Victory Conditions should be customizable

[nhand85]

I am coming off an extremely disappointing MP 1v1 (with an additional AI major) that I "lost" despite never having a city threatened or losing a significant battle. My start was isolated geographically and politically, so I sat in my corner controlling the few passes into my nation and building an economy and tech base to eventually explode out from. The other human player meanwhile had the run of the land, and conquered most of the other minors on the map, but didn't mess with the AI major at all. Turn 70, and after a few months of our PBEM game, he is declared the winner due to having the most empty land and lots of barbaric population.

The sole victory condition that a player must have 50% of the VPs and 25% more than another player can lead to situations like this where an interesting, contested game can end in a very unsatisfying way. I think victory conditions should be customizable when setting up a game, and personally I think one of the options should be capturing the High Command palace of the other players/majors. Additionally, VPs should take into account more than just land/populace - perhaps it should be weighted for admin/tech/civ levels as well in order to provide a more accurate snapshot of how the players are doing.

[eddieballgame]

I agree on allowing for more options per assigning victory.
This amazing game offers so much data/statistics that it is a shame the only criteria for being crowned the victor is via land% (much of it useless depending on the planet) & population.
The current method does not do justice for one of the best 4x games on the market.

[Niedowidek_slith]

I agree. It would be great if conquest was only one of the ways to achieve victory.

My playstyle is peaceful, I usually don't attacked if not attacked upon, I love to ally with AI regimes through diplomacy. I would be happy if I could win by development of technology, population happiness, quality of life level progress.

[eddieballgame]

Games can be continued beyond the Victory threshold when reached.
Agreements can be made per number of rounds & other criteria to crown a winner.