More Eminent Domian playtests - good news and bad news

I played 4 more games of Eminent Domain again last night with Brian, Marty, and one with Paul as well.

Good News
* Everybody enjoyed the game.
* The 4p game was won by someone who eschewed Research - meaning it's not imperative that you invest heavily in Research to win (albeit, the only experienced player, me, played terribly and didn't do much, so that might have something to do with it). I do feel like Research is a viable path, but not absolutely necessary. I do also think that most players will at least do some level 1 Research to improve their deck a little bit.
* I tried my damnedest to get the "potentially broken" Arms Dealer strategy going, and struggled heavily. I'll note however that I was not playing well at all, and it's possible I just wasn't doing it right.

Bad News
* In a 3-player game, probably 4 of the 6 Politics cards took Colonize cards, leaving a total of 10 in the stack. 10 Colonize Roles later, the game was over, and all three of us were choosing Colonize as a Role. That game felt disappointingly short. However, I'm not sure how realistically that will happen very often, but I do fear this... in a 3-player game with 3 newbies, it's easy to imaging that scenario playing out very similarly. It creates a game that is too short (not enough turns), doesn't very fun, and can end with a disappointingly low winning score of 10 or so while players have unflipped planets and haven't developed their game hardly at all.

I might have to reconsider game end conditions for 3 player :/