I have approval buildings on 3 planets.

If you do not take Patriotic or farm Approval relics you will need to research approval techs and place 2 or more on each planet you settle or add. 

I would say Patriotic is a bit OP at an insane galaxy in it's current state, to the point the AI will become a pushover by mid game. But then again that depends on your definition of what is fun?

I do think the LEP will go through some iteration of balancing over time, but currently you are probably better of lowering the number of habitable planets on insane maps for now to have a balanced and fun game.

Decisions, decisions...If I take patriotic, it means I don't get colonizer and the free improvement, or I don't get engineers and the non-decaying ship yards.

So far I have been opting for ++ content. It helps a lot.

remember that you can build approval upgrades on star bases (up to +3 i think - maybe there's more in the age of ascencion, haven't played a lot in the late age yet). and you can upgrade star base range to 7. even without that range upgrade you can usually have 3-4 star bases affecting each of your planets. just build the base economy star base (the initial 10% production boost is far better than any of the subsequent upgrades anyway) and add approval modules as required. also, pick the commerce and approval traits that give flat or % approval bonuses approval and you don't have to waste much room for approval buildings on the actual planets. 

that's good enough for "reasonable" sized games. probably not enough for 1000 planet insane galaxies

also, as an alternative "infinite scaling" bonus, you can get the T3 trait in the upper line of malevolent. each planet you conquer gives you approval. so just absorb a neighbor or two every time approval starts becoming a problem

Unless a post-1.0 patch came out that I'm not aware of, approval still modifies all three output types. It just does it through base production, which means that the effect is hidden from the player if they're not paying attention, since base production isn't listed anywhere and none of the modifiers to it get listed in any of the tool tips anywhere in the planet and govern planet screens.

Evidence:

Listing: Population, Approval, Approval Modifier to Resistance, Actual Base Production, Expected Base Production, % Difference between Expected and Actual Base Production

1. 10, 48%, -1%, 19.8, 20.0, -1.1%
2. 10, 46%, -2%, 19.7, 20.0, -1.6%
3. 7.3, 63%, +3.2%, 18.5, 18.0, +2.5%
4. 7.3, 60%, +2.5%, 18.5, 18.0, +2.5%
5. 4.5, 97%, +22.5%, 19.2, 15.7, +22%
6. 1.9, 100%, +25%, 16.3, 13.1, +24%
7. 2.9, 91%, +17.8%, 10.8, 9.21, +17.2%
8. 3.1, 84%, +14.2%, 10.7, 9.42, +13.6%
9. 3.5, 73%, +7.2%, 10.5, 9.81, +7.1%
10. 3, 80%, +11.6%, 10.4, 9.32, +11.6%
11. 3.5, 68%, +4.4%, 10.3, 9.81, +5%
12. 4.1, 59%, +2.2%, 10.5, 10.37, +1.3%

The first 6 entries are for the homeworld, the others are for colonies. I think there's enough evidence to conclude that approval modifies base production in the same manner, or at least in a similar manner, to how it modifies a planet's resistance. This is supported in the GalCiv3GlobalDefs.XML file, which defines a set of points for an Approval to Production curve, with the curve points being a set of multipliers which range from -25% at 0% approval to +25% at 100% approval; this curve is identical to the curves defined for Approval to Growth, Approval to Resistance, and Approval to Culture.

Those numbers come from a game created in game version 1.0.

I'd tend to suggest avoiding farms for the most part, myself. They're frequently not as good at increasing a planet's output as the ~two factories/labs/markets you could get instead of 1 farm (including the approval structure you probably need to build with it).

While it is possible to get hundreds of planets on an insane map though building stations and approval buildings and other bonuses it will become quite hard to settle new worlds after a while since they start with huge negatives in morale.

it is also not a clear cut case if it is worth the overall population loss on all your colonies you could otherwise get. If you have 100 colonies and settle a new colony you essentially remove a minimum of 20 population cap in total of your entire empire. The higher your global percent modifiers to moral is the worse it gets. If you for some reason has 100% global moral modifiers those 20 population instead grow to a potential loss of 40 population. Unless you have a victory condition that require you to own all those colonies you might be better of just to start destroying low class underdeveloped colonies after a certain time.

Has anyone here done the permanent boost to morale that the Malevolent trait provides to help offset this?  I'm not quite at the point in my I/A/A/A game yet where I'm gonna be conquering fools.  But when it comes, I expect it to help quite a bit.  

It's a relatively early trait as well (second tier, IIRC), so it's not like one can't get it early.

don't think patriotic is a "must". it's kinda overpowered. a bit like taking subterranean and creative in good old MoO2 the game should be playable with the stock factions or custom faction of similar power levels. if it's not, the devs should cook up some solution that affects huge galaxies but is not required/feasible on smaller ones. they could for example expand the tourism concept a bit and add a global happiness boost to it. add some spammable (not "colony unique") tourism building and make fully built "holiday worlds" give a global bonus equivalent to a few (1-3) harmony crystals.  so if you have a ton of planets, you can simply dedicate 1 in 10 or 1 in 20 to global approval production - problem solved. not required on smaller worlds, and infinitely scalable in gigantic galaxies.

Last I heard from Brad on this was that there would be researchable techs to minimize the LEP.  How exactly this would work, and if this is still what they plan on doing, time will only tell. But they do seem to be moving away from the "scalable by planets" idea under the banner of "different maps should play differently".

Am I the only one that thinks it is strange that a 'large empire penalty' starts with your very first planet?  How exactly is it a large empire with one planet?  

It's unreal. I play every game with it, and in my current one, after conquering the Altarians, I have enough approval for 65 population on all my planets WITHOUT any approval buildings. If I add the intimidation center, I can support over 100 population. This is with 54 colonies, and I conquered 30.