You can, Steve said something about the possibilty of encountering alien races split between 2-3 empires on the same planet.
IIRC probability was somewhere in the 1-3% range tho...
And once i even got three empires on one planet.. Thats some "You know you play Aurora too much if you .. ".
Good to know. I am currently shipping troops there, so let's say a unification of these two is coming up. I am wondering though about the merging them later stuff. Let's see.
In other news, the unremarkable race has declared war while I was surveying their home planet. I had good relations (+50 or something) with them and the surveying didn't seem to bother them...until it suddenly did.
Now I am thinking if I should deal with them first and let the split-empirese be for now. Or just follow through with my initial plan, conquer them and then turn to the aggressive race.
Plus, my game got really intense really fast. The race with the 134.000 thermal signature planet seems to be way more advanced than I am. I have found a fleet with ships ranging from just a couple thousand of tons up to +25.000 tons, with a max speed of around 9.500 km/s! That, together with the huge thermal signature tells me that I am probably not ahead technology wise this time.
Everything got even more exciting when their fleet with about 25 ships just appeared in SOL! First they made a beeline to Pluto and after that directly towards Earth. I was torn between just keeping still and firing everything I got at them. But I only had 2/3 of my fleet in SOL at the time and out of the 6 carriers 3 were undergoing a refit, although I am not sure if that would have changed anything, as I probably could have used their CAG anyway.
So anyway, I didn't fire. I didn't know anything about their capabilities and if this was their only fleet or not. I am pretty sure with all the stuff I had in SOL I could have killed that fleet, but what then? I would be at war with a definitely capable opponent who knows where my main system is and who might have more than just one fleet of high tech ships. In addition to that I have no idea how they got to SOL that fast. They are more or less on the other side of the galaxy, but they probably used a connection to SOL or at least close to SOL that I haven't discovered.
In the end, they hovered over Earth for about 2 weeks and then just left. They are still in SOL and I am passively tracking them, but I can't really follow them because I have NO SHIP that is faster than they are.
So all research effort is now focussing on new propulsion technology. Strategy wise I am trying to find the connection that they are using to get to my home system. Once that is done, preparations for the biggest invason to date will start. I am just too curious to see what a 135.000 thermal contact world looks like...