Since allies and federation members count as independent, it’s impossible to achieve the victory condition to eliminate all other independent empires in an alliance or federation. For the purposes of controlling 40% of habitable worlds, your planets and your vassals’ planets are the only ones which contribute towards the quota.

Take, for instance, the game's relatively complex system of alliances, which doesn’t figure into deciding whether a player has achieved either victory condition. Stellaris’ implementation of victory conditions is baffling. They are badly implemented, badly designed, and even were both of those issues solved they’d detract from the game. Whether you’re colonizing planets to fill a victory bar rather than to meaningfully enhance your empire or crushing weak empires who don’t stand a chance, Stellaris’ victory conditions suck some joy from an otherwise great strategy game. Both are a bad fit: rather than guiding you through the game’s rich, durable simulation of competing sci-fi civilizations, they shunt you down one narrow path which takes far too long to complete.

Stellaris’ victory conditions demand you either own 40% of the galaxy’s habitable worlds or conquer or subjugate all other empires. By then, my empire was the strongest in the galaxy and I’d settled into the long galactic clean-up that precedes formally completing the game.

By the time I was approaching the two victory conditions it warned me of a chore. Every time you complete the colonisation of a planet in Stellaris, the game’s AI assistant cheerfully barks ‘New colony established.’ When I started the game, it was a pleasant reminder to plan the future of a new planet.

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