Half way through game, what now?

[Terminus]

I'm the farthest into a game that I've gone, which is about halfway. I have explored the whole map. I am ranked 1 or 2 in everything. I have 35% of a conquest victory and 45% of a prestige victory. My race is traders so I was not planning to conquer the galaxy, although it seems I may have to in order to win the game.

This is that point where you say "I could probably win the game, but do I want to?" I am just curious if there are any other paths to victory I don't know about. If there aren't, maybe there should be?

[227steam]

There are like 8 ways to win, you can even turn them on and off.

Once it is obviously a win, I use turn and ai in the console and let the AI play it out.

[Terminus]

I count 5 ways to win on the Victory Status screen: Conquest, Influence, Alliance, Prestige, Month Limit. They are all variations of the same thing...have the most of one statistic, or a combination of stats. In my current game, I am pretty much going to have to attack somebody to meet one of the victory conditions. I guess I could try to ally with everyone but how much fun is that?

I haven't played to the end yet, but I can imagine other ways that the game would end. There could be an existential crisis that you have to defeat to win the game. Or you could have something like a seals victory where you have to build something in multiple places and defend it to win the game. Or you acquire certain artifacts and then everyone in the game attacks you. Do these types of end game variations exist?

In a traditional sense the game is fine. It is just sort of one-dimensional in the ways that the game can end, and it could be more fun with a variety of different end conditions.

[Terminus]

Here's another one-get elected emperor. Maybe you have to go through several steps to get there.

[Illauna]

Prestige Victory allows you to win multiple ways. The victory condition basically leaves it fairly open how you want to achieve it. You can gather ascension crystals, which is basically the seals victory mechanic. You can do galactic challenges to gain points. Tehre is many different types and some are linked to events. One is the everwar where you can have a total war scenario where everyone is fighting everyone. There is also a crisis mode where you face on the dread lords. You can also gain score by building your empires economy. To be honest very few games have this much flexibility on winning the game.

[Terminus]

Oh great! It sounds like this is already covered then. I am just trying to find ways to get over the end game slog.

[Frogboy]

Prestige victory is the way. Then use some galactic challenges to get over the top.

[z|A|bik2]

Prestige victory is very much designed specifically for players like you.

Even though getting a victory screen is trivial, it matters a lot to many people for the feeling of closure. But not everyone wants to actually conquer every single planet, or even go through the diplomacy to ally with everyone (which however could probably be the best other option for you, since trading gives diplo buff)

But if you have never won a game with prestige, it may be tricky. However once you have done it, future games will be relatively easy to finish.

Galactic challenges provide decent boost for final points, but the most important part of prestige victory, is to establish dominant culture in all (or at least most) sectors.

You can do that either by colonizing planets (if there are still some), building starbases, or doing small wars to capture a minimal amount of planets required for culture majority. Note, that you do not need 50% of culture in each sector, just to be the most influental there. So if it's a big sector with 5 civs, you can gain lots of prestige at as low, as 20% culture control there.

[Terminus]

Thanks for the tips!