Sponsor: RefSteel, with enormous help from sargon0
Opening Date: Monday, March 22, 2010
Duration: Four Weeks
Map Generation: Widespread Asteroids (See Notes)

Race: Humans
Difficulty: Impossible
Galaxy Size: Medium
Opponents: Five
Color: Red
Events: On, but Partially Disabled (See Notes)

Scenario: Eons ago, in the deep galactic past, wars of unimaginable fury swept across the stars, as ever-more-powerful war ships laid waste to cities, continents ... and by then end, entire worlds. Once-fertile planets were blasted into cratered husks, shattered by the energies of the stars themselves as massive doom ships channeled them into pure destructive power. All across the galaxy, planets that once had held thriving populations were torn assunder, so that only asteroids remained.

The legends of those ancient wars each speak of a different outcome - some of mutual destruction among deep-space colonies or by bioweapons with pan-galactic impact. Others speak of an Orion Compact, a last heroic effort that save the galaxy from destruction by its own people - of survivors of the wars gathering at Orion or departing the galaxy.

Whatever the cause, the ancient warlords disappeared, leaving the galaxy - what was left of it - to such races as could develop among the ruins.

Six have done so ... and if the wars of old are not to be repeated, it will be up to Humanity.

Variant Rules: None per se (apart from avoiding the usual exploits) - this variant is based entirely on the map and scoring system.

Scoring: This event has custom scoring. SCORING IS OPTIONAL. You are not required to track your scoring if you prefer not to do so.

+10 for playing the game and posting a report on the forums.
+5 if the High Council chooses an emperor and you accept the ruling.
+1 if that emperor is you.
-1 for each race eliminated from the game (by you or anyone else)
-2 if the GNN "will soon control the galaxy" message ever appears

Notes: We're trying out a new "map script" for this event - a rexx script that modifies the save file to ensure that exactly one third of the stars in the galaxy are completely without planets - asteroid fields only - of course without affecting homeworlds or Orion. The effects of this may be far-reaching, and I'm eager to see how the game plays out for everyone who participates. One of the obvious and intended effects: There will be no meeting of the galactic council until every non-asteroid planet in the galaxy has been colonized ... including Orion!

In order to ensure that each race will get a fair shot at colonizing and conquering the galaxy's non-asteroid worlds, the savefile has been further modified to place Controlled Radiated Enviornment in everyone's tree.

Finally, Events are on for this imperium, but have been partially disabled in the save file. Events that affect only a specific planet (Plague, Quake, Nova, Accident, Comet, Rebellion, Fertile, Rich, and Poor) will not occur at all, and no events of any kind will occur until the year 2450 has passed.

Closing Date: Monday, April 19, 2010. Reports due by the end of Tuesday, April 20, your local time.

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