| abstract
| - The colony rush strategy refers to a strategy where your main aim is to occupy as many high quality planets before the AI can do it. This will probably hurt your economy in the short term in several ways. Firstly, citizens sent off on colony ships may take several turns to reach their destination, they don't contribute to the growth at the time. Once they reach the new colony, their growth is much slower compared to if they remained on the homeworld because population growth uses the base pop as one of its variables. Since more citzens means more tax income, this indirectly means in the short run your income will be less. Secondly, new colonies generally end up in the red, particularly if you build only factories, starports and labs. Thirdly and more directly such strategies often damage your economy due to rush builds of both factories and colonies, which may cause your economy to overheat particularly if you rush build factories on bonus tiles. That said in the long run colony rush strategies can be very effective, because if you can keep the AI off your back long enough, eventually, the advantage of having more development space and hence more productive colonies will begin to tell.
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