So you can actually lose the game without ever even contacting the race that wins a senate victory. Seems balanced, except a senate victory doesn't care about non-senate members. General setup is senate members have tons of diplomatic ties, non-senate members have more room to grow. An additional problem is senate membership is determined randomly at the beginning of the game. Make friends with 1-2 medium-size races and bam, you've won the game without firing a shot. The problem with this one is Antaran votes don't increase, and it's not all that hard to get over 1000 votes without fighting anyone. Technically, you can win this victory on turn 1, except you have like 10 votes, and the Antarans have 1000. Senate victory requires a majority vote in the senate, if I remember correctly. MoO2's stellar converter, or Civ 4's domination victory would both be great steps towards making this tolerable.

You just have many more hours to make the game realize this fact. Longer than in MoO and MoO2, and by the time you have 1/2 the galaxy the games decided already. You conquer every single planet in the galaxy.

Master of orion 3 races