I was thinking about this too last night. Tsagoth has stated that his latest change makes it so a colony takes about 7 days to get to 400mu. I am all for slowing down growth, but this seems too extreme. A week is a significant portion of the total game time. It means that only colonies created early on will have any impact on the game. Also, it means that colony acquisition through warfare will be largely pointless, since it will be impossible to defend an acquired colony from a counterattack (or, more realistically, it won't be worth trying to take a colony in the first place, because it won't provide you any advantage anytime soon).