Can AI's win by researching Final Frontier?

Is there a mandatory year in which the game ends like in Civilization?

maybe you need the arcean to love you before the torrian does

The expansion will enable the AI to score a tech win.

AIL ST:

AI's cannot currently score a tech win (1.05). If you want to even things, you must disable this victory condition. As Crypt notes, it will be enabled, probably in the upcoming expansion.

End-games can become tedious due to size of map and length of time necessary for a cultural or alliance win. Culture victories require 90% of all sectors to convert to your dominance; alliance victories require an alliance in effect with all current AI opponents. This, in turn, necessitates setting up trade routes with all of them early enough in the game to promote your relations to "close". This can take up to 50-100 turns for your nearest competitor.

For these reasons, military conquest is usually both the easiest and most interesting win.

To avoid lengthy end-games, play Medium or smaller maps. Culture-dominance will usually end a Medium game before either of the other two conditions are achieved.

~SDC~

No, you can play indefinitely, but the given game mechanics make that nearly impossible (e.g. if you're dominant, you'll eventually absorb everyone culturally unless you take steps to avoid it) or impossible (if you're not dominant, someone will come and kick your butt).

Of course, if you want to play forever, you can manipulate the game to let you: turn off alliance and cultural, set research to 0 before you finish Final Frontier, and gift party palaces to alien systems so they won't fall to your culture.

Why you would want to do this, I don't know, but to each their own.

@Silent Fires: May be... but on the other hand I think if I cancelled my 10 Traderoutes from the Torians to establish some with the weaker Arceans, the Torians could have become angry and could have declared war and asked their Ally to help em before I could have allied with them...

@Def Zep: I had all (10) traderoutes to the Torians but it never got better than "warm"! The Torians were Pure Evil btw... Maybe Evil Races are just not so likely to ally with each other... I wonder how the Arceans managed to get them close...

AIL.ST,

I've had the same thing happen...some AI relations will never progress to Close, no matter what is gifted, or how many trade routes you have.

I believe this is a "balancing" factor at the higher levels: to keep the game interesting (or simply make it harder) your nearest competitor simply will not ally with you, and will downgrade its relations periodically to force a war.

However, this is merely an observation, and I have no empirical evidence. I would be interested in hearing if others have encountered this phenomenon.

~SDC~

He did not downgrade it far enough to be at war... it was between wary and warm...

For whatever reason, sometimes an AI race will be very, very difficult to get to Close. I haven't yet figured out the pattern, but even when it occurs, the AI has its price...but usually the price is much, much, much more than any sane person would be willing to pay:

"Would you like to form an alliance with us Earthlings, weak alien scum?"
"Oh yes, your Greatness. We who are so unworthy even to address you would happily join your Terran Alliance."
"At what price?"
"Well, let's see...90% of all your planets, all your tech, all your trade goods, all your money, and also 9743 kitchen sinks. Thanks!"

And that's just to get them from Friendly to Close!

Try giving them a tech a turn for a while. I've been able to ally with Torians with me as pure evil. Alterians are more difficult in this position. Steady amounts of bribes seems to help.