I've played 3-4 games of different map sizes, it seems like whoever gets a population/planet lead will start pushing out influence and evelope others and there's nothing that can be done about it. It seems very unbalanced. In one game I had a planet within the leader's influence, so I built two influence bases right next to my planet and built every moral boosting and influence boosting structure, and since I was losing the influence battle researched heavily on all influence bonus areas, but not only did I lose that planet but it started a domino effect of planet after planet getting swallowed up. There really didn't seem like there was anything I coulda done. So I"ve adopted a similar strategy now, I get as many planets as I can up front, then I just build a good enough fleet to hold back invaders and research influence and swallow everyone up. I agree with some other posters who seem to think the influence is too easy to win by... IMHO it should be more difficult to spread influence.
