Competing with an established interstellar power like the Starfish Republic meant comprehensive competition on every front, across multiple fields and at every level.
Both sides did everything they could to avoid direct military conflict, lest it escalate into an all-out war between two superpowers.
The Starfish Republic had spent over a century consolidating its influence in Southern the Milky Way, surrounding itself with numerous subject states that submitted to its hegemony.
Xi Yan, meanwhile, held firm in North the Milky Way. He first annexed several neighboring empires, then united a group of northern nations through shared interests. With that, two major military blocs formally took shape and began an all-out struggle for supremacy in military affairs, politics, economics, culture, and more.
Both sides sought dominance in every field, making conflict inevitable.
However, both humanity and the starfish deliberately overlooked military competition and instead began fighting each other through public-opinion offensives.
The starfish denounced the Human Empire's extreme authoritarianism, though their methods were essentially the same as those the United Nations of Earth had used back then.
The humans, meanwhile, tried every conceivable way to humiliate the starfish species. The term "canned starfish" spread across the entire galaxy at astonishing speed.
Competition in the cultural sphere was the fiercest, because it was the only arena in which every citizen could participate.
Humanity's advantages were on full display. Humans vastly outnumbered the starfish, and thanks to nanite virtualization, their consciousnesses could stay online around the clock to trade insults with them. With practically everyone thinking like a physicist, the humans could back their attacks with logic and evidence, usually roasting the starfish so thoroughly they could barely hold their heads up.
On the ideological front, both sides lavished praise on their own systems and schools of thought while hammering the other side.