Something has been bothering me in 4X games for decades now and GC2 was no exception. I figure out that I've won the game a long time before the game admits defeat. Half the time I don't even bother to finish. The ships I'm currently refitting are strong enough to walk into any enemy stronghold and blow it away without taking any losses. I've got twice the resources any other empire has. Yet the game demands that I have twice the resources of everyone else combined or defeat every far-flung, minor outpost to give me the win. I remember playing a GC2 game for two days after it became clear that I was going to win!
So half my games don't end with a win at all. They end with me bored out of my mind, sighing, and quitting. Even when I do win, it's not very satisfying.
It's not a unique situation in the world of games. Most sports seem to solve it by having some way to score a lot of points in a little time. In baseball, if a pitcher gets tired and the guy coming out of the bullpen is having a bad day, the other team can score a ton of runs even if there's only one out left in the game. In American Football, it typically takes several minutes to score but some long passes and a couple of turnovers can get you over 20 points very quickly. TV game shows typically raise the stakes as the game goes on, ensuring that you don't know who the winner will be until the last minutes.
Is there some way something like that could be done in a 4X game? Something that would let an empire gain a lot of power quickly WITHOUT resorting to some cheap die roll? An actual strategy with a low probability of working but, with a good bit of luck AND skill, could net a lot of power?