Well, our counterclockwise neighbors seem nice. I sign a bunch of deals with them (notably trading them some surplus food and energy for minerals to fuel my expansion)

I do engage in a bit of a race with them to claim the remaining territory between us.

But really, they seem like good people.

Then we meet more weird aliens. On the plus side, they’re far away from home.

On the minus side, they’re assholes.

They’re basically our polar opposites: they love warfare, and they love their myths and legends.

Realistically, we’re not going to go to war yet: there’s so much empty space between the two of us that it’s a far-future worry. But it absolutely means we need to start looking at our military options.