Well I've been playing as Horatio on normal, and since playing for the first time, every other race is steaming ahead of me.... cravers, 7000 score, me 1500.. Will the AI win using any of the victory conditions besides conquest?, Will I need to rush everything to prevent any of the conditions from being met by the enemy?

I highly recommend you check your happiness and population. I have learned a lot about this from the 30-turn challenges, which you can play along with here:



http://forums.amplitude-studios.com/group.php?groupid=80



The techniques you can learn here will increase your score to the point where enemy victory conditions will not matter. :-)

Victory conditions by the enemies as far as I can tell can occur, and I actually lost to an economic victory by an AI.