Yes we agree: influence needs some love
Hope you will create reviews also for ES2, MoO 2016 and Stellaris - would love to read your opinion on them as well
Even though we are kinda living in the golden age of 4X games including space 4X I was disappointed by the big titles
ES2, you have already mentioned that you like their UI: but for me it is too often inconsistent: galaxy map is a mess full with useless graphical noise and menus riddled with a bunch of low-res low-quality icons. Loved EL as a fantasy/sci-fi title but ES2 lacks all the charm of their previous title
Stellaris has been praised from all heavens and at least the expectation was understandable before release as (on paper) it was addressing all the issues plaguing the genre (diplomacy, endgame, micro MGMT, random race generation etc).
Still it was a huge disappointed for me: combat is boring (no agency), ships are ugly blocks, menu is lifeless excel sheet and I found myself constantly looking at the metal reserve to hit pause and issue a build order: just don't understand why this was made into real-time (no added-value - you end up clicking more than in a turn based title)