There were 21 different players and 160 planets in a 150x150 galaxy. The game lasted 73 turns and had five active players remaining when it was decided to call the game. The game was called because the two dominant races preferred to trust the judges scoring system to fighting it out between themselves. There were ~21 points divided up between the surviving and thriving races. Points were awarded based upon the number of home worlds each race controlled and their percentage of the overall industry.

           Ghost  10.04  (10 home worlds, 30808.81 pop, 18266.7 ind)
   Rock Warriors   9.40  ( 9 home worlds, 15905.70 pop, 19159.5 ind)
          Nippon   1.56  ( 1 home world,   4660.00 pop,  4660.0 ind)
          Dragon   0.09  ( 0 home worlds,  1034.40 pop,   179.4 ind)
     AstroCreeps   0.01  ( 0 home worlds,    96.00 pop,    25.9 ind)

There were 10 different players and 100 planets in a 120x120 galaxy. The game lasted 68 turns and had five active players when the game ended. The winning race, Paranoids, took control of the galaxy by exploiting the production clause in Explorer's end game conditions. The Paranoids' production exceeded the combined production of the rest of the races in the galaxy. There were 10 points divided up between the surviving races. Points were based upon the percentage of production each race contributed to the overall industry total.

     Paranoids  6.63  (31533.23 pop, 22714.30 ind)
   Star_League  1.81  ( 7213.31 pop,  6665.85 ind)
   ArchWizards  0.79  ( 3244.48 pop,  2900.86 ind)
    Anihitrons  0.63  ( 2342.71 pop,  2364.99 ind)
         Mages  0.14  (  540.38 pop,   540.38 ind)

Game started with 45 players in a 210x210 galaxy. The game lasted 77 turns and had 16 semi-active players when the game ended. The winning race, the Paranoids, won the game though alliances and building its technology levels up to an extremely obscene level. While the rest of the races tried to play catch up, the Paranoids began to eat up home worlds like they were candy. A late challenge mounted by three races (Fluffy, RaceS, and Fangmoons) looked like it had the potential of slowing the Paranoid juggernaut but failed when the Paranoid's allies failed to switch sides. Paranoids won the game by controlling over two thirds of the home worlds in the galaxy. There were 45 points awarded for this game. Each race controlling a home world at the end was awarded points for it.

   Paranoids  35.58  (34 HW, 44620.29 pop., 34516.00 ind.)
      Orkses   3.14  ( 3 HW, 16413.31 pop., 15020.80 ind.)
      Gehowa   3.14  ( 3 HW,  6385.94 pop.,  5382.48 ind.)
      Terran   1.05  ( 1 HW,  8470.20 pop.,  7951.85 ind.)
      Caspar   1.05  ( 1 HW,  4040.28 pop.,  3112.25 ind.)
      Zeroth   1.05  ( 1 HW,  1479.12 pop.,  1479.12 ind.)

Game started with 25 players in a 150x150 galaxy. Game Lambda wrapped up after 72 with Phantom dominating the field. When it because obvious that there was no one left who could challenge Phantom the focus of the game shifted to his three staunch allies. Novice lost his last home world in an attempt by the nytes to be relevant before being eliminated by Phantom. The musicians, with an eye on the scoreboard, waited until the last few turns and then turned on and captured the home worlds of Phantom supporter, the Reams. Then proving to be a player to be watched in future games, the musicians turned on Phantom on the last turn of the game, stealing a home world and padding his overall point total.

	  Phantom  	18 home worlds	18.75 points
  	musicians	 6 home worlds	 6.25 points

Game started with 29 players in a 180x180 galaxy and ran for 76 turns before the Communists seized control. The tech levels in this game reached an obscene level never before seen in an Explorer game. Is this an escalation of a trend started in Iota2? Enquiring minds want to know...

                Technology Levels      HW   Points
Communists:  21.13 22.27 34.35  1.00   21   21.75
        SS:   9.83  9.44 14.71  1.47    5    5.18
     Ghost:   5.03  6.03  4.61  1.00    1    1.04
Great Apes:   1.68  4.97  2.53  1.00    1    1.04

Game Omicron started September 3, 1997 and after 93 turbulent turns, one race finally emerges from the pack and seizes control of the galaxy. This was not only the longest running Explorer game to date but probably one of the more competitive as well.

