It's a bit of an older thing, but out of curiosity: how do you feel about enforced hyperlane drives?
The ability to reinforce chokepoints and defend your territory even if you don't want to invest into ships plus the general reliance on tactics (or patience I guess) to break through defenses is something I vastly prefer to the wack-a-mole nature of hyperdrives and wormholes.
Sure, I also regularly get screwed over - minimal territory when I want a wide empire and vast expanses of resource rich territory when the plan is to build tall, but I'm the kind of person who rolls with it.