Mid game is where is give up playing, it just turns into a routine of exploring, researching, building outposts on barren star systems, colonizing fertile ones, while sending your fleet to kill space squids or pirates.
The game has a fun start, but that's it, then it's a much worse map painting simulator than EU iv
Yeah, it needs some Game of thrones in space. My empire is so damn stable it's boring. Had a tiny incident. Started to build some robots but regretted it and started to dissemble(purge apparently) them. That started an anti-purge movement in my empire