Omicron continued the recently emerging tradition of the leaders building their technology levels to ludicrous levels but Omicron may come to be know as the game that ushered in the advent of the super alliances. At one point fourteen races were allied to take down one of the front running races. The fact that the alliance broke down before the race was removed is probably more a testament to human nature than a reflection on that oppressed player's skill. Omicron also brought back the elegantly executed back stab. This may be the only thing that keeps these super alliances from taking over future Explorer games.

Anyways, the game started with 36 players in an 180x180 galaxy and the Warlords entered the end game by building their production levels up to a point where they dwarfed the rest of the races.

                           Technology        Effective    Points
                      D     W     S     C    Production   Awarded
         Warlords    8.67 24.16 18.00  1.48   51650.56     24.0
    Free_Radicals    8.12 38.69  9.33  2.00   22801.64     10.6
        Jhorlians    3.73 10.87  7.15  1.37    2534.18      1.4

                       Technology        Effective    Points
                  D     W     S     C    Production   Awarded
    Paranoids    4.32  8.77  7.35  1.43   9791.58       4.4
        Ghost    4.33  4.14  6.33  1.00   6884.38       3.6

The turning point of this game was around turn forty when the entire galaxy polarized into two camps, those supporting Ghost and those opposed to him. Unfortunately for Ghost, those opposed to him greatly outnumbered his supporters.

Finally on turn 66 the Draconians won control of the galaxy. There was a surprise ending however. On the final turn of the game, race Hallucigenia, who had been knocked out of the running by the Draconians earlier, managed to steal a home world from underneath the considerable noses of the Draconians and Que.

This was a sixteen point game and here is how they were divided up:

                          Technology         Effective   Points
                     D     W     S     C     Production  Awarded
       Draconians   7.88  7.29  9.01  1.00   12,577.16    13.0
              Que   6.00  4.71  6.85  1.00    9,889.88     2.0
     Hallucigenia   3.70  4.01  3.98  1.20    3,155.32     1.0

After six and a half months Xi finally comes to a close. The growing tendency towards alliances continued in this game but the occurences of races violating their agreements are on the rise again as well. This made for an interesting game.

The fireworks started early. Kodiac asked an alliance mate to guard his home world for him while he went out to attack a third race. Well, maybe this betrayal was understandable, some tempations are just too hard to resist. The back stabbing continued throughout the game until the very end when normally reliable Ghost turned on his game-long allies in an attempt to pad his stats.

Nephilim, fresh from his pounding in Omicron, applied what he had learned in the previous game and used alliances to either neutralize his opponents or gang-up on them. This strategy worked for him and enabled him to succeed where he failed in Omicron. The apparent lesson from his game is "Alone you will not succeed but don't trust your friends either."

This was a forty point game and here is how they were assigned.

                         Technology          Effective   Points
                   D      W      S     C     Production  Awarded
      Nephilim   23.68  20.11  32.75  3.20   20,949.45    29.8
         Ghost    6.52   6.91   9.22  1.00    9,465.87     5.1
    Communists   19.04  16.93  20.88  1.34   10,465.15     4.1
     Darklords    8.24   9.70   8.90  2.00    2,372.08     1.0

The conquest of galaxy Sigma in turn 74 by the Convicts marks the successful completion of another beta test game. Sigma confirmed the value of the new balanced planet allocation algorithm.

An early attempt by some players to rally all forces against the Hall-of-Fame players failed. Instead of teaming up against the proven threats, players battled amongst themselves and watched as their nieghbors ate up race after race.

Eventually 3 players teamed up on Paranoids. But with the advance warning of previous failed attempts against them, the Paranoids put up such a strong defense it took more than a dozen turns (42 by one count) until he was eliminated.

This game apparently had some probelms with vacations and computer change-overs. BORG (clearly the leader) was attacked and destroyed when his neighbors determined that the his planets were producing the same stuff turn after turn. Apparently, the BORG were unable to assimilate Windows 95.

Convicts won this game through diplomacy, alliances, and well-timed back stabs (pretty much the way the game was designed to be played). This was a sixteen point game and Convicts won by satisfying the seldom invoked production clause. His production level exceeded all the other races combined. Points were awarded based upon production levels to all surviving races.

