The starting placement of civilizations is very anoying

what are the game settings you are using? setting it to scattered or tight star clusters or having abundant or few stars will have an affect on it.

It also has a tendency to stick the civs in corners, its especially bad on medium and smaller maps when you are playing with alot of civs, like 8 or 9 because there is not much room. Although I'm doing huge maps and in those games the civs are pretty well spread out. sometimes one or two end up near a coner or in a corner, but It is not happening to the extent where all of the civs are crammed right into one corner.

Sometimes though when you are in a corner, it could be not too bad as long as you aren't jammed too far into it and there are lots of planets around, plus you don't have to worry about ships coming in from behind you.

I already stated that I had planets and stars set to abundant. I will also add that habitable planets are set to common. The problem is, (every single game, yes it realy is every single game), on a HUGE map all of the civilizations are cramed into a stupid corner. And then one civilization, different every time, is on the outside of this corner cramming crap and colonizes the rest of the map while I have to plow my way through a bunch of stone age races, (there is not enought room to colonize planets to have any affect on research), just to meet some tech behometh who crunches my bones into powder for breakfast. And while I'm doing that I am a stupid stone age race myself because I got one freakin star system, my Homeworld. I have tried different setup settings but I always, always, get the same craping results. I actually don't have a problem on medium maps. But I only play against 5 other races. I would think that on a huge map, playing against 9 other races, there would be a lot of growing room. But instead the galaxy suffers from growing pains. I realy would like to play a game on a bigger map than medium but I guess my computer that has 2 Gigs of RAM just can't handle it. The alternative is the programmers may have decided they found a new definition for spacious placement on a freakin enormous grid! Its a good thing they aren't starting out as a cashier for a store,

"Let's see, you gave me $5.00 and you bought a $3.25 product ... that means I owe you $1,456,234.75 in change."

I never mess with the xml code for this reason. Can't mess something up by 'randomly' coding, and then blame the developers. I have this problem very rarely.

maybe a screenshot would help show just how crammed into a corner you are talking about.

also, a debug.err would be nice, so we can see just what the game is doing.

I never mess with the xml code for this reason. Can't mess something up by 'randomly' coding, and then blame the developers. I have this problem very rarely.

I HAVE NOT messed with the coding on this game. When i said I have done A LOT of random coding I was talking about ME doing MY own programming NOT related to this game. I have not repaired this game in any way. And everytime I play a 'game' on any map size above medium I get a galaxy with everyone cramed into a stupid corner. I just assumed that when they coded the setup process that they would have done it randomly. Placing races in corners is very silly to me because there can be 10 races in all (counting the player) and there is only 4 corners. Hmmm... I hope they figure that out soon.

Well... I start a new game for the 8th time in a row and suddenly I'm placed closer to the middle and no one is by me. However, that probably means the rest of the races are cramed in some corner. I guess I'll find out.

@uglycow...

Ever thought of researching planetary invasion really early and taking the homeworlds of those around you. If you can take a homeworld the AI has usually so few tax payers on their other colonized planets that they cannot recover.

Then it is just a matter of building transports rather than colony ships and all the best planets can be yours (together with a few enhancements prebuilt).

Seriously in a corner is my fav starting position, but my strategy is war, war, war I get very bored of trading/influence etc.

Having said all that you are right that random should be more random.

I play on gigantic maps, and I get a reasonable spread of placements.

I've never seen the problem discussed here. I've played all map sizes with several different settings of stars/planets. And the placement of all races is pretty random and reasonable.

Keep pressing ctrl-N until you get something you like. I occasionally get cramped up at the start but most of the time i find it to be quite balanced. maybe you're just extremely unlucky.

Sometimes you do get a streak of very similar-looking placements. It will happen occasionally, if only by pure chance.

Re-install see if this problem persists.

ctrl + n is your friend

I have to agree with the OP on this one. It's not the version though, its been that way since... well... uh GC1. Make the hugest galaxy ever, even with few opponents, some fartknocker alien civ will be in the next system over.


Ctrl-N is definitely your friend. I still wish to be able to somehow add/edit the init routines and fix it for good. like a simple if/then check, if starting placement = very close to another race then try again.

Pardon my ignorance, but what does ctrl+n do?

Pressing Control-N recreates a new galaxy with the same settings as your current one.

