One thing I would like to see: Start on an OWN continent

[tzeraph]

I often play with a huge map and at most 3 more civs. I do this to have as much time to develop my civ on my own. I know I would like a game mode that pushes other civs as far away from me as possible.

[Oaks]

This is a topic that appears from time to time. It seems there is some sort of algorithm that ensures AI Civs always start close to the player, presumably to make it more difficult perhaps.

[omnius]

I agree that AI civs and city states start too close to my civ. I'd also like more Lebensraum to develop my civ with having interference from the civs and city states early on. I wonder if there's an algorithm for that? I don't see it as making it more difficult, just more annoying.

[plaguepenguin]

I don't know of any mods that increase distance between civs, but that can be done in the unmodded game. You're already using the lower density you can choose when creating a new game.

In addition to lower density of civs and city states, the other way to delay contact with them is to put ocean between your start and theirs. To almost completely guarantee no contact at all with another civ until cartography is unlocked, you have to go pretty extreme on the low density, say, standard size continents map with only one other civ. That map usually creates approx 2.5 land masses separated by ocean tiles, two big ones, and then often a lesser land mass in addition to the two. Play with any more civs and you often will luck into a land mass of your own and be unbothered until the Renaissance, but it's less and less likely the more other civs you let in.

Of course to make this work you have to exclude Kupe and other civs that cross ocean tiles before cartography. Leif Erickson can be a problem as well, but he's one reason you use continents rather than archipelago for this purpose, as the other civ is less likely to build harbors on a continents map.

[grognardgary]

Of course there is the option of simply exterminating the civs on your continent. on a continents map. Fairly simple in ancient era on a huge continents map Pretty much guarantees a golden age in classical and gives you a good shot at one in medieval.

[Schaffner]

Might be boring to always play the same map, but you can pick one of the pre-created maps (world, europe, asia) with true start locations.
On world map you could pick USA for example and make the remaining civs only ones from Europe, Africa or Asia.

[Heau]

AFAIK, there's a min distance between spawn locations in map scripts. The CPL MP community tweaked those numbers a little to reduce spawn variance in multiplayer or to help make certain maps deliberately more sim-y.

I wouldn't be surprised that there's already a map-mod that would give you one or a set of map scripts that significantly improve your odds of getting your desired results which reducing #civs alone doesn't do.

The downside is if say you doubled the spawn distance in the map script, then if you returned to playing "normal number of civs for the map size", your maps could fail to load or take forever to try to find suitable spawn locations and possibly break out into some dreadfully miserable spawn locations as a result of trying to enforce your min spawn distance change. i.e. its something you'd probably have to turn on/off in a mod list if you wanted to change your own game settings.

*Edit* Actually I checked the Better Balanced Start mod files real quick and they seem to have added a "minimum distance slider". So it's possible the MP mod adds an extra option in your game creation UI to edit this based on your #civ pick.

*Edit #2* They did add a customizable minimum distance with the mod - at the game creation stage. "Standard" uses default map script (e.g. for pangea its 9 in the base game and 11 with BBS), but customizable for the player to anything from 6 to 24 tiles minimum distance between players. So I suggest you check out the "Better Balanced Start" mod. The mod is mostly dedicated to giving spawn locations of similar quality between players. Although its possible that the mod includes the tile yield rebalances used by the MP community which you may not like. I forget if tile yield changes are part of BBS or BBG.

The MP tile rebalance does things like nerfing spice from 4/2 or 3/3 to 4/1/1 or 3/2/1 (basically trades 1 prod for 1 gold which is a big nerf) and buffing mercury for +1 food baseline(yes I know its not the most logical change since mercury is poison but it was needed for spawn balance purposes).