                              Technology          Effective   Points
                        D      W      S     C     Production  Awarded
           Convicts    8.04   6.43   9.15  2.03   29,936.38    9.52
Spanish Inquisition    6.58   8.13   8.17  1.00    5,709.94    2.85
              Ghost    5.63   8.42   7.31  1.00    5,169.03    2.24
          XANARIANS    2.97   9.46   3.89  1.00    3,209.04    1.39

1. Don't take vacations
2. Teaming up almost always works
3. The more compact the galaxy, the earlier the fighting
4. Being in the Hall-of-Fame marks you as a target

This game featured Explorer's new partial bombing/conversion rule as well as a fully populated galaxy when the game began. All-in-all a different flavor of game than we have ever run here before.

The game started off quickly with a race near the top of the Hall-of-Fame being eliminated by turn six by a hastily formed alliance. These allied races quickly adjusted to the new gaming environment and stuck together using stealth, deception, and overwhelming force to subjugate the rest of the galaxy by turn 40. By turn 43 the alliance fell apart as members began to attack one another with the Spam People coming out on top.

This was a sixteen point game and points were awarded based upon the number of home worlds occupied as the game game to an end.

                              Technology          Effective   Points
                        D      W      S     C     Production  Awarded
        Spam People    6.33   8.50   13.52 1.52   22,562.86    12.0
    Suicide Machine    5.85   5.67    4.73 1.00    4.496.19     2.0
              OUIZY    5.46   5.14    3.69 1.00    3,584.59     2.0

The stated purpose of this game was to give people new to Explorer a chance to compete with others with similar levels of experience. It did not take these rookie players long to start behaving like experience players. This games featured a mega-alliance, factions within the alliance, betrayal, and in-fighting. In the end it game down to three races, the organizer of the mega-alliance and two races that were allied from the beginning.

It was the end of this game that was unique. ULTRAMARINES led most of the game. In turn 102 they finally captured the last home world from the Intrepid Alliance and met the winning conditions. On what they thought would be the last turn of the game, 104, the Intrepid Alliance attacked and settled two home worlds guarded by DA_ORK'n fleets. What the Intrepid Alliance did not realize at the time was that the DA_ORK'n fleets were guarding those worlds for the ULTRAMARINES and by losing those worlds the ULTRAMARINES did not meet the minimum winning conditions and the game continued (this is a first for Explorer). DA_ORKS, given new life by the Intrepid Alliance, then turned on his game long ally bombing a host of their worlds. This enabled the DA_ORKS to enter into a seldom exercised winning condition. In turn 111 the DA_ORK'n production exceeded that of all the other players in the game and more than doubled that of their nearest competitor. After 114 turns the game was finally over.

It was in anticipation of games like this that the end game conditions were instituted. Twenty-five races started this game and the three remaining divided the points between them based upon their production levels.

                                             Effective   Points
                       Population  Industry  Production  Awarded
              DA_ORKS    51,288     39,567     42,497     17.0
         ULTRAMARINES    17,980     17,230     17,418      7.0
    Intrepid Alliance     3,313      2,025      2,347      1.0

First game run from an "outside" site. The game started with 12 players in a 120x120 galaxy with 115 astral bodies.

Gabrielle provided more than it's fair share of headaches for players and GM alike. The fact that anyone made it to the end game is a testiment to the desire for victory that Galaxy players seem to have...

Most races were plagued by an empire that refused to communicate with them at one time or another, but following the early loss of a couple of key races, it quickly became a game of attrition. Those races that had taken early risks to build large industry bases, soon began to dominate.

Nephilim having learned that being famous is not always a good thing, hid behind the obscurety of Mrem until he was convinced that no-one could halt this homeworld munching monster. Intrepid Alliance made good use of his position to gain some valuable points for the Hall of Fame.

This was a 12 point game, and points were divided amongst the winners based upon the number of homeworlds occupied when the game reached its conclusion on turn 55.

                        Technology
                    D     W     S     C    Population  Industry Points
         Nephilim  7.35  7.11  7.08  3.82   21630.71   16495.5   8.0
Intrepid Alliance  6.80  9.47  4.72  1.12   19238.86   12237     4.0

Game started with 36 players in a 150x150 galaxy and quickly became a game of alliances, bold strikes and mistakes. Early on an alliance, led by the fun-loving race pasta, seemed destined for greatness until they combined for an attack on a race that correctly assumed was the Hall-of-Fame race Communists (and eventual winner) and forgot to set each other to peace. Communists were able to sit back and watch these fleets destroy each other. After that debacle the alliance unraveled for a while. The Space Dwarves took this as an oppurtunity to blitz across the galaxy, obliterating most of the non-aligned races. This was the catalist required to shore up pasta's alliance. The alliance struck out at Space Dwarves and was very successful as the Dwarves had neglected defenses in liu of offensive power. Noting that the alliance members had neglected their defenses as well, Communists made their move. They struck at pasta's under defended worlds which led pasta to summon his offensive fleets home in a vain attempt to protect his industrial base. With pasta gone and with the Communists having an overwhelming technology advantage the game was soon over. The moral of this game appeared to be, "A good offense is not always the best defense."

