There is no balance between small and large empires, either. Eventually it will become clear whether you're going to win by domination before you win by say, science.
The victory conditions can all be achieved in broadly similar ways - expand empire peacefully until you run out of room, conquer weakest neighbour, recover, repeat. There are obvious technologies to rush for (that one that gives the +40 science per system building for instance) and strategies that work with one race will work pretty much as well with others.
I think where Endless Space falls down is that the game is basically "solvable". This also makes the different planet types feel less like terrain being explored and more like different game 'levels' - the harder planets to colonise are harder because they give more bonuses (this is not the case in, say, Master of Orion games although harder to colonise worlds include the types most likely to be mineral rich, colonisation decisions are strategic - a key benefit of colonising a world of a difficult type is that you can get that lebensraum before your rivals, and may be protected from invasion). You basically never need to focus on planets with good food production, since exploiting a world for food until it reaches its population cap can be done anywhere (ironically, other than being easy to colonise, Terran planets don't seem to be of much value - I imagine when terraforming is discovered there's a tendency to "terraform" towards less hospitable planet types), since Alien Grafting is an early tech and can grow your pop to maximum quickly. When you have planets that provide 10 science and 0-2 of everything else, you're not presented with much complexity in decision-making. Click to expand.This would work if there was a shortage of terrain of each type, and at least be more interesting if the decision about what is optimal less clear-cut.
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