<Insert various forums of people complaining about victory conditions here>


In ES2 there are 6 victory conditions: supremacy, conquest, science, economic, wonder, and score. Or, alternatively, control all capitals, control most of the map, reach the end of the tech tree, play the game for a bit, build so many wonders, and the distasteful victory condition no one of any value would ever consider turning on (this is a joke, but seriously, I'd rather the game go on indefinitely until someone wins than for it to just abruptly end and just declare someone the winner. first setting I set in any TBS. if this doesn't also disable the end turn bit then I'm not gonna be a happy camper, but I most likely won't reach that point anyway)


As some of you are no doubt aware, there's a problem with at least one of the victory conditions, namely the Economic Victory. There are numerous threads complaining about how it's far too easy to win this victory, some offering how they think to fix it, and some that complain about how turning it off prevents the AI from building trading companies because apparently they're worthless unless that's turned on. The problem with the victory is that it happens just by playing the game. You don't take any steps to win it. The "steps" required to win it are just basic gameplay elements that are actually really needed for every other victory. There needs to be a gate somewhere. By gate, I mean something like the wonder victory. You don't win the wonder victory on accident, or just by playing the game. You have to actually try to win it. This is because in order to win it, you're required to build X number of arbitrary expensive buildings in that many different systems. Even the conquest and supremacy victories, which are backwards in their definitions, have gates that you actually need to pass through in order to win. You can't win conquest unless you capture everyone else's capital, or ally with the ones you don't want to kill (or everyone, there's your diplomacy victory), and you can't win supremacy unless you colonize a large chunk of the galaxy, something that up until the G2G mod was virtually impossible to accomplish unless you made a custom civ build specifically for that purpose due to the overcolonization penalty. oh wait those are backwards <insert corny sitcom laughter here>. and score victory... we don't talk about score victory.

that said, this isn't a thread to bash on the economic victory. Believe it or not, the science victory falls under this category, too. The reason I include science as a problem victory is because, like the economic victory, it has no gate. the 4 techs at the end of each branch do not count as a gate. sure, they're expensive. sure, they're on the furthest corners of the tech tree. and sure, you can delay researching them for a long time. but not forever. in fact, you're dissuaded from doing so due to the bonuses you get from researching them. tech cost reduction is nothing to sneeze at. neither is the FIDSI boost. if you wanna be good at doing the things those trees are aimed at, you're gonna want to research those techs. Eventually, you're gonna run out of techs to research and the game's gonna force you to pick them. Now, I'm not gonna build a super science crazy custom empire to reach the end of the tech tree first and then complain that there's no techs left to research. However, my point here is that science is important if you want to reach the other victories. If you want to win the wonder victory, you need to reach the end of the left branch -and- the end of the right branch (for the industry buildings). The supremacy conquest victory needs all of the approval techs on the left to be researched (and after the G2G mod, it needs the 4th tier of the left, right, and bottom branches) to overcome the overcolonization penalty. Conquest Supremacy technically doesn't need the top branch, but bigger guns goes a long way to tearing down the enemy's capitals. Also, they need the top half of the left branch as well to unlock bigger ships to hold their bigger guns, so that's 1.5 tech trees. Economic victory requires you build a single trade company somewhere and then forget about it. Score victory requires you do everything and somehow manage to not get a victory by the last turn. Or to turn off all victory conditions except for score. Some people are weird like that. The point is, science doesn't just help you get those other victory conditions, it's downright necessary to get those victory conditions. I've had a game where I delayed the science victory as much as possible, and then formed an alliance so the requirement would jump up to 6 and I can return to conquering others because I wasn't satisfied with winning at that point. Science needs a gate, too.


My proposal deals with these problem children victory conditions.


First, the economic victory.


Making a lot of money is hollow, and the victory, unsatisfactory. Winning the game because you produced the most is not only not fun or proving you're good, but it's actually frustrating when you're trying to go for a different victory. If I had a dime for every time my score victory got interrupted by-*shot*. If the enemy ends up almost winning it, there's nothing to can do to stop them, since you can't lower the amount they earned over time. The only way to prevent their victory is to completely annihilate them. Though, considering they're filthy stinking rich, they have 1-turn spanish armadas they can throw at you endlessly, making wiping them out, if not difficult, quite the chore. If you get to their final system a turn too slow, it doesn't matter that you're aiming at their planet with a planet cracker, the game immediately ends and they win. And then you click "just one more turn" and fire the planet cracker just to spite them.


