No start location RNG

[Bitterman]

My very first comment on Steam :)
So, me and my wife have been playing AoW together for, well, ages. But now after purchasing AoW4 I have noticed something annoying. We like to play in classic hot-seat teams mode, and every time I create a new map (and I mean EVERY TIME!) we spawn smack in the middle of the map. I have been re-rolling the start for about three and a half hours now and must be into my 40th or 50th map, and we are still... in... the... centre... of... the... map... every... frigging... time...
There is no randomness, the computer just put you in the middle and you are surrounded from the start. Had this been AoW3, that would have been fun, since we ran that on Emperor mode in the end anyway, but it would be fun to begin with a softer start during a new game.
So, any way to change this?

[A.J]

It usually looks like you're in the center, but you're actually center-top, center, center-left, center right and so forth. I thought I was in the center in the last Brutal game I played with 5 players but it turns out I was center-top.

[Astasia]

I've started 4 games since finishing the campaign, the first one I was on the bottom edge of the map. Second one I was on the left edge of the map. Third one I was in the bottom left corner almost touching the map borders with my starting city. Fourth one I was center right.

There may be some map features or settings that are encouraging your starting point. I tend to play with starting distance set to distant. Though all 4 maps were wildly different custom maps I made. The one that had me closest to the center of the map was an islands map (which BTW is more like a webbed river delta than an archipelago).

[CoffeeBro]

Yeah, I usually start close-ish to the edge. But yeah, not as close to the edge as I would like. Wish this could be changed in an update.

[Cellar_Cat]

I've started in the exact middle only one time. Was actually nice, all the gold tier wonders seem to congregate there...

Mostly I appear randomly around the edges.

[messlinger76]

I've only been in the center too. Not sure how people are getting on the edge. But I'm also just doing continents, 8 AI, Far distance.

[WolfWhiteFire]

In the second story realm, something I noticed is that the map seemed to start smaller and expand as you explore. So at the start of that realm, it looked really tiny, explored a bit and it got bigger, and so on.

So it could be that you aren't actually in the center, but it initially appears as if you are then you explore and the map expands as you do so.

Could be completely wrong about this though, this is just one observation I made that could easily be wrong.

EDIT: Tested it by going to my most recent save then the start of the map. Seems like you can see the full map from the start if you zoom out enough, but the minimap starts out small and with you roughly at the center. At least it showed me around the center at the start of this realm.

So if you were looking at the minimap to judge, it might look like you are around the center of the map every single time. If you zoom out enough though you can see where you actually are.

Not sure if that is what happened in your case though, could just be weird RNG.

[Blanch Warren]

It's reasonable for the developers to have assumed that allies would want to be near eachother. Apart from making the suggestion to them, you could jinx it by starting as enemies, send a unit to meet eachother, and then ally. Of course I'm not actually familiar with the map mode in question whether this would suit your purposes.