                        Technology
                    D     W     S     C    Population  Industry Points
       Communists 27.13 27.21 27.19  1.0    54766.88   14658.1   24.0
    Space Dwarves  5.35  9.67 10.41  1.0    23749.98    7457.8    6.0
         Spartans  8.45 15.00 10.73  1.0    17669.98   14517.8    6.0

Game started with 16 players in a 160x160 fully populated galaxy, it did not stay that way for long. Four races were eliminated within the first ten turns. The most interesting conflict involved Hallucigenia taking down Communists with the aid of Spam People and Spanish Inquisition (who promptly turned on Hallucigenia as soon as Communists were no longer viable). While this double cross was going on, Ghost and Nephilim moved in. Nephilim grabbing the Spam People core worlds and Ghost taking out Spanish Inquisition (who played the game under the name of Mr. Pelican Pants which has got to win the award for the most creative name yet) and acquiring all the Communists and Hallucigenia worlds in the process. Ghost's rapid expansion made him appear to be the fore runner and a shoo in for the win. To combat this an alliance was formed consisting of Hobbit, Warlords and Nephilim. Not wanting to violate existing treaties with Ghost, this trio set about to undermine Ghost's support by taking out his allies (both real and imagined). Hobbit and Warlords pondered how best to proceed (continue to ally against the apparent front runner, ally with Ghost against the apparent tech leader Nephilim, or find a way for the other two races to fight and destroy themselves). While they pondered and while Ghost tried to consolidate the territory he so rapidly acquired, Nephilim accumulated tech. This proved to be the winning strategy in this game when Nephilim launched a fleet of bombers against Ghost worlds. These bombers quickly swept through Ghost space and until there was none left but the three races of the Ghost Busters Alliance. At this point the game was called.

                        Technology
                    D     W     S     C    Population  Industry Points
         Nephilim  8.27 15.38 24.58  1.0    31961.59   20857.9   10.0
         Warlords  6.32 16.55 15.60  1.0    17854.06   15300.7    3.0
           Hobbit  7.76 13.69  4.98  1.0     8348.60    8345.9    3.0

Well it seems that Nephilim has triumphed again !!!

At the game end there were only two races left standing, with the opposition having been smashed in the most bloodthirsty game of Explorer I have witnessed. Although partial bombing was enabled, yields were very small, and as a result a stable industrial base was always a good bet. Nephilim started well and until around the mid point of the game (turn 40) looked like they were going to run away with it, simply from having a stable industrial and tech base.

It all changed however when in separate parts of the galaxy a number of bloody (yet profitable) conflicts broke out. While Rancher began his expansion across the galaxy, his over already overstreatched neighbours offered minimal resistance, and Rancher seemed to be the race on the way up.

Meanwhile a slow but deadly Plague was spreading across distant stretches of the galactic arm. Between these two expanding races a relative power vacuum, caused by a costly war that left xe_XE building one of the most defended homeworld outposts yet seen. Other races in the area slowely crumbled, and an uncharacteristic lighting strike by Plague allowed him to grap much of Tigers and The_Fishes space. A position from which he would be able to build an empire to see it through to the end of the game. The_Fishes are worth noting as the race that fought it out longest, with little or no industry and an increasing tech gap. His people were not exterminated however and there are still one or two around in the galaxy today.

At this point it is worth noting that five races lay ahead of Nephilim in the power rankings, but it would seem to be a characteristic of powerful races that they always underestimate themselves, and believe thier neighbours to be very powerful. A number of alliances and dodgey deals later saw the end game in forming, with the result that Disco, Rancher, JoanDarc and Dnai would be the victims. Any one of these races could have been the victor, but it is probably for just this reason that they were squished so comprehensively.

At the end of the game Nephilim had defended his borders well, and that early industrial platform served him well to the end. The game ended on turn 84 with:

            Drive  Weap   Shields  Cargo  Planets Pop     Ind    Points
Nephilim    11.05  15.75  21.92    1.00     88    55811   32206    24
  Plague    21.65  14.65  19.80    1.53     77    43582   25115    12

This was the second game run from the Explore UK site.

