Victory conditions really need to be looked at. As far as I can tell, Warlords are the only one's who's conditions change depending on the number of players in the game. Looking at Nergal with over a thousand players, the couple servers I joined right off the bat with between 100 and 200 players, and Atargatis which just started with 31 players, the Trader win requires 4.3 billion CO and 1 billion RO regardless of how many players are in the game. The Research win requires destroying 12 stars regardless of how many players are in the game. Warlord is the only one that varies, and even there, in the 31 player game, it requires destroying 15 homeworlds, which means if half the players decide not to actually start playing, it won't actually be POSSIBLE. Making researcher basically the best option (too bad I didn't think about that until I already picked a different specialization. Hadn't looked at the victory conditions yet at the time...). Considering there was no way I was going to get 4 billion CO and a billion RO on a server with over a hundred players, there's DEFINITELY no way it'll be possible on a server with only 31 or less. It should really vary depending on the number of players on the server...
Edit: Research win should probably vary as well. I have to imagine in the long run (once people start defending their homeworlds) that it'll be far easier to destroy 12 stars than to capture 15+ homeworlds, as you can pick any 12 stars you want for researcher, so you can just hit undefended ones, or ones you control yourself.