Some people suggest making the gold value absurdly high. In fact, that's the recommended fix right now since disabling the victory condition altogether disables AI trade companies and subsidiaries. This would indeed keep the goal the same while making the stretch be so long that in order to get the victory condition you have to dump tons and tons of dust into investment for making tons and tons of more dust. However, that's just time-consuming, and still not very rewarding. Others have suggested tying it to trade companies, Offworld Trading Company style. win the game by buying out your opponents! unfortunately, I haven't build my offworld market, and I don't quite know how it would work in ES2, and even if it could work, it could be outside the dev's vision for the game.


Instead, I suggest a different kind of gate.

Solution 1.


A wonder.


But this wonder will behave differently from normal wonders. Unlike normal wonders, or even buildings in general, this structure cannot be built via industry. The only way to construct it is to purchase it. buyout the construction. make them bloody expensive, and make it so the player has to build several of them, so that after they buyout a few of them, the rest of the universe is notified and given a chance to stop them. Maybe what they're making is a literal dust planet. Forget golden toilets, we need to go galactic with this. The only pupose such a "planet" would serve is to display just how much wealthier than everyone else you are.


Solution 2.


Stocks.


Anybody who's familiar with Galactic Civilization 3 Master of Orion 4 will know what victory I'm talking about. Or, at least, I believe it was GalCiv3 that did this. It's been a while. it wasn't


The goal here is to be the primary stockholder of the galactic market and keep hold of it. Again, you have to purchase these, and it has the added benefit of having both a number gate and a timer gate. You need to have X stocks and hold the most for Y turns. You need to be wealthy to do this, and displays that you're capable of buying everyone's empires out by... well, buying everyone's empires out.


The downside to this solution is that while the idea actually isn't a GalCiv3 MoO4 idea (it's a market idea) (if it was even GalCiv3, it might've been a different space game)(it was, whodathunk), some other game did do it first. If I had a dime for every time someone got mad at a game dealing with traditional japanese dieties claiming they're ripping off of naruto, I'd win an economic victory.


But that's enough of the economic victory.

Next up, the Science Victory.


My proposed solution to the science victory is a simple and rather minor edit. In fact, it'll still be tied to the endless techs at the ironically-not-endless tech trees. Basically, it'll function much like science victories in many other TBS games. Like civ. Thankfully, so many TBS games have done this that people most likely won't call you out for it. ... Probably. Basically, each tech will unlock a component. you need to then construct all 4 components. Once all 4 are constructed, you win the science victory. Works almost identical to the current science victory, but with an added gate to ensure that people who're getting it are actually trying to get it, while simultaneously not punishing those who engage in science because they want bigger guns. Now, what would these be? Good question. An idea I have would be finding out what happened to the endless. Or maybe where they went. Or maybe, transcending to almost-literal-godhood, so you're so scientifically advanced that no one can stop you if they wanted to, because you build faster than them, have bigger guns than them, produce more dust than them, win more debate competitions than them, and eat more hotdogs in hotdog eating competitions than them. Hey, maybe you've turned all of your population into ENFER! Except not buggy or xenophobic. Hopefully. Or maybe you create a device that creates galaxies. I don't know. It's scifi. There's plenty of amazing things you could accomplish after learning "everything" the universe has to offer.


Finally, Supremacy Conquest.


Until the G2G mod there was no point bringing this up. However, with the G2G mod, it's now important to bring up. That said, the problem and proposed fix are very simple.


The Problem:


Now that empires can endlessly *snicker* expand, winning via a Supremacy Conquest victory is now very much a real possibility. That's not the problem, though. The problem is that, if I'm reading these conditions right, you need to own 60% of the galaxy. That number's too low.


The Fix:


Raise the requirement. *sips drink*


There's not much you can do with this. The Supremacy Conquest victory is inherently un-gateable. All you can do is make the gate higher without making it so you need to own the entire universe. But owning just a bit over half of the universe isn't enough. Rome owned over have of europe. Look where they ended up. It's important to own so much that it's unfeasible for any other empire to be able to make a comeback. According to the files, there isn't even an alliance multiplier for this either, making the victory that much easier to accomplish (just ally with 2 or 3 of the largest empires in the game, boom, there's your 60%). Personally, I find the decision to lower the % you need depending on the number of active empires to be rather strange. or, at least, the amount it decreases it by is. every player lowers the amount you need to own by 3%? at 9 players or higher, you only need a simple majority to win. While I can understand lowering it because there are more players, and so you can win without eliminating anyone, if there's anything the name of the victory got right it's that you still need to engage in some conquest in order to win it. Why stop at only half-killing an empire, and repeat that with everyone, when you can completely kill 2 or 3 of them and get the victory? While it could be argued to be fine before, now that there's no hard cap on the overcolonization cap, it's important that the conditions be raised to show true Supremacy conquestry(?) over the other empires.


I'm never letting that joke go. I hope you guys aren't keeping sco-*shot*


EDIT: wow this is a long post. 11960 characters before this edit. Apologies for the wall of text