I feel like this is a dumb question, but I can't find it in the book. What exactly defines a tie condition for a game? My assumption is that neither player has achieved a win and therefore the game is a tie.

Specifically, today I had a game where one player had captured 4 planets and the other player had captured 3 planets. Neither player had sufficient symbols to achieve a win. Both players had a living warlord at the game's end. I assume this constitutes a tie.

Does the fact that one player had captured more planets than the other have any bearing whatsoever as to the final outcome of the game?

In your example, the player who LAST added a planet to his score area won the game.

in order for a tie to occur, both players must score zero planets for the entire game (incredibly unlikely, but possible in some niche circumstances).

Someone wanna drop a RR page number in here? I hate doing this from work where I don't have convenient access.

RRG, Winning The Game, pg 16.

Thank you so much. I looked in the RRG under "Tie". It didn't occur to me to look under "Winning the Game" to find the definition of a tie.

Note that in a tournament game that goes to time limit (which is different from playing all 7 rounds without someone reaching a win condition), you do count planets and/or symbols to determine who gets a "modified win/loss" for the purpose of tournament scores.