You would be surprised how managable it is. When you destroy a town i only get one converted native, but instead of collecting them into bigger cities, i spread them out to collect more diversified products. So, by the end of the game, i end up having roughly four metropolises (six to thirteen pop.), five cities (pop of three to six), and twenty one "colonies" that have a population of one to two. It's much faster to produce LB's with cities with one population so they mostly make up for my decent sized cities, although it would still take forever without ( can't remember the founding father, he gives three LB's for a town hall?). It may take me anywhere between two decades (if i acquired the elder statesman in my major cities) to about four decades. Although this strategy increases the amount of troops you have to face at the end, the increased borders limit indian attacks (especially if you're simon bolivar) as they destroy their settlements and give you more time to react to their attacks; which is huge when you have such large borders to defend.
Besides, you end up with so many LB points that you pretty much can get the best founding fathers before the revolution; just another bonus.
To your statement concerning micromanagment: you are right, the game takes forever to get through a single turn. My current game has already cost me twenty hours of my life, and i am only at year 1657. If one wants to attempt it i would suggest this: build your cities and organize their economic production along the lines of "mini states" or vicerroyalities. For instance i have around seven divisional areas that i use to to organize my cities (usually along the lines of the vicerroyalities of spain in the seventeenth century.). I have six cities that make up the vicerroyality of Peru. they make mostly silver, but also ore, and by the late game (when silver inflation makes silver worthless), i build up lima to include an armory and blacksmith, so my peruvian colonies mass produces tools and guns. In my my latin american colonies i trade lumber and silver, and in my New Mexican and New Spain colonies i trade cotton, tobacco, and later on, wool and cigars. In La Plata (argentina) i build horses, and in my colony in florida and in the carribean i produce sugar and rum, while New Granada ( columbia, venezueala, ecuador, panama, and costa rica) harvests silver and is the breadbasket for the empire. i usually have one to two wagons collecting resources in these vicerroyalities shipping these resources to panama city to send to my ships waiting there. my ships collect there because it is in the middle of my empire as well as it's position between the atlantic and the pacific to collect these resources from my vicerroyalities.
I hope this has provided you guys with some reasons to pursue making large colonial empires to aid in the revolution. Just trying to demonstrate that there are other tactics for victory out there that are a lot of fun.
