I just finished the recently added 2nd campaign game...the insane sized map of the Milky Way galaxy. It is a very, very well done map and quite a challenge. You must play as the humans and all victory conditions are open.
I usually play on gifted or genius level, but I had no idea what to expect from a campaign game, so I backed off to normal, especially since the only choice of race is the humans and I haven't played with them since my first two beginner games, some 180 hours (of game time) ago. After over 480 turns, I saved the game. I wanted to see how ascension, cultural dominance, and military victories would play out for scores.
I had 167 planets, about 60 were acquired by colony ships and the rest came from invasions. By turn 300, the game was a real slog of micro-management Moral was terrible. Every planet needed at least two morale boosting tiles and I was using constructors to build a starbase close to every planet to increase happiness. It is so much easier on these huge maps to have the patriot trait.
At turn 480, I had researched the entire tech tree and saved the game. An ascension win the next turn netted me 17 points! After 23 hours of game play, that was all I had to show for the work. I had 600 points on my first game on beginner in about 30 minutes on the smallest map. This just isn't right.
Well, let's try another way. I went back to the saved game, and a few turns later won a cultural domination game and had 67 points. I wanted to try for a military win, but was too far advanced in the save and always won a cultural domination win about two turns before I could take over the last two opponents in a one turn mass blitz attack from all points.
One of the Steam achievements is to collect all of the benevolent bonuses. I missed by ten points out of the massive amount required, just one turn shy of gaining the last bonus. No matter what I do, I can't turn off the cultural win by just one turn. How in the world do you gain all benevolent traits? I had point generators on each planet as soon as they were colonized and it was the first building I built after an invasion. Unless you colonize 150 planets and put a benevolent generator on every planet and play on huge maps I can't figure out how to accomplish this. And if you play with all the races available on the huge maps, I can't see how you can ever colonize 150 planets before other races are there before you.
Any thoughts on gaining all traits, benevolent, pragmatic, or otherwise? Any thoughts about scoring on insane maps?