That, my former sir, was awe inspiring. The music, the timing, the use of shading, every bit was beautiful. Congratulations for choosing to fly instead of to fall.
Notice that if you remain in one place for a certain amount of time then pillars never spawn directly in your path; you always have to swerve slightly to hit them.
The AI doesn't cheat. In fact, you can be the trolling army in the enemy's territories, which makes it fairly easy for you to ambush large hostile armies.
If you are looking for speed (and have some grasp of what you're doing) then your goal shuold not be to colonize but to decolonize the enemy's planets and detroys their ships; when your opponent send all of its ships out to colonize a planet, that's your cue to go to the planet it just left and decolonize it so they don't really gain anything.
+ to keep this comment alive please.
 "Amea"){kind=icon}
 "Personal Trip to the Moon"){kind=icon}
 "WarLight"){kind=icon}
 "Solarmax"){kind=icon}
 "Choose your 2012"){kind=icon}
 "You Find Yourself In A Room"){kind=icon}