It depends on who you ask, but tbh I don’t think it matters. See my point here:
To apply that to this conversation, I don’t think preventing hyper-aggressive empires should be a goal. Rather, we should give their targets the means to counter-punch. We don’t do that well right now, and I think focusing on that would benefit the game more than manually moderating gameplay.
No, but that is a misrepresentation of what happens. Nobody can decide how you have to play the game. What they can do, is use tactics to limit your options, including killing you off.
That is allowed. That’s not to say we can’t improve how it works. We absolutely should, but in the interim it is better that we allow it than try to manually interfere.
If in a UA-galaxy, make allies and attack them back. If not, ask your family to help. It may not always go your way, but there’s nothing stopping you from trying.