So, check this out, I was playing a game with a huge galaxy on suicidal with most things common, no tech trading, 5 races and no minor races. I made sure I DID NOT randomize intelligence and used max CPU.

I was owning in the beginning and taking no world under class 10 even got to about half way across the map with colony ships and my economy was just starting to boom after the end of the first year. "I cannot not believe I was doing so well", I though to myself. Kept expecting a flood of colonizers to come and snatch up all the rest of the planets almost every time I pressed the turn button but nothing ever came. So I checked on the other civilizations influence circles because I did not enable blind exploration.

My jaw dropped open. Half of them only had one world and the other half only had 2. WHAT THE…… was happening. Then the next turn another race contacted me and wanted to trade me techs.

OKAY so somehow my game went from suicidal to cakewalk…and turned on tech trading??????

I double checked the game setup defaults as they remain to the settings that are previously used. I thought I might have messed up and click some wrong buttons but no everything was as expected. On top of that to have both things changed at the same time?

So has anyone had this happen or what might you suggest I check before starting another suicidal game?

I am so confused.