9 Races, Tiny Galaxy, Rare habitables (though I stuck with abundant planets).

THAT is a rough game. It also demonstrates a gross imbalance in how alien races respond to you. Within 10 turns, I had four empires threatening me for money, even though their relations to me were Neutral, yet NOT ONE had made even the slightest progress towards Friendly even with trade relations and some deliberately thrown tech trades and gifts. Its like the game is deliberately weighted towards alien hostility.

Anyway, I got lucky, and the one system I was stuck with in my sector had two habitables, but more than one race got stuck with just their home system, and the rest had at least one habitable outside of their home system. Still got kicked by the Drengin hard because they went militant right out of the shotgun. That and having the Drath on the same border undergo an alignment reversal did NOT help matters an iota.

That looks like one I'll be keeping at for a while, its almost like knife fighting in phone booth.