[Jmenschenfresser]

I think the Peaceful race has it too easy. 150 turns is easier to do in a larger universe with quite a few players than any of the others. I would say suggest giving the peaceful multiple goals:

-Must survive at least 150 turns. (so he can't win before turn 150. this gives enough time for him to meet and piss off other empires)
-Must be at peace with n% of the existing empires for so many turns in a row, or...
-Must not lose or kill a planet, ship, satellite, drone, etc etc etc for so many turns.

Just 150 turns doesn't make him peaceful. He can kill and pillage for those entire 150 turns.

Another idea I had about alternate goals was along the lines of some of the newer rules for RISK. The capitol game in particular.

Would go as follows, more or less:

First mod in a facility that does really nothing, and call it a palace. Start a game with a decent number of players (no AI) and five or ten planets. Then on the first turn each player would pick a planet to be their capitol, scrap a facility on that planet and build the palace.

The winner is the person who captures so many capitols of the total number. You could even put a number of turns he must hold them.

First off, this would change the flow of the game, in that people would look, not to destroy one another completely, but simply find and take their capitol. Some rules would have to cover the destruction of capitol worlds. I suppose the population hit points could be massively upped so that it would be hard to destroy a multi-billion pop world. However, to make it interesting, and since I always found the notion of a stalemate in Chess fascinating, a destroyed capitol cannot be transfered. Meaning, if your capitol is destroyed, you cannot move it. However, if the empire, whose empire was destroyed gains back the space his capitol was located, he can rebuild the capitol on the world where it used to be. Destroying your own capitol would have to be Banned, and so would purposely allowing someone to destroy your capitol. However, if say empire A is about to win by capturing empire B's capitol, thus putting him over the required amount, empire C may fly in at the Last moment and glass empire B's capitol, thus preventing empire A from winning temporarily. Well, that is the theory of it.

Destroying a capitol brings the attacker nothing, so a great deal of emphasis would be put upon ground combat. And alliances would be temporary, given that if you attack he who holds the most capitols, the allied will eventually squabble over who gets the spoils.

Just an idea...and one someone else has probably had.