Space race bug and other concern.

[Amarsir]

I just won Culture Victory in the early 1800's in less than 2 hours of gameplay.

Sometimes I don't think I could get farms going in less than 2 hours of gameplay. Grats on the 1800s win, and I have to go find Sava's post. I won (on fast, admittedly) vs Noble a cultural victory by around 1950, and I still had quite a lot of cultural potential to build in had I wanted to. I also probably could have won sooner, but I didn't want to crank up the output prematurely and risk attack.

I would list religions as the first tip, though as has been said it's not necessary. Another is that as you're getting to mid-game, look more closely at the cultural multipler vs the cultural base, not just the overall number. Example:

City A has 200 cpt. City B has 150. Hermitage time, but where? Instinctively I'd go City B, but when I looked I noticed A had 100 cpt + 100%, B had 50 cpt + 200%. Mindful of that, A got the 100% boost from Hermitage, and I started pushing specialists and building raw culture buildings in B.

Back to the original poster's point though:

Lastly, does anyone else find (in single player games at least) that the game is ALWAYS won or lost via the space race?

Not always. But right now I'm about 75 turns from the end in a game in which I've been very aggressive. (Noble, standard mountainous map, 7 players, normal speed). I've been conquering since before horses were around. I've done reasonably well taking territory, never lost anything, and only had peace long enough to grow/resupply or switch enemies.

Not a perfect game, but I've played pretty well with a conquest mindset right from the beginning.

And now, 75 turns from the end, it occurs to me that even though science was about 4 on my priority list, it would still be much easier to win a space race than to complete a conquest or domination victory. I could probably win that in 25 turns or less, vs 50 maybe for dominating enough land or a squeaker at 75 to eliminate all. That doesn't seem right.

I think we'd all agree that you probably won't fall backwards into a cultural victory. There's no "whoops I'm a badass" dominations (though controlling land/pop may seem like an accidental occurance when you're trying to destroy everyone). And you won't win UN votes unless you've been very careful making friends. But if you're developing technologically anyway for the purposes of war, a Space Race victory just jumps up and licks your face at some point.

And it does seem to be the victory of choice for AIs that only attack to harass, not conquer. So I do think there's a balance issue there. And I'm not sure how you'd fix it, but it is taking some pizazz out of the "multiple ways to win" appeal.