Turn off diplomatic/influence victory?

Why go for opinions?
Why not just turn them off and try it?

Usually, the only reason I would turn them off would be to make extra sure I didn't inadvertantly get one of those victories when I was trying for a military or research. I usually don't bother, though, because as long as you're careful, you can usually keep that from happening.

True. However, I just played and am really confused. The Krynn won by influence, but I have no idea how. All of a sudden it said that they were about to influence all our worlds. It was like a switch turned on. Did I miss something?

Nevermind, looks like it's one of those mega events that I guess I should probably turn off for now ha ha. The only thing that's aggrivating was I didn't even have Planetary Invasion, so it wasn't like I could stop it. Ah well, there's always the next game.

Well, the AI civs do have the same victory options you do, so if the Krynn got 75% of the map, they'll win. I've had that almost happen to me before; I wasn't paying attention to AI influence, and nearly lost because of it (I had to declare a war I didn't really want to fight and quickly take out some starbases to get their influence back below 75%). The xenophile event can let a civ sneak up on you, too.

I don't think they had 75% of the map, I had a bunch of planets, and no one had gone to war so there was I think 3 other AI's plus me still out there. I think it was the mega event, but who knows.

I leave diplo and research off, as they allow me to win at times when I'm not "really" winning, ie I'm not the dominant power. I tend to leave influence on, since if I control 75% of the map it's pretty much a forgone conclusion I'm going to win anyway.

That's a good poit Vinraith. I normally turn everything off but on a gigantic map it sure makes for a long game. I will try the influence option next game.

You don't need planetary invasion to prevent an influence victory, you only need to declare war. You can't win by influence if you are currently in a war.

In one of the games I played in DA beta, the Drath got the 10x influence mega-event. The effect was so over-whelming that planets every where were flipping; I could barely hold my own. It quickly got so bad that I ended up being the only one left, with almost no territory to call my own. Knowing that war was the only method that I could prevent an influence victory, I declared it. It took a lot of effort to beat back a race with nearly 3 times my size, but I managed to win. Ofcourse, my pre-war military starbases, and the pirate mega-event helped.

If you want higher metaverse scores, it can be a good idea to turn influence victories off. This is because scores reward military victories, and you are likely to accidentally win by influence before you have wiped out the last few pockets of resistance to your cause. This can be avoided by constantly staying at war, but watch out... if for instance your dominating influence lasted for 7 of the 10 turns, then you went to war, then won and there is another civ out there, you will accidentally win in just 3 turns, it won't take you the full 10 when you reach peaceful relations again.

I didn't know that being at war prevented the influence victory. I must have missed that in the manual.

I tend to turn off the victory options I've done. So if I've had an influence victory, I turn that off for the next game; a diplo victory I'll turn that off for the next game (in addition to influence) until I've had each victory type, then I just turn on what I like.

I play only 'Conquest' - no diplo, science, allied, etc victories... even though I'm a builder and nester rather than a military 'rusher' - I prefer to slug it out in the 'end game' with massive fleets of tech'ed out ships.

I turn off every victory condition (so I play with conquest) but I almost always conquer through influence.

Once you're dominant, wiping out the last few civs is easy, but it takes a lot of clicking and real-life time. Alliance or influence victories are sometimes just the fastest way to get an official win in a game you can't possibly lose.

The disabling of technological victory thus does not affect scoring, i assume. Good. My forst diplomatic try had a harsh end because i "forgot" to keep thalans busy and it was a bit disappointing when the game suddenly ended. Besides - what strategy is best to avoid this, if you dont want to disable it?