I went to make a post a little while back to complain about empire placement. I was just tired starting out on the edge of the galaxy, often times in a corner. Rarely would I get would would appear to be a fair starting position. I had coped a tude and decided I WAS NOT GOING TO accept an edge start. if you start out closer to the center, you have all directions to explore (more anomalies), and more systems that might hold some sweetspots. But the kicker was I was irritated that it seemed any game start would be ok even if I lost over half of my influence radius to the edge of the map. Now I still think that is unbalancing. Just on tourisim alone, you start out handicapped against ANY opponent that has not had it's sphere of influence quartered or halfed. I was also tired of starting right next to someone or someones and not having any breathing room at all.
Off the to boards to vent my frustration, and post exactly how it should be done. i type out half a post and wanted to explain the obviously better method of race placement.
I made a large map grid representation using "#" for sectors and numbers for races. I study my grid for a second and start showing how you would best place 9 races and not have any radius loss.............. After about 15-20 min of "no, rats, grrr, na, oops" I decided it was not possible to have random placements with that number of races on that size map. One way to deal with it, is have race starting points on the map, and randomly place the races on those starts. A start sector would always have a race in it, even if you don't know what that race would be.
Oh well, doing it that way would get cheezed so bad I laughed again. Maybe rotate the position around, although every civ retained about the same spacing (breathing room). Ah hA! Back to the grid! Oh yeah, I couldn't get it balanced before and I am still messing with 9. (no map edge starts, 2 sec away. And no starts right next to another).
I deleted the first part of the post and went back to the game. If I want a better chance at a sweet start, I needed to use less than the max civs. The thought of playing against 9 on a tiny map (and getting a good start) made me actually laugh. I could seee someone taking 3 hours of time being stubborn about a start. It might not be an issue on gigantic maps (no interest in playing one of those on this computer).
About the only question remaining, was the order in which raced are placed. If the Terrans are always placed first, and a custom race is always placed last, then the custom race is not going to get the pick of the litter. I do think the humban play should get placed first. Less chance of an edge start, and the AI really don't mind a bad start (I asked them, they said "huh?").
So imo, I think the game should place human player first, then the AIs, using random race order. Aside from the first part I think that IS how it's set up. But I was not going to make a post whining because "I didn't get to go first". I started a game, played a few turns and quit.
And then the real kicker happened. I took a look inside the debug file from the start I had just done (took what ever it gave me as a start). I was shocked. The game had tried to start a galaxy several times and failed to initialize (iirc it was "failed to place planet" or "race"). Wow, the game really is trying it's best to give me at least a viable start. If an edge start is still what I get, I know it at least tried to put me in a decent start. It was not like I had assumed where the game goes 1> create map, 2> scatter AIs, 3> stick human in worst place possible.
I really do view edge starts in a different light now. I don't mind them. Heck stick me in a corner. Don't care. Use to love those single civ island starts in the civ series because I had a strategy for it and knew I could win most of the time. If I get my hat handed to me in a corner start game, it really would be silly to blame the loss just on starting location. I would have to screw up a lot more to lose a game and blaming the loss on the start would simply be denial that I had pooched the map all by myself.
I have no use for CTR-n now with the rare exception of a total corner start with no other systems around for 2 sectors. THAT, would be a non-viable start. Just getting a bad start is not enough to get me to make a new map.
my best fix idea for an edge/corner start fix:
It would be neat if the game looked at your starting position, and gave you an initial cash bonus for the civ radius that fall beyond the edge on the map. You would not hate an edge start if that start gave you an extra 500bc, or the corner start if you got an extra 1k. The little extra money would allow you to thrust towards center a bit easier and get yourself some breathing room. And by all means, give the AIs the same bump when they get a bad roll.
Yeah, I know. My standard choices are: common planets, common habital, occasional stars, large galaxy, 9 AI races.