Distribution of races at start?

[r9hearts]

I haven't played in a while, but I don't remember my starting area being so crowded before Universe. Maybe I am just getting unlucky, but in my last 4-5 starts I always have two to three other races starting in sectors adjacent to me. There are usually several more not far beyond that, meaning that half or more of the twelve starting races are clustered in a small area of the overall map. Most of these were with an Irregular map. I tried one with dense clusters figuring that each race would get its own starting cluster, but I again ended up with two other races in my starting area and had three others in the periphery. This meant that six of the twelve races were in or around one of the eleven clusters.

Would it be possible, via a mod or otherwise, to have starting areas better distributed? Or am I just having bad luck with this? Having these close starts essentially forces an early series of wars lest I get left far behind in colonization. While early wars can be entertaining, it would be nice to have the option to build up a bit before running into my neighbors - just for a change of pace if nothing else.

[Redan]

I concur. It is hard to customize play in this version of the game. Not as satisfying as the previous versions. Really an inexplicable step backwards.

[Tree Dog]

ORIGINAL: Redan

I concur. It is hard to customize play in this version of the game. Not as satisfying as the previous versions. Really an inexplicable step backwards.

You know you can click "custom game" in the bottom, right?
Now you can even set what sector the other empires spawn in.

[pycco]

no way thats so cool, thanks for informing me

[Redan]

Tree Dog, thank you. I have not seen a customize button yet. I don't mean to dis the game, which I love, and I will look more closely at the unfamiliar set up areas...again, thank you.

[Castinar]

Caught that little tidbit in Larry's Lets Play I think...episode one, the setup video, highlighted that. It can be found on the other empires page setup, one of the dropdowns

[r9hearts]

Thanks all who answered, exploring those options does help a bit. I've been playing around with those settings, but haven't found a setup I am completely happy with. The issue seems to be that all starting locations are based upon distance from the player and don't take into account proximity to other NPEs (non-player empires). This creates problematic starts for many of the races as a number can get clustered together while a few have wide open ares to explore and colonize. This is particularly an issue on clustered galaxies as this usually means one or more empires start in the middle of nowhere with few stars around them. So far, assuming an irregular galaxy with 700 stars and eleven other empires, the best distribution I have found is to make one empire set to near, two to average, and the rest to distant. This still tends to end up with a couple other empires being close neighbors, but is better than the default of all being random from me.

If it is possible, I think a way to even the start out a bit better (assuming this is desirable for anyone besides me) would be to have an option to have all empires start at no less than average distance from any other empire, including the player. Even better, if this algorithm could try and avoid starting any empire in a sector with less than 5-6 stars that would be ideal. Anyway, this is a minor suggestion for an already very fun game.

P.S. If Erik is reading this I think I found a very minor bug. Normally when you start a custom game your previous settings will be auto-populated. When setting up the distance of the empires, the first empire always returns to "Distant" upon the next custom start - the others all seem to retain whatever you specified the previous time.