If you played the original game and the first sequel, you know that back then, there only two paths to victory, through world conquest or space race. Which of them did you prefer? When I started playing for good, I aimed for building the space ship, since conquering all the AI nations was quite challenging, especially on a larger map. But this still required fending off or knocking down rivals with military might, so later, when I gained more skills, I started to prefer world unification. It's just more elegant - and they can build that spaceship after "the world will be as one", anyway.
Screw building a spaceship. It's a pretty peaceful way of winning, and I really don't like that. I like warfare, manipulation, creating treaties and breaking them when I am in the middle of their territory, and just destroying everything in the process. Spaceship victory is great, but it's also pretty boring, since you do a turtle style most of the game, focusing on resources over armies, and you just play chess basically.
I honestly never attepmted to play a turtling game in Civilization, even when I was dead-set on space ship victory I would still attack an unfriendly (in Civ 2 they all became unfriendly after short time ) neighbour once a chance presented itself. I completely subscribe to the doctrine that best defence is offence. I agree with your opinion overall, world conquest was more satisfying than rushing to the stars.
