Yeah seems so based on the streams: It might not be ideal to have the factions compete for such abstract goals. Players might not be happy with loosing a game based on this system

There should be clear alternate goals at least to achieve victory. Dominance is the most straight-forward goal in such games which can usually be achieved via military force of diplomacy

Saw that sea-travel attrition effectively prevents a domination victory before 2/3 of the era progress is reached - this is sub-optimal: if there is attrition, it should not be devastating enough to prevent travel and expansion from ancient era onward but at least in middle ages it should be doable.

Note: The Chinese golden fleet has traversed the globe by the 1430s and the middle ages only ended in 1500 not to mention the Viking colonies which are dated from even before the Chinese expeditions. So colonization across the entire map should start at latest in the mid-middle ages and thus allow for domination victory at the mid-game mark if there are continents

Other usual victory conditions can be wonders, spaceship but was never a fan of these. Fame is better then these two at least but it doesnt seem to intertwine the game mechanics enough

Meaning: How does fame exactly translates into a game for a player? What does it effectively mean if an AI has twice the fame - does it have any mechanical effect on how the game plays?

E.g: If fame has a palpable effect on the soft (diplomacy and/or economy) or hard (military) power of a nation, that would have a natural translation into the competition within the game: If an AI has 3X the fame as the player, that means they are more powerful and would have won a direct confrontation anyhow

If fame is only representing victory points and expansion overseas is limited until way beyond the second half of the game, that means that all games with continents will boil down into a prolonged endurance game where it will usually not be clear why a player is winning or loosing

Ideally I would suggest that the game aims to allow a more rapid conclusion of typical games, where the player is either overwhelmed or is victorious by the second or third age (normal map with 5 enemies)

The game would only continue beyond these ages if the map and number of enemies make it impossible to dominate them by the third era OR the player is pursuing a peaceful play-stile and is lucky enough to do so with the given neighbors

CIV games did not have a chance at this as combat in these games is crippled and all games seemed to boil down into a rush to modern age where combat was working enough to finally conquer the enemy AI which never had a chance. The AIs didn't already have a chance in the classical era but the broken combat system was actively preventing the player from winning (not the enemy :)) - this leads to the exact same playing experience every time: predictable and boring where I suspect most players never finished their ongoing games but started new ones instead for the early game thrill