Omega began with twenty five races playing in a 125x125 galaxy with 200 worlds and asteriods. This was the first Explorer game being played at the new explorer game server site. The theme of this game might best be characterized as "If I only had one more ship ..." A number of races sent my private emails throughout this game lamenting that if they only had one more ship (one that did not complete its construction in time, one that was sent to the wrong planet, or one that was just to slow to arrive with the rest of the fleet) they would have won a pivotal battle.

This game also saw the second coming of the super alliance. Just like in game Omicron, all the races in the galaxy teamed up to take out the apparent front runner. Unlike Omicron, the alliance held together and continued to pick off front runners until just three remained. The first race to suffer the wrath of the super alliance (and who served as the impetus for forming the alliance) was a race who had the misfortune to simultaneously attack three other races and win. This was a race who took advantage of the case dependent nature of Explorer and kept renaming his race after other race's with only capitalization differences. Apparently this was done in hopes of sowing confusion. This race finally settled on calling itself "judge" which led many races to (erroneously) believe that they were facing the GM himself. This too may have served to galvanize the alliance against him.

The game was called when the three remaining races petitioned for a cessation of hostilities.

                         CHARTER OF THE UNITED EMPIRES
    
   Game Omega
   Upon turn 68
   Somewhere in the Void
    

   The high Signatories (Bear, Hungriest Eater and Pooh) solemnly enter the 
   following
    

                             A G R E E M E N T


   in the name of their races (Bears, Hungry Eaters and Poohs):

   1. Herewith we formally declare eternal peace between our Empires to
      form the United Empire 'Hungry Bears, descendants of the holy Pooh'.
    
   2. We undertake helping each other to follow the spirit of this
      Agreement.
    

   Signed:         Bear            Hungriest Eater            Pooh

Normally alliance wins are not allowed in the highlander games but after 71 turns I was ready for the game to end as well.

                      Technology        Population Industry   HW
   Hungry Eaters  7.94 10.55 10.66 1.29  41708.36  19175.2    10
            Bear  8.00 10.15 11.00 1.00  36541.51  13713.7     8
            Pooh  6.66 10.00 10.00 1.00  32780.68  14951.3     7

This game started with 36 players in a 180x180 galaxy containing 288 planets and asteriods. Partial bombing percentages have been set to lower levels than players have been used to seeing in recent games.

This was a game of great courage and chilling hate, noble friendship and dirtiest treachery, bloody battles and catastrophic bombings.

Two of the races, Your and Other, used holes in the Galaxy Explorer engine to become "invisible" in the Galaxy Chart. This helped them to catch their neighbors unawares and establish an early and quite unnoticeable lead.

At the same time, the races Antagony and ThePeople entered a deadly clinch that nearly saw ThePeople gone until their ally Laire added his ever growing weight to the equation. Nevertheless, Antagony continued to pound both opponents with redoubled vigour. And only sudden stab in the back masterly executed by Other let the air out of Antagony's war pipes.

In the meantime, Your has been building up his three systems and started to pick up on one naive neighbor after another. His strikes increased in force and virility until the presumed friend Tufus attacked the whole of the eastern flank together with Hitchhiker.

Was it genius or sheer luck, but Your managed to lose only half as much as his opponents intended to bring down in the first strike, and started to regain initiative two turns later. Eventually, both Tufus and Hitchhiker were literally obliterated by combined forces of brothers in arms, Your and Other. The stage was set for the finale grande.

Then the fate struck. The game was suspended after turn 54 for an indefinite hiatus due to a server shutdown. Since the hiatus proved permanent and the data base appeared to have been irretrivably lost in Judge's attic, the game was called after more than one and a half years of waiting.

The six active races vying for control of the galaxy have reached the following intermediate standings:

                       Technology       Industry Population  HW
           Your  6.01  8.10 11.00  1.20   9989.3   29709.48  14
          Other  7.11  7.03  8.86  1.00   8431.0   25756.34  11
          Laire  7.87  6.92  9.86  1.00  12286.6   20676.59   7
      ThePeople  3.97  4.15  3.92  1.00   4775.5    8124.83   2
    Peacekeeper  4.25  5.25  9.44  1.00   3178.4    3178.39   1

The game of Issos started with 23 races in a galaxy of size 145. It ended after 62 incredibly tense turns. A mysterious (until very recently) engine error, also known as the "doom of Issos", broke the game off two turns too early. The server shutdown that came shortly afterwards didn't help the matters either.

