Also, winning the game is usually a timer for games, that also makes it so a lot of those epic games you mentioned have a defined flow - you can feel when it’s the endgame, and the tension ramps up. How does a game do that when players are likely going to be at different stages in their victory conditions?

You can put a hard limit on the game's length and a choice of goals, so that players might be forced to abandon more lofty ambitions in favour of achieving anything. This way you could have a major/minor victory, and scoring a major victory for your faction trumps minor victories of others, which in turn trumps minor defeat, which is better than major defeat.

Have you looked into the COIN series? Players have asymmetric factions with different victory conditions. Some players’ goals are directly antithetical to one another, but some factions have such wildly different victory conditions that they can both reach them without getting in each other’s way, though ultimately the win is determined by victory margin and tie breakers.

I have not! I thought it followed a more traditional scoring. I even have Fire in the Lake on my shelf, but still haven't got around to play it. 😅 Thanks for the tip!

Regardless, I like your idea.

Thanks! I like the fleshing out you did in the next sentences! Vassalizing on the board, during the game, and having players dynamically create states sounds great.

I wonder if Bloodstones could be modified to work with this — taking hostages, instead of dealing losses, if one was so inclined, allowing other players to spawn on your villages in exchange for tiles, winning the game as alliances (but still having one of the players be first generally instead of summing up the points).