I agree with what red said about keeping the original "absolute victory" as an option since it's a method I thoroughly enjoy.

As far as controlling the victory timers in the original proposal, perhaps the timers only start after x minutes of games play (preferably selectable from 20 minutes to 60min) This would help prevent quick easy victories at the start of the game.

Another few ideas for victory conditions:

-Colonize or spread your culture to X% of the map at one time. (With the % and which option or both being selectable obviously) Currently once you've got your opponent at 25% of her planets left, victory is all but assured. (This option would also promote more aggressive expansion opposed to slowly fortifying and creeping outwards.

-Eliminate the enemies Capital. Pretty straight forward, once their home world is gone so are they.

-Eliminate the enemies flagship. Similar to eliminating the enemies home world except the ship is mobile and much harder to take down. Although since tracking it down could prove to be nearly impossible so the ships location should be viewable to the enemy from 10 or so jumps away or maybe always. (Range selectable perhaps?)Also with is option enabled the flagship should start at level 10, which would make it more challenging to take down. (Running constantly with the ship could be a problem though, so a default cool down of 2-3 minutes for jump charge up when it's engaged in combat would perhaps be necessary? Although luring it into a ambush or just using jump inhibitors etc.. would solve this somewhat)

-Find the Ancient Artifacts. Kind of a galactic treasure hunt, whoever finds X # of hidden artifacts and hangs onto them for X amount of time wins. (the # of artifacts present and the # needed for victory, as well as the time they need to hang onto them being adjustable obviously)

Each one of these victory conditions would make for a different "feel" to the game and really add to the replay value tremendously. (Maybe adding in some more achievements centered around these victory conditions would be neat to for those of us who are keen on earning them legitimately.)

These conditions sound great but one thing I would really like to see is when a culture overwhelms a planet the population remains and they become part of your empire.

Boy howdy, these are all great ideas! I hope we get to see some of this in the future. I especially like the Kill the Capital to end the game.

I would suggest a "Kill The Space Elf" variant to the "Kill The Flagship" idea. Each race would have a single Space Elf represented by a marker. The Space Elf lives on a planet and has no weapons or defenses of its own. It can be transported only by a non-captal colony ship. The Space Elf dies when either the planet it is on is completely razed or if its transport is destroyed. The death of the Space Elf signals the end of its host civilization, as well as much spectacular cheering and revelry.

They've already confirmed new game modes of some sort will be included, and will probably invite some discussion on it when the beta gets closer.