What does it take to start alone on an island?

So I'm trying a Deity game for the first time. I'm going for one similar to the famous high level AWS games with Iroquois on a Standard map, arid, warm, Archipelago, 80% water, 5 billion years. I've restarted about 1000 2000 times already, because every time I finally end up on an island that will support more than four cities, it's shared by another AI. Is it really uncommon to start alone on an island for the map settings I've picked?

Hi,