Nevertheless, this is the ranking upon turn 62, when Ghost entered the second turn of the winning condition according to both victory criteria:

                HWs       Productivity         Power ranking
-------------------------------------------------------------
     Ghost   16 -> 16   73769.30 -> 16.57    1261.36 -> 15.12
  Warlords    4 ->  4   12158.02 ->  2.73     335.12 ->  4.02
Communists    3 ->  3   16003.85 ->  3.60     320.98 ->  3.85
      mice    0 ->  0     435.95 ->  0.1        0.74 ->  0.01

The last men standing agreed on the following fair distribution of the points: Ghost - 17; Warlords - 3; Communists - 3; mice - 0 (and a big lump of cheese for survival skills).

This game was remarkable in several respects. First, it was run on an external site, as all Explorer games afterwards. Second, it gathered for the last time the old hands - Nephilim, Ghost, Communists, Warlords, Plague - you name them all. Third, all players used their historic race names or easily discernible aliases. Fourth, Nephilim got killed by an ambitious youngster before the game was old. Finally, the tournament ended in a clear victory of one race, which somewhat restored the original pioneer spirit of this wonderful game.

This was the first game after a substantial pause caused by the absence of a publically accessible Galaxy Explorer server.

Once by a combination of persistence, good luck, and incredible generocity of Jan Olof Flink the server was found, the game was formed within two weeks and provided a platform for the newly introduced Explorer management extensions.

It started with 22 vigorous races in a galaxy of size 125 with some 300 celestial bodies to discover and conquer. The game was called after turn 59 when the Free_Radicals all but eliminated all other life forms, and simultaneously fulfiled both winning criteria for three turns in a row.

This is the final standing of the remaining races:

                       Technology       Industry Population  HW  Rating
  Free_Radicals 12.04 11.85 13.30  1.00  16920.9   38544.53  16  260.17
     SpaceSlime  5.07  4.32 11.38  1.00   7717.5    9988.86   2   51.80
         eannac  3.76  7.81  6.86  1.00   6131.0   12170.50   2   41.50
      ThePeople  6.27  4.66  4.57  1.00   2604.5    5722.22   2   16.73
        Witches  4.86  9.99  9.44  1.00   2408.7    2408.65   0   19.31
       Callibso  5.51  6.05  7.15  1.00     58.3     255.18   0    0.45

This was something totally new. This very special interest game started on January 21, 2003, and was unfolding for 40 turns before being called after turn 40, with MrCreosote elected the President of the Galaxy by the surviving races of Gunman and Trilarians.

Best of all, let the organizer of this event, Jan-Olof Flink, tell the story himself:

In early 2003 there will be a special Galaxy Explorer event!

It will be a PBEM version of the old "Master of Orion II" computer game,
using the Galaxy Explorer game engine as a base platform.

The game can be seen as a quite normal game of Galaxy Explorer, except for a
few "minor" changes to the initial setup...

These changes _will_ make the game _very_ different to play, so although
it will probably be fun and very challenging it will not count towards the
hall of fame. (Sorry dudes)

1. To simulate the difference between the races, all players will start
   the game with 2 turns of production of their own choice. This also means
   that there will be no StarForts around to indicate an idle player.
   The production must be specified to the Judge before Turn 0 is
   distributed, so you will not have the map available when deciding what
   to build.
   NOTE: This production will be built and ready when Turn 0 is sent out.
   So it is not the production for turn 1 and 2.

2. The homeplanet will not be fully populated, so there will be no colonists
   or full production available until turn 2.
   NOTE: The "free" two rounds of production are made at full production.

3. All races start with a set name, that may be changed by the player if he
   wants to. But there will be no Player_05 or such to encounter.

4. Although a highlandergame, trading between races will be possible, using
   asteroids to load / unload.

5. Global messages will never be turned on.

6. Space monsters will guard some of the good worlds out in the galaxy, and
   there will be one especially good planet (Orion) guarded by the ancient
   artefact-ship "The Guardian".

