Has anyone put any thought in to pushing?
Using many account to push one account up does no good to the player. Using this method to do so has costs no one is considering.
To do this tactic. You will need to be able to defend all planets.
Keep them growing or the resources provided is of no value.
They are only of use for pushing in the first two weeks.
I do think that they mostly become farms for everyone active, its hard to defend them. Obviously there is some advantage - but the limit is the human attention span. Getting your whole village to make accounts is another way that's not multi-accounting, but what motivates them to log in and send you the resources? Aren't they just players at some point?
There are a lot of ways to look at it, I think we could detect some extreme versions, which is why the new rules are looking to limit only the most egregious cases, when the top player(s) use it to try to continue to snowball. I think "working together" should not be considered pushing in most cases - but this also depends on designing more clever win conditions.