AI empires always near start position.

[Cyspeth]

New to the game, trying to figure it all out. Watching guide videos and so forth. So please forgive me if this is covered somewhere but I haven't seen it mentioned.

Have done largest game map everytime (1k stars) to give myself lots of breathing room to learn, and everytime is multiple AI right near me. A game I was trying to get going yesterday was 5 NPC AI boxing me in from all sides. This time made it biggest system available (1k stars) and when setting up the game lowered the included NPC AI factions to only 15, and there are 2 right next to me and one has 5 planets.

Never seen a space game with such scope where every game has the exact same result. This has happened in all 5 games I've started. I assumed it was something I was doing wrong, but 1k stars and only 15 AI in the game it's a bit boggling to me to have 2 right on top of me from the start.

I'm going straight for colonization ships as suggested in guides here, sending my 3 start ships out to explore, but I'm lucky to get 1 planet before realizing i'm totally blocked in. Most the planets require tropical or arctic or some other research to colonize, which I haven't even seen as a option to research yet.

Am I missing something? Hopefully someone has a answer and it is a setting I can correct. I appreciate any help here.

[Mysticismer]

Yeah I've had the exact same thing happen.

I know that it is inevitable that you will find other life eventually, but to have the AI about five star systems away from your starting system everytime is just absolute nonsense.

I was hoping that it was more randomized instead of having a rule that the player must always be surrounded by other factions within a short distance by default.

Examples

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/261588921319190678/DDE0755AFCEF1C1E490C339A592827AF18E407AE/

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/261588921319197236/0E4C93F43C9DA5F01B4F4DA63F296227ECAB6CC5/

[vindicator]

It is deliberately done so player cant turtle without interaction/interrraption from AI empires.Usually you got 2-3 empires very close sometimes at 1 wormhole jump range from your capital world.

[RossDBrown]

Check the workshop - there's a mod that spreads empire starts out.

[Crisscross]

There's a mod for this. No Clustered Starts or something.

I also don't believe it is a "rule" to be surrounded. I've had numerous starts where I have 3-4 empires on one side, but completely open on the opposite side where I can expand freely. The default "rule" only seems to involve clustered spawn points, so there's a chance the player will be in the center of that cluster, but also a chance they'll be on the outer edges.

[Galactic Origins]

I usa a mod called No Clustered Starts

[Rendarg]

Unfortunately you are not missing something, it's really always like that. Empires start in clusters of 3-4 around the galaxy. I think the idea behind this is based on the theory about how life evolved here on Earth, we live in a relatively peaceful area of the milky way, where no big cosmic events like super novas have happened in the past hundred millions years. Gamma radiation from super novas would have killed all the simple lifeforms, the early bacteria and amoebae in the oceans. So it's a pretty good thing to live in a "boring" area of the galaxy, because otherwise there would be no intelligent life^^
But it also means that life will have only developed in these special areas of space around the galaxy, and therefore you have only a few spots in the galaxy where there is intelligent life. And in the case of this game, you have several of intelligent lifeforms right next to each other in these areas.

Now i remember what that theory was called: Galactic habitable zone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galactic_habitable_zone

I really think thats the reason why you have only certain spots with civilizations in this game.

[Cyspeth]

Thanks a ton for the answers. Will go download the No Clustered Starts mod.

Thanks a bunch all!

[Cool Beans]

I had the exact same problem, and this game does something special compared to other 4x games. Sometimes you have to play for 30 minutes or more before you realized how screwed you are by the empire spawns around you. I've taken it to extremes to avoid being boxed in such as reducing the empires to 1 per 100 stars, to no avail.

I had one game where the two empires sandwiching me, literally built a string of colonies that reached entirely around the borders of my own, completely boxing me in, with vast tracts of empty space on the other side.

At first I looked into the mod that helps spread the empires out, but the one I checked out removed fallen empires entirely. Didn't seem worth it based on the lose of that aspect of gameplay So i just learned to deal with it. I just hope they will put in a map option for empire spacing down the road. Doesn't seem like a difficult implimentation.

[Wompfbeere]

What bothers me most is that the random generation seems to recognize what you want to do.

Started with peaceful pacifists and wanted to form a big alliance, the game spawned 2 fanatic purgers next to me wich have -1000 oppinion on start wich whiped me in less then 20 years.

So i tried a militaristic empire, game spawns "peaceful" republics wich all hate me for beeing focused on military, in the end they formed a giant federation across half of the galaxie and wiped me in less the a year. :/

Maybe im just extremely unlucky, but its annoying.

[Desolator]

Originally posted by Rendarg:

Unfortunately you are not missing something, it's really always like that. Empires start in clusters of 3-4 around the galaxy. I think the idea behind this is based on the theory about how life evolved here on Earth, we live in a relatively peaceful area of the milky way, where no big cosmic events like super novas have happened in the past hundred millions years. Gamma radiation from super novas would have killed all the simple lifeforms, the early bacteria and amoebae in the oceans. So it's a pretty good thing to live in a "boring" area of the galaxy, because otherwise there would be no intelligent life^^
But it also means that life will have only developed in these special areas of space around the galaxy, and therefore you have only a few spots in the galaxy where there is intelligent life. And in the case of this game, you have several of intelligent lifeforms right next to each other in these areas.

Now i remember what that theory was called: Galactic habitable zone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galactic_habitable_zone

I really think thats the reason why you have only certain spots with civilizations in this game.

While that's a nice idea, you can start in a nebula, where cosmic activity is generally very high, so I feel the devs kinda missed the point they wanted to make :P