Warning!  You are passing turn 126, and are in uncharted territory.

Ok so I am playing as Vodyani on hard difficulty setting.  I have four star systems and live at the end of a four spiral galaxy.  The four families have me confined and outnumbered.  It was a game of survival for at least 130 turns.  I slowly built up a fleet that could punch a hole in the four families plans to assimilate my arks.  Several border skirmishes ended in forced truce, but that's OK, I found ways around this.  30 turns later I had at last discovered the shipping lanes to the galaxy centre and the other empires who occupied it.  Started to send out science ships for Intel.  All looking good for a long and difficult game.  Then it all collapsed thanks to another forced truce coupled with influence penalties.  Forced truce closed borders locking me out.  Then a few turns later influence massage told me that due to unfair influence, the four families would take over all my systems, even though I had clear military superiority and I had pushed them back.  I could do nothing but exit to desktop as I pondered what could have been a really good game.  

This scenario has me a little perplexed.  The way modern 4X games are starting to impose restrictions in areas where 4X means expansion and acquisition through arms.  Folks talk about penalties for over expansion, like the further away you are from your home planet ought to make colonisation harder.  Sure some minor penalties might be applied, but not game breaking ones.  Colony expansion is linked to planet type, not distance.  If you have built a space station in a asteroid field, and you have the tech to colonise, then you should be able to colonise anywhere you want.  This is where astride fields can become integral game areas.  They are neutral and any player could build military or supply outposts.  This does not restrict the game in anyway but opens up all possibilities.  It also provides areas of space that are not centred around planets.  Large space stations could evolve into large pops that have colonial rights.  Valuable  supply lines to be maintained when expanding your empire.  One of the primary tenants of 4X is expansion, let's not constrict this by imposing penalties that ultimately break the game flow.

In my play through two separate game mechanics coming together broke my game.