What victory type do you shoot for?

Military conquests rule!

Though flipping palents are great fun, sometimes it just seems to take forever. It's particularily funny when the ships in orbit around a planet that flips get kicked out and just kind of sit there not knowing what to do, sort of like a forlorn puppy.

But by far my most favorite part of the game is when your invading a planet and you've killed all but that last guy running towards your tanks and he puts his hands up to surrender and then one of the tanks vaporizes him into a puddle of blood. That's cool!

I've never seen that happen, but it sounds cool!

Influence and Alliance, with Technology as an out if things go south.

Alliances are arguably the most difficult wins anymore. Influence just takes an insane amount of time. I play in Gigantic galaxies, and even with rare habitables, its a LONG game flipping planets.

Alliance vics aren't hard if you play your cards right. remeber you can just kill everyone who isn't part of your alliance (wich is why you shoul build relationjs with the race(s) that have the best militaries early on, then look at who you you're having a hard tim building relations with, convince your allies it's time for a "regime change", and watch the fireworks. (note you may hav to declare war on the ones who refuse to be your friends, your allies usally catch a bad case of Oh-My-God-My-Friend's-In-Trouble-I-Have-To-Kill-The-Other-Guy Disease.

I play in Gigantic galaxies, and even with rare habitables, its a LONG game flipping planets.

Flipping planets *is* a long game, but conceptually it's the most efficient. You don't have to take pop off your planets and use it to deplete the target planets pop so that once you win you can begin to build up the depleted pop on both planets. Instead *poof magic* there you are with a brand new planet all built up and populated. What could be cleaner?

I think the rare planets thing might be making it more difficult. True, with a more densely populated galaxy you will have a lot more planets to flip, but with the planets closer together you can get a domino effect. Once they start flipping you can get a bunch in a short time.

Destroy everybody except the last opponent. In my experience, the last opponent tends to have equal and opposite military strength. It's amusing to go through brutal, bloody war to win a cultural victory and have the game tell me that "nobody could imagine military conquest." War is peace!

This time, however, I'm going to fight the last civilization. Conquest all the way.

Conquest has become my favorite of late, but I have won many, many more diplomatic and influence victories. One of the most enjoyable things is when you have supreme military power, and use it to get what you want without any real war. Threats and the classical strategy of declaring war and then sign a peace treaty with planets as payment. I have won many influence victories with the treath of military use. However, this only works when you could have crushed them anyway, but it's simply so fun (and takes less time) that I simply can't resist it...

I think the rare planets thing might be making it more difficult. True, with a more densely populated galaxy you will have a lot more planets to flip, but with the planets closer together you can get a domino effect. Once they start flipping you can get a bunch in a short time.

I was thinking that, too. It was hell trying to arrange influence bases so that I could get more than one planet in single area. Especially the bases where I was breaking into an influence zone uncontiguous with my own. I took out the Thalans, Areans and Torians this way. Dropped two full on Conquest bases right next to their homeworlds and pried open an influence zone of mine right in the middle of their empires, then worked my way out.

Influence victory is sweet, but I will also take a tech. victory. I've never been able to achieve a military victory yet (need to work on those ships & transports more).

I go for the Victory type that i believe will take the shortest time. In pre 1.31 version this tended to be alliance for me in my latest game culture looks like it will be the quickest method so i'm going for that.

I Like to win as quick as possible.


Lenius.

I play in Gigantic galaxies, and even with rare habitables, its a LONG game flipping planets.

More abundant planets actually makes flipping planets easier because of the way influence works.

I am working on a strategy guide for influence conquest which I will post in the Stratgies section later today.

i always wanted to win a military victory but i always get mudered

The metaverse is heavily weighted toward conquest so I might go down that route in future.


Lenius.

I always go for an Influence Victory. My one Military Conquest was actually essentially an influence game, I just turned Influence Victory off and absorbed everyone. I used to go for Diplomatic Victories before V1.31, but I can't get more than one or two surviving races to Close relations anymore. My first Tech Victory I did because I wanted to, my second Tech Victory was in my first game on Painful difficulty and I didn't see how to win otherwise. My third Tech Victory was supposed to be another Military Conquest by influence, but I got the xenophile event that increased everyone's influence and thus resistance, and then the "oppose the human player's Influence" event, which I thought was really unfair. Both in one game is not right. Anyway, I wanted a Diplomatic Victory, but I just couldn't get enough races Close before I completed the Tech Victory.

I almost always go for conquest. In Civ I'm a relatively peaceful player, so I was surprised about this when I started GalCiv2. I think the ship designer is one reason I find it more interesting. The other reasons are that the other victory conditions are just so boring.

Tech victory is just such a click fest. Hitting "End Turn" so much reminds me of playing MOO3. Wouldn't it be more interesting if you had to find 3 or 4 planets in the galaxy with special artifacts on them. You can only research the tech victory when in possession of these artifacts.

Influence victory is half way between the two, but if you research all the influence techs early on it's really easy to win this way.

I go for anything, but military feels good and so does alliances

Hi!
Recently I lost patience for conquering the very last bit of every existing civ. I have an ongoing Stars! game open, that requires 2-3 hours of work per turn, two turns a week, and that's for me enough micromanagement for that week.

So after I conquer two-three neighboring civs, I usually try removing the hardest/strongest one, and then shoot for the easiet victory. If remaining civs are allied, I chose alliance, else I chose tech victory. Not much luck with the former though.

BR, Iztok

Military... always.  

Once I started playing higher than Tough, I now turn off all the other victory conditions, and only go for conquest. I've never won a diplomatic or a technological victory. Just doesn't feel like victory to me.

The only time I have made alliances is with a more powerful opponent so I have time to build up before I stab him in the back. Tech victory seems to boring, and once you have a cultural victory in your hands, you might as well just clean up.

I usually play Huge, common all. Gives a lot of planets without overdoing the micromanagement.