Ancient Star - game over

Now that there are means to end the game (bombardment and ground combat) it is a good time to make the ending itself.

Many 4X games are about the journey then the destination and some of them tend to have no fanfare at the end because of it. This bugs me more than it should, I like to finish all my games and the lack of acknowledgment at the end feels unsatisfying. That's why I've made it this "early" in my project. It also makes me think more about the overarching question in game design: what is the goal? Usually, 4X games have victory conditions where there can be only one winner, and that in my opinion creates a lot of game design problems. Mainly, if you win by eliminating everyone then the end game is one interesting conflict followed by a long and repetitive mop-up phase. If there are multiple victory conditions then you are likely to get a situation where everyone is playing almost a different game that abruptly ends when someone else reaches their goal.

In the image above you can see players ranked by some score (1, a mock value). Meaning I'm experimenting with something different, instead of trying to be the only winner, players are trying to be ranked as high as possible. I'm also pondering the idea of having a score that doesn't feed directly into military power to have some opportunity cost of being higher ranked. I made a similar system in the Stareater where you directly "sacrifice" your colonies for the score but since the game is not finished yet I still don't know the real downsides to it and I want something less extreme in this game. At first, I thought of using the population as a score but when someone gets eliminated, their population will be zero or, depending on when elimination counts, some low circumstantial value. Also, the population is a direct indicator of economic strength and to an extent military potential. So I thought why not research points? They are the closest to representing the art and culture of a civilization, they are accumulating value so they can't be taken away, and counter-intuitively, having a lot of research doesn't directly indicate a strong military or economy. Heavy research is an investment that trades "now" for "later" and makes you vulnerable in the meantime. 

Anyway, nothing is set in stone yet and a mock score of 1 will stay for a while :).