Personally, I think it is balanced pretty well now.

I consider myself a pretty average player. I have been playing a long time, but not playing all that well. I started an insane map game before the patch and by T 200, playing for a culture win, I was in pretty good shape. I was 2nd among 6 AI players that I had met (4 still undiscovered) and I was gaining on No. 1. I felt like I was coming to a point that I could eventually win by conquest or culture but it would have taken another 200 turns, at least, to win a culture victory, maybe a lot longer. Who knows with those insane maps?.

I played a small game with the patch today and I won a culture victory on T 159, which seems about right for a average player on a small map. I found the AI planets to be fairly resistant to flipping, but theoretically you can win a culture victory without flipping a single planet. All you have to do is surround them with your influence and you win the game. The Iridia were starting to flip pretty regular at the end but that was after being in my ZOC for well over 20 turns. Bottom line, every faction was still holding out when the victory music played.

I have no doubt that there are power players that could have won both games in half the time I did, and they would be here on the forum moaning about over powered influence. I don't think y'all are designing the game for power players. If you were, it would not be long before only power players would be playing the game. The typical potential buyer of this game has several months of game playing to go before the knows his way around the game as well as I do. Believe me, they are not going to be complaining that influence is too strong in the game.

The power players will be fine. They will mod themselves a game with the AI playing with high difficulty bonuses and no FOW. The power guys will play with a blacked out screen where they must randomly click where they sense things are. Any culture improvement will have an off-setting penalty of 50% against any manufacturing or research on the planets.

Their scores will be the stuff of legends, and their names will be written annually in the pages of Stardock's report to stockholders.

It'll be great! 

what always irritated me is the AI not doing anything to stop you from winning, I mean some form of hostile reaction when the victory conditions close on. IMO, he should do so with alot of force, because easy ways to win don't make the game challenging. personally I like epic long games (even on medium maps, don't like the repetition on bigger maps) and the AI should find ways for himself to prevail without the obvious advantage difficulty bonuses....