I have been looking over the features for Dark Avatar and I am dying to try out the new features; especially the "Planet Colonization Techs".

I have one concern however. Suppose I start a new game. I quickly colonize all regular planets near me, then focus on military. Some other race, say, the Torians, decide to take the colonization path and start littering my empire with little pockets of Green. All those heavy-gravity and zero-atomosphere planets become a thorn in my side.

I know what everyone is going to say. "You can just flip them" or "Your surrounding them so you can easily conquer them"or "They're Torians damnit! Blast em!". What if I don't want any of these solutions?

My solution: Up the trade value of planets closer to other planets. So trade value is equal to: Planet Size + Improvements + Number of Other planets within X tiles. Also, you could decrease the value on planets that are surrounded or far away from others.

Purely skepticism. This could be on the game already I don't know. Please criticize the hell out of me.