Just a reply to a thread I read the other day where somone was complaining that once they'd effectivly won it then still took hours to finish off the map.

I ended up playing a Me+AI v 3AI v 3AI single system 10 planet. The Early game was very hectic I basically had to defens not only myself but my AI buddy who of course was completely outmatached by the 3AI on his side of the map, was acutally kinda fun protecting him as well as myself and trying to buildup a fleet. A little while after tat we'd taken out 1 from each of the AI teams that was closest and had thier planets at which point I conclcuded the game was basically over as I was already getting rediclous income, big fleet and had most of the research tree's done. Of course I was also feeding income to my AI buddy who was also now a powerhouse.

So In an effort to have a resolution to the map I was the inflence route, since I had a fleet big enough to ward off everything I sold all my logistics and maxed out inflenece structures at every planet I own'd.

In a word DOMINO's man planets started falling quick and even better 2 of the empire not only quickly lost planets to my inflence but quickly lost all thier planets which meant all thier structures autodescruted leaving me a handful of newly colonised virgin planets which of course I maxed out with influcence structures, rinse repeat and it was all over in a very short period of time.

And while I could have done it the hard way conquering every planet, everyone knows when they've got the AI beat and its just a nice way of having a map offically end without the time sink to do it