I have to agree with the OP on this one. It's not the version though, its been that way since... well... uh GC1. Make the hugest galaxy ever, even with few opponents, some fartknocker alien civ will be in the next system over. Ctrl-N is definitely your friend. I still wish to be able to somehow add/edit the init routines and fix it for good. like a simple if/then check, if starting placement = very close to another race then try again.

Try every game every race being close to eachother. That is what has been going on with me. I don't care about three races being my next system neighbors, but ALL of them! That's just freakin retarted. Also, it's kind of hard to research planetary invasion when it takes 37 turns to do so because I'm squished into one star system with every race surrounding me. I'd rather research some other stuff first like, weapons to blow up the enemy transports, and drives so I can maybe, hopefuly get one more freakin colony going. But since all the pre created races have tech up the wazoo when they start, except the brain dead 'Dominion of Korx' (I might have mispelled it's name wrong but who cares), who always get taked out first no matter what level their AI is set on. I usually end up keeping just to one or two freakin colonies and blowing as much stuff up as I can while I wait for research to finally get planetary invasion worked out. The problem is by the time I get transports that can carry "500" troops there's one civilization that has been placed in the middle of the map and they have transports that can carry "3000" troops, at least, and they freakin crap on all the other races, including me. They also have a soldiering ability of +100, (at least),by the time they say hi to me and my "500" carrying transport. So until this problem gets fixed there's really no point in playing. I guess that's ok though since I didn't have to pay money for this game anyway. And NO I did not pirate the game. I got a free copy from StarDock because I was with them when they were still doing the member plan of I pay about $63 a year and get everything that they sell for free for that year, plus stuff they have already released previously. There used to not be any "tokens for crap plan". All these old games from companies hoping to get at least some money out of it by letting stardock sell digital versions of their games. There's a reason "Supreme Ruler 2010", "ORB", "Hacker Elite", The "black gold" crap, and all the recent 'RPG' games on stardock aren't in stores. Or if they are they are selling for the outrageous price of $9.99. I've seen some manager specials at CompUSA for some of that crap for $1.99. Galactic Civilizations 2 is the only thing worth buying from Stardock and there is only enough room for a 10 civilization game if I play on a Gigantic size map. That's because there is more space between everyone on the freakin corner party. I suppose I just happened to have a membership at the right time. I was only a member for one year.

I've never seen this problem and i've played gigantic(9 opponents ), huge( 6 opponenets ), and large( 4 opponents) map games mostly at suicidal difficulty wuth normal for most galaxy settings. However I almost always feel like I'm crammed in some. I design colony ships with 2 impulse engines and 2 basic life support modules which give me the range and speed to colonize outward and i take whatever course the other civs let me go in. I almost always end up with at least my fair share of planets. And I buy 3 survey ships before I ever build a Colony ship.

Personnally it sounds to me like your exagerating a bit and may need to work on your opening strategy.

Personnally it sounds to me like your exagerating a bit and may need to work on your opening strategy.

And you would know because you watch me play, right? Or do you think you have ESP? I don't see another person around me and I doubt your stupid enough to think you have ESP so you REALY don't know what your talking about do you.

Another problem I found is ship components and customization options are not showing. I thought this was only a bug in the 1.3 beta. I'm using 1.2. I've scanned my computer for spyware and viruses and both came back negative. However, this only happens when I am designing ships off of the "Human" hulls and I have just recently created a custom race using that hull type. It happened before when I played the campaign a few days ago so maybe this bug with human hulls has been there all the time and I've just encountered it now by using that hull desing. I've tried what the post by cari elf told those in the 1.3 beta to do to correct the components and customizations from not showing but they are still hidden. Which makes the combat look crappy. Also does the option to let the ai use cpu intensive algorithms actually work? I've been using that and I just let the computer build up a force before I wipe all of them out. That was when I played on medium size maps. I don't have a problem with corner parties on those maps.

Ok, post your opening strategy in detail -- i've posted mine before.

And I did not say I know rather " it sounds to me " and " may need to " but very willing to be blunt if you'ld prefer.

I find the civilization placement on the maps to be very good and challenging and in no need of alteration. I'll leave it up to the Devs as to whether or not they think they can make it better.

Have you tried setting research to 100% on planet invasion?

What's your beginning strategy?