Major Problem with Start Location of Colonies!

You could always take it as a challange to bust your way out of the crowded section and overcome the 2 power houses. I'm looking for a challange, not a easy time at it. But that's just me.

I wouldn't call this is a "major" problem it can be mildly annoying at times. The thing is you can't always be the most powerful and advantaged player in the game, sometimes you have to play the underdog (which can be fun). Since I play on gigantic maps that sometimes take a week to finish this doesn't bother me...because if you're three days into a game and you finally are getting a sense for the entire galaxy and you realize your starting position sucked you just bite the bullet and play it out.

That being said it would be nice to be able to make custom maps where you could decide the position and conditions of everything, hopefully this will come in the future.

It doesn't really bother me at all. I like it that way actually, it gives me more aof a challenge. I go through too many games where I have complete control of the game very early, and that is boring. I like having at least one strong opponent to fight against. (I hear that Brad will make the AI better in 1.1, so I can't wait!)

You guys make it sound like the biggest problem is when it happens to the player, which is where I'd disagree. The biggest problem is that it happens to the AI players, essentially making the game easier because it essentially removes players from the game.

I had one game where four computer players were stuck in corners and had nowhere to expand due to absolutely horrid starting positions and the star mapping. This lead to there only being fie computer players to deal with in the colonizing rush; which increased the number of planets I got, which made the game a cakewalk.

And that's the major problem. To get a 'fair' game, you have to keep generating a new map.. and waiting for it to not generate a bad collection of starting positions.

Its tedious and time consuming. More to the point, its not fun, and is, imo, the single largest flaw in this game.

If I setup a game with nine computer players, I expect o actually have to go against nine, not five, six, seven, or eight, or whatever, based on how the random seeding distributes us.

Well, I actually enjoy the challenge. Every game is a different game - one of the many targets the producers wish to make!

Use scattered galaxies, et voilà, the problem is gone.

It's not a bug.

At first, I used the control&n to generate a nice cosy little galaxy for myself with room to expand and close off my borders. I moved up to intelligent, then one day I just went on in and played it as it was. The result was that its a damn sight tougher to play without having set yourself up that cosy little niche at the start..... this incidentally also makes the game a LOT more fun as there is constant military action practically from the moment you first meet the Yor/Drengin (if you are good) or the Altarians (if you are evil). This further brings in the strength of starbases, of developing weapons techs amidst the economy/influence ones further and further balancing the game.

Ultimately I agree though, the capacity to make some choices in the startup screen about how civs are distributed would help to let people play the kind of game they want to.

Sometimes I wonder if most of the threads posted here about how easy the game is comes from this control&n function which is all too easy to exploit.

i wish the start positions were a bit more spread out too. I usually just stick with what I've got, I was playing as Humans in one of my last games where the Drengin were stuck in a corner with the Yor and Altarians right next to them....I was on a large map. Over the course of the game they never even got out of their home system, so after destroying the Drath, Torian, Yor and Altarians the Drengin were a piece of cake. My point is that I'd be nice if all the civs had the ability to get at lest a few systems otherwise you may as well not have them in the game.

As I understand it, the system was purposefully made to produce truly random starts, rather than forcing a reasonably balanced start. If you want a game where everyone is dealt the same hand, you can hit ctrl-N a few times until you see what you like - this only takes a minute or two. If the game forced relatively equal starts, you wouldn't have the option of playing an unbalanced game (which can be a lot of fun).

The original poster should understand that the world just ain't fair. Though I do agree that sometimes the situations are far to extreme. I tend to play with very few star systems en few planets. Because I find that you will have to rely on tactics and strategy more because you can't overpower with alot of planets. But then it is annoying when all Civs start close to each other with no planets at all and two or three start in lonely corners with most of all the planets. I am getting used to it though!

luck of the draw my man.. luck of the draw...
Besides, you can always play a CUSTOM map where things are predefined.