Empire Starting Positions |
I started up a game of SE5 1.13 in a large galaxy with medium AI's and equal spacing. I had 3 warp points out of my home system which was located very near the northwestern corner of the map. I found one race in an adjacent system, one two systems out through the second warp point and a third three systems out from the third war point. Four races stuck in a small section of the galactic map. I've wiped out two major AI's with the third major AI almost gone and in one area I've got clear running room down to the bottom of the western half. I found one minor AI just beyond the one major AI I'm finishing off, about half way across the map.
Why were there so many races so close to me while there's very few races spread throughout the vast remaining galaxy? Seems like equal spacing needs some work so there's not a gaggle of AI's sitting right on a human's doorstep set up for early destruction.
Omnius
Uh..what?
Are you playing the same SEIV as me? the one that loved to stick empires next door to each other? 
Another issue
Every time I've tried TCP/IP multiplayer (from 1.08 to now), the game hangs on the "Empire Placement" portion of setup. The game never actually starts.
Thought
We had that problem once awhile back and were able to work around it by not generating the map prior to starting the game. Every time we generated the map it seemed to hang. Definately not a "fix" but might help get a game going for you.
How many games?
How many games have you had this issue in? Two is NOT a statisticly signifigant number, IIRC you'd need at least 30 for it to actually mean anything statisticly 
-The Nitpicker and Irritator Par Excelance
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Randomness
Truly random distribution of other empire will statistically result in them being next door to you more often than most people would expect. I like this and if I walk over the near opposition I am not beyond creating a few more AI controlled empires to add to the fun. With SEIV I frequently allowed empires to start in the same system wor a good fight at the start
One of my favourite scenarios was with SEIV to start with one empire bold it up for a bit then add several new empires drop the original empire onto AI control and play one of the barbarians its quite a challenge as your out numbered out gunned and playing against an initial set up that’s as good as your own but bigger and with more tech. I haven’t done this with SEV yet but I am in the midst of my second proper game 1.17 stock and want to try the balance Mod with the next patch first
empire distribution
Ok, I have loaded up several test games using various number of ai players, and galaxy types and sizes, with the "See all quadrants" options enabled. And it so far seems to spread them reasonably well, about as much as SEIV, no it is not a perfectly even distribution. But only rarely have I found it to cram too many in one area. (This is with 1.17)
The tests are not conclusive yet, as I am too impatient to sit here for hours just loading games to get a proper statistical sample.
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Empire Placement needs Fixing
I started another game after my current 1.13 game went up in smoke thanks to the eternal processing bug. I started with no neutrals since they are a waste and low empires in a large quadrant. I started with all techs and 10 planets. I got two AI's and sure enough I found one of the AI's right next to me. I'd bet the other is far, far away. It seems that empire placement always places some AI's very close to the human while others get placed far away. There is no equal spacing. AI's placed too clsoe to humans get snuffed too early and makes the game less challenging. Please fix equal spacing for empire placement so there is equal spacing to start and all empires have some expansion room before the ineveitable meet and greet.
Omnius