Trani - Tick 384 - The game is won

I won the game! 

Updates slowed towards the end but the long march from 50 to 80 stars is the most boring.

Final thoughts

• This was probably the most 'boring' 8 player game I've played. If you look at my day 0 strategy I more or less just followed that and that means I never got effectively challenged. 
• AFKs and starting position neutered the two experienced players (Dust and Denizen) that could have most effectively challenged me and whilst Ktocs position had latent potential when Dust quit, I got in there first.
• Ktoc might have won this game if he had negotiated more evenly over the Visya wormhole. I was initially prepared to cede this and only dug in when he was very demanding. I underestimated the importance of it and I should never have negotiated it.
• The war against Ktoc was correct strategically but took so long. Too long. I need to look back at this and assess what happened. A potential mistake was attacking when I did and not allowing Ktoc to send his ships at Darrow first, but if I'd let him take Dusts stars I'd have struggled so its delicate.
• Denizen did well to survive, and I think this was a sloppy war from Anita/Gilgamesz. With the ship count differences this should have been easy.
• Gilgamesz did some successful expansion but my message to them would be, be more aggressive and cut throat next time. You had the potential to win this by attacking Anita OR throwing your full weight into Denizen
• Inerz also suffered from being a bit too passive. They did launch a big attack on Anita successfully thru their wormhole but never really went further even when Gilgamesz went afk.
• Would love to know why Darrow never spoke. Darrow being unreachable diplomatically probably helped me a lot. He was a potential strengthening ally for inerz or ktoc.
• Whilst i schemed against Anita most of the game (mostly unnecesarily) it wasnt personal but strategic. I felt Anita held the keys to a Gilgamesz win. Anita was quiet but friendly via chat. 
• I hope Gilgamesz would agree I was a good ally until he quit. Did i do some low level scheming? Sure. But I never attacked or considered attacking him even when I knew his east flank was weak and always intended to ensure he finished first or second.

All in all, a bit of a cruise - but that is how I like my games to go. I'm not going to make things more difficult for myself, but I'd have been ready and acted swiftly if required.