Just checking to make sure something isn't borked in my game or I'm misunderstanding something, but the cost for colonizing with the Argosy before the "free cooldown" has always seemed prohibitively expensive throughout my game.  If I save up 5~10 turns worth of my Dust income, sometimes I can afford to buy the colonizing when there is just 1 turn remaining on the cooldown, but during the majority of the cooldown it costs orders of magnitude more Dust than I produce.  

In my current game, I'm producing close to 1k Dust per turn (864 Dust on turn 77), and the Argosy colonization costs 8,277 Dust + 44 resources to recharge, when it's down to 4 turns remaining on the counter.  At turn 70, it cost 19,074 Dust + 109 resources while my Dust income was 751 per turn.  Also, Dust Inflation is just at x2.87 at turn 77.

Am I somehow just underproducing Dust way less than a normal player, or are people not "supposed" to be able to afford the early colonization under normal circumstances?  My Dust stockpile of ~3k seems similar to what the other AI factions appear to have when I check in Diplomacy, all having between 1k and 6k Dust on hand.

Thanks in advance for any advice or info!