7. A hostile race from another dimension (The Antarans) sometimes emerge
   from hyperspace to attack poorly defended colonies. (Such events occur
   in a VERY fair way)

8. Every 10 Turns there will be an election for president of the galaxy.
   The two largest races will be eligible for election. Every player gets
   one vote / 1000 population and may choose to vote for either candidate
   or to abstain. The result as well as how the players voted will be
   broadcast on the Galactic News Network. (Although not how many votes
   each player had) So it will be hard to hide your size close to election
   day.
   This is a normal highlander game, but with this extra win-condition:
   If a player get two thirds of the votes for president he is declared
   winner and the game is over.
   NOTE: It is two thirds of the total number of votes, including the
   abstainers. You may (and are supposed to) vote for yourself.

9. All important events, monsters slain and such, will be broadcast by
   the Galactic News Net.

Upon turn 40, MrCreosote was elected the President of the Galaxy by the majority of survivors who longed for peace and stability - accidentally the main points of MrCreosote's election programme.

This is the final standing of the survivors:

Summary for MrCreosote
Technology:  5.10  4.00  4.00  1.00
Planets:     41
Population: 24502.17  (187.741)
Industry:    5891.82

Summary for Gunman
Technology:  5.07  4.30  4.55  1.00
Planets:     39
Population: 16874.46  (404.322)
Industry:    4296.32

Summary for Trilarians
Technology:  4.71  3.77  3.63  1.00
Planets:     19
Population: 13130.12  (368.799)
Industry:    4652.97

Summary for Trigos
Technology:  1.20  1.20  1.20  1.00
Planets:     1
Population: 120.47  (0)
Industry:    120.473

According to the precondition of the game, no points were awarded to the Hall of Fame. But it was fun anyway!

It was a completely blind affair. At the beginning of time, the nascent races knew neither the galaxy size, nor the number of races, nor the number of worlds - utterly nothing.

All they had was a home world and naive childish dreams of galactic dominance through merciless total extermination of the aliens, look whatever they like.

And so it went, until after turn 55 only three amigos remained standing, and one of them - WLs - held his friends and long time alies in awe by incredible industrial might. It is worth noting that no other life forms remained out there.

Since the game was won by industrial dominance, the 17 points of this game were assigned as follows:

                                             Effective   Points
                       Population  Industry  Production  Awarded
                  WLs    89,213     35,356     48,820     10.63
                Eniac    35,956      9,515     16,126      3.51
           Arachnoids    24,857      9,201     13,115      2.86

Again, this was a completely blind game. 18 races set out to conquer the galaxy consiting of 300 astronomical objects, knowing nothing but their own single home world.

The races hit the ground running, and some of them where lucky in capturing vacant positions or stumbling upon rookies with their pants down.

The first highlight happened at turn 13, when the Mohicans challenged the later winner Therminators by capturing his sweet world. The Mohicans missed that Therminators had produced a giant drone cutter just in the turn before Mohicans attacked his home world. In addition, Mohicans' forces were heavily undershielded and could be blown even by Therminators drone cutters. But the most important point was, that Therminators at this stage already had established their alliance with Eniac, an alliance that should last nearly to the end of the game. While Mohicans was attacking Therminators, Eniac quickly captured the undefended Mohicans system.

Between turns 30 and 36 TheKnightsWhoSayNee engaged Therminators and Eniac in a gloriuos battle, nearly missed eliminating Therminators' production base, but finally could not resist the joined attack of the two allies. An attempt to convince Eniac that his only chance for survival was in turning upon the Therminators failed.

In the meantime, Pendragon managed to grow to the leading race in the galaxy. He was already in the posession of three well developed system and outperformed any other race in the galaxy in production capacity.

Eniac and Therminators attacked Pendragon at turn 44. It turned out that Pendragon, despite having been warned and having an overwhelming production capacity, had not managed to build up capital fleets. Instead he seemed to be in favour of building bombers(one of them having mass 900!). Eniac and Therminators flooded the Pendragon system with a fleet of small units combined with a few capital fleets. Surprisingly, Pendragon simply gave up after the first massive attack. In the absence of any other real challenge the allies could quickly eliminate the remainders of Pendragon.

After the last remaining force, Oooze, was quickly eliminated, the game proceeded to the final show-down, where the allies had to fight each other. Only one can survive! This was one of the rules of the game.

At turn 63 Therminators launched a massive attack against his old friend Eniac. After two turns Eniac had to bow to the inevitable and the old Galaxy Explorer veteran Therminators won the game.

Therminators were awarded 18 points for this glorious victory that seemed impossible at times. Their skill, luck, and unbending will to survive should serve as an example to all who plays this noble game.