Imperium 35 (light)

[Nad]

Thank you very much for your ultra-detailed report! I would really love to see you trying the extreme one even as a shadow game. You played almost flawlessly - congratz on the win! But I am afraid that we can't crown you as the gentle champ, because you settled yellow systems (by coincidence - that should be forgivable), but tempting the Humans to declare on the Darlocs in 2347 without having declared yourself is against the rules if I recall them correctly. Of course it is handy if the two direct neighbours are caught in a costly war and one can just watch and applaude...

[flugauto]

You can't declare war, if it would be possible I would have declared. But it was no phony war at all, I bombed 2 Darlok planets right away and continued the Darlok war as actively as I could for a long time.

And yes, the 2 yellow stars were a stupid mistake after I took a break. I just forgot about the rule. I should have bombed them and then finished Humans' last world. Any way, one world was destroyed and the 2nd was building a planetary shield till the end of the game.

[Nad]

Hm, maybe I misunderstood your move compared to

3. "Spectator Wars": Also known as "Let's you and him fight." We may not ask one AI to declare on another race with whom we are not already at war ourselves.

Anyway, it is fantastic that you've played your game until the end.

[RefSteel]

Well played - and I'll second Nad's appreciation for all the graphically-pleasing detail: I think you've just set a record for number of images in a single Imperium report!

It sounds like you dealt with your accidental yellow star captures as well as you could (though there's no way to "give back" the tech you gained by capturing Maalor) and while you technically were in violation of the Spectator War rule, I doubt if the results would have differed significantly if you had waited a handful of turns and THEN made your request for a DoW after you'd attacked the 'Loks and received their foregone-conclusion DoW. There are reasons to have that rule worded the way it is, but they probably didn't apply here.

I'll also second Nad on his second comment: I'd love to see you take on the Extreme version of the game!