So I am quite new to the game, 20 h in total or so.

The early game goes well, I quite understand the systems and my empire, I have 3 or 4 planets that I can manage and I am exploring and expanding. I know what my planets do, what my pops like and what they are good at.

Then the game like scales up and you lose track of everything, around the 100-150 year mark. The tech tree kinda blurs and it barely matters what you actually click. I have 20-something planets that are distopias of crime and unemployment and I cannot distinguish between them. My populations rebel and my economy is a complete mess, its unbalanced and crashing. I am landlocked by other empires who have outpaced me and are stronger than me and hate me. Suddenly I need to keep track of all the diplomacy in the galaxy, the relations of my neighbors to me and between each other, but I cannot affect the galaxy around me because I only have 3 envoys. I used to have a type of pop on my empire and now suddenly my planets are filled with aliens who have very different interests to eachother.

I could rant on, but in essence.... How do you keep up with everything? Do the automation functions work? When the map expands so much the game gets crazy and it keeps adding layers and layers on top of the already complex balancing act of the early game. I cant imagine how some people can go for galactic domination. At some point it just gets overwhelming and I have to close the game.