One of the boring things about late game in 4x games is that the endgame is pretty much the same. You always have to do this same things to win a conquest victory; those others to win an economic one, and a few others to win a science one. They are always the same.

It would be more fun and interesting if they could be much more diverse and not always the same. So here is my proposal.

1) The game will present you with a sub-set of objetives you have to complete to win that type of victory.

For instance, winning a economic victory could mean the current way to win OR having to achieve all three of:

- Sell 200 of every luxury and strategic resource on the market

- Have every planet produce X ammount of dust per turn

- Have a trade agreement with every other faction

Every other type of victory would also have a list of objectives to achieve.

(Those examples are here just to ilustrate the point, they of course could/should be tweaked)

2) Those objectives are semi-random

They are part of pre-set list of objetives, but are chosen by the game itself during game generation. Maybe they can be weighted to appear more in certain galaxy sizes, with certain factions present in that game, with or without the presence or not of pirates etc. The fundamental thing is that there is a good chance the way to achieve victory in a new game is different from you previous game.

3) The number of objectives presented is bigger than the ammount you need to win, so you could pick and choose which ones to pursue.

The game could present you with 5 objectives to win a science victory. But you only need to hit 3 of those 5. This way, there is flexibility to react to how the game is going. Maybe one of them is impossible right now, and the another would contradict the way you are playing. There is still enough for you to try and hit.

I feel like this would open up a lot of how late game is played, and would provide a a more engaged experience. This system could live with the current victory conditions or supersede it - but that is a long term talk even if this idea is ever picked up.