The Value of Victory

I seldom finish a game.
When it is obvious that I am going to win, I start another.
I cannot be bothered to laboriously invade the remaining enemy planets, one at a time. Waiting for an endless stream of ships to cross the whole Galaxy.
The one exception, is a Civilization that has given me a hard time, early in the game.
I enjoy totally exterminating them.  

I usually play on gigantic, because it gives me more options in the game play.

Military victories are generally much more challenging to achieve, whereas diplo victories are dirt easy, so that makes a lot of sense to me really.

....that war is good.

It is entirely possible to get a military victory through an influence victory if you have the influence victory option turned off. You basically flip their planets over one by one until 1 last planet of 1 last empire is left, that one will not flip (no matter what), and you invade it with transports (taking care of orbital ships if there are any). But yea, it is quite boring (I mean, after a point, all you do is stock up starbases to flip planets).

Embird,I'm with you. if it looks like I'm totally smacking them around, I'll start a new game. But since I'm playing DA mostly, there are a whole bunch of new things to play with ... and the game is more interesting throughout with Dark Avatar. ... Also, when I'm playing a metaverse game, I want to see it through so I can post it.

btw: how long does it take you to play a gigantic game? ... I usually go for medium so I can finish in a decent amount of time.

and ... war is good

Eh? I did this exact thing under DL 1.4 and managed to flip every planet on the map, I didn't have to invade anything. I was somewhat amused, since I had influence victory on but the last few planets all flipped on the same turn, before the 10 weeks had run out.

I usually finish a game in about 4 years (game time).

And I think the military aproach gives you more points because it takes quite a lot of time. Diplomatic and influence games can finish quite quickly.

Where would a tech victory be ranked I wonder?

I think a military victory gives more points because you control the entire galaxy, compared to a small part of it in a diplomatic victory. More territory means more planets, resources, technologies, and money.

Note that a diplomatic victory seems to be very difficult when tech trading is turned off. In the few games I’ve played since the patch with tech trading off the AIs generally do NOT research the government/alliance tech line. If they don’t research Alliance then, of course, you can’t get allies. And you can’t gift the tech, get an ally when they are close – you have to wait for them to research it (and some never do). In my latest game almost all the AIs are Close (I’ve been a good Krynn), but it is March 2232 and only the Terrans have pursued that tech line at all. So I’m stuck.

Good thing there are other victory options.

Hydro

so lucky this is a game, not life.

I won a technological victory with well over 10000 points after beating two out of four major races so badly they surrendered to me long before I could invade every one of their remaining worlds. Most of the end game was spent buying more discovery spheres and improving overall population. I actually had enough tax and tourism income that by the end I could have launched an all-out conquest of the other two races (they'd got wise and made an alliance) but the tech victory seemed an easier way to finish up.