Can god make a boulder that is so large that even he can't lift it? The game only becomes a chore if you've built a larger empire than you care to manage. I think there's a few players who maybe have some sort of OCD complex. Anyway, the moment you arrive at this point of feeling like its a chore, you should stop expanding, because you've reached the "big enough" state.
The other part of this is that there are several techniques for optimizing how you run your empire. Not every colony needs to be checked every turn once you've reached a certain size/colony age. Some players use Mind Control to avoid having colonies that run out of food/hydrocarbons. A mind controlled colony needs very little maintenance.
People that want to try to manage larger empires should be allowed to. The problem is the players that don't seem to be able to stop themselves from continually expanding even after they've reached the "big enough" point. (looking at you Amazoneon)
A colony with the Drilling Planetary upgrade enabled never runs out of hydrocarbons.
Haha yeah you can afk your planets but only if you don't want to actually do anything useful with them. Steel only builds up to about 400k so you hae to check about once every 2 months to build. Also wtf with the big enough stuff, that doesn't even make any sense. Military power is more or less proportional to number of mature planets. Tedium shouldn't be a constraint on size of empire. No rome references pls.
