I was on the verge of being wiped put in my most recent game, I went very tech heavy from the start and because of this my military production was lacking. So I had good weapons just not much production capacity to create ships to use them. Thankfully for most if the game everyone liked me, so I was left alone. As the larger civ's started gobbling up the smaller civ's I knew my time was short. I had two options boost my military or start influencing nearby planets over to my side. I was a neutral civ. So no one would ally with me.
So I decided to boost my military, I was looking good and then the pirate swarm mega event hit and destroyed every ship I had and every ship all the other civ's had. it occured to me that since no one could build ships in any number to attack me and I couldn't build any ships, lets just go for a tech victory. As I was teching up everyone left declared war on me but could not get to me because of all the over powered pirates sitting in my space.
Easy Tech victory without fighting a single battle, never would have guessed the game would end like that. Just goes to show how unpredictable the game can be.