I've been telling Gemini to limit it's response to a certain amount of words, typically in 25 word increments. When I just want it to agree with me, I add "25 words." to the end of the prompt. When I want it to give me a rough answer, 50 - 75 words. For a more robust response, 100 - 200 words. This has made my experience much, much better.
That is a great pattern. Word count constraints force the model to prioritize instead of padding. I use a similar idea but in the other direction -- asking for the single most important thing rather than a list, so the model has to commit to one answer rather than hedge across five.