Govenors

one more thing....

I am using large maps (or larger)

What I do is have a governor for different types of colonies, grouped into the following categories:

1-low quality planets that I want to terraform ino a better planet (soil enhancing projects take priority)
2-ok quality planets that I want as an economic outpost (for colonies wihtin my empire)
3-ok quality planets I want as military outposts (at the edge of my empire). Priortize ship boosting and population growth (so I can fill transports quickly).
4-ok quality planets that I want to boost my research (within my empire).

That's how I do it. Thee're are probably more efficent governor managers out there, so hopefully you'll get some other (probably better) opinions

I tried it on a gigantic map and found it useful. I didn't enable it until I had made a fair bit of research (early expansion was over). I only used one governor and added 10 improvements to the list, basically fusion plant, then soil/habitat improvement, then various econ/mfg/research improvements... Main thing was nothing which costs a lot of maintenance was added. I always used governor for PQ 13-16 planets but for better planets I sometimes micro-managed it.

I think governors, as implemented, are great. They are really just glorified build lists.

I only set up social production queues based upon the way I want my colonies to develop -- which is pretty standard. This alone has saved me a tremendous amount of micromanaging.

The military queue is something I managed individually for each colony.

However, that is just my personal preference for doing things.