First, lets talk about what it shouldn't do:
- Nothing: as it currently stands, and in many games, the tech victory doesn't really do anything, and this feels like "cheating".
- Control the Board: it should not give some ultimate weapon, or ultimate influence tool that makes the "real" victory something else.
- Force Interaction: the tech victory should not force the player to compete or cooperate with any other player.
Now let's talk about what it should do:
- Reward for Theory: you have to go though a lot of techs that don't give an immediate reward to the player, except getting them closer to transcendence.
- Remove the Player: either literally or effectively. You have now progressed to another level of existence, the rest of the galaxy is beneath you.
Here are some things I would like to see:
- Something Left Behind: with the player now gone, there should be signs of their former greatness.
- Omniscience: should you not walk away, complete awareness of the galaxy is a fitting reward.
Scenario:
Singularity of Transcendence Victory
Upon reaching the Singularity of Transcendence, your population leaves this entire plane of existence for a better one. All your ships disappear. Outposts become unowned. They get the abandoned colony, ancient ruins or monster nests specials randomly applied. Homeworlds get their populations set to 1 and become unowned, and get the ancient ruins, moderate tech or advanced tech specials applied randomly. The appropriate guardians should also be spawned.
However I can see some possible variations on this:
Variation 1:
All colonies (at least without existing specials) get a simmilar effect to outposts, but with random growth specials instead of monster nests.
Variation 2:
This would be predicated to a major modification to the tech tree, that would remove the "construction" requirement and replace it with an "intelligence" requirement, thus putting the stealth techs in-line with the tech victory. Colony planets would disappear, being pulled completely into the void. This may or may not depend on the presence of specials on the planets. IE: planets with certain specials might get the treatment of the first option.
However one thing I am not certain is if I want the removal to be literal and figurative.
Literal Removal:
If a planet has the Imperial Palace, it's population gets set to zero and randomly gets the panopticon, honeycomb or fortress special applied to it. Possibly also having all of its starlanes severed: so anyone trying to get it has to use a starlane bore.
Effective Removal:
Your capitol remains, but all the starlanes are severed, and it is granted a defensive and/or stealth boost that make it impossible for another player to successfully attack, even if they do have a starlane bore to get to you. Your ability to colonize (outside of your capital-system), bombard and invade would be removed. Really producing ships would be predicated if you staying around was a prelude for something like a Precursor invasion (Unifiers or Final Ones), in which case you should get a substantial bonus to ship structure or the ability to "summon" a guardian so you can be a *valuable ally.
I have a couple of other "effective removal" concepts, but they're quite a bit more complex.
*I'm thinking something along the lines of Ivanova's First One's roundup form Babylon 5.