Well firstly, being online from the start. Every day your planets increase in society level and population. If I get a week head start on you that is several planets underway before you even start, and at least several days head start on those planets being able to produce more colony ships. Secondly is "acquisition" either by taking on the inactive planets all over the place, or simply squashing those newer players around you. Before the reset I had over 10k planets. Each and every planet could produce several colony ships every day. How is a player with even a few hundred planets really going to catch up? Unless to large empires get stuck in a war, or we finally see a successful federated group of smaller empire take on a large one. Hieruf was number 1 in planets early on before the reset, and try as I might, even with a surprise war against him that got me a good few planets I was still falling behind him, I simply couldn't match the number of arc's he was producing.
