I think that, generally speaking, boring-time hits at about the same time you hit MEE. At that point, you basically KNOW you'll win, its just a matter of time as you blow away/subjugate all the other races.
So....
Our 5th X...our Anti-Boredom schemes...should kick in somewhere around that time.
Now, to make this unpredictible, there must be a wide variety of things that can happen. All of them must have a serious enough impact so that it jeaopardizes the whole game when it does happen.
One thing that can happen is Civil War (as described in another thread). Where half of the MEE empire starts it's own empire.
The antareans is another interesting idea. They would come in at the edge of the system in one of the MEE Empire's systems and claim it and assimilate it instantly. This would be their starting base system. From here they would start building ships & launching attacks on everyone and everything.
It is important that they be VERY strong. To achieve this you would have to grant them some extraordinary powers...equivalent to a 5k race in a 2k game...with a level 5 bonus. You WANT them to proliferate quickly and to be able to produce & maintain a viable fleet unless defeated by a massive onslaught. If you were to grant them a special racial tech that made them very difficult to defeat (not Impossible to defeat), then you'd have to have a balancing effect of the players being able to research SOMETHING that would work. One way to do this is to add to the various ruins out there Unknown Techs. Unknow Tech 1 thru 5 would be used to produce Antarean Tech. Through Antarean tech you get Antarean Sheilds, Weapons, Sensors. From each of those you can break out how ever you like.
Each of the Unknown Techs would be on random Ruins planets and you would not be able to research them unless the Antareans showed up (NOW we know what that is!). You would have to research all 5, or otherwise gain that research to achieve Antarean Tech. This means you'd have to gain at least one of the techs, and probably several of them, from other Empires.
More ideas as I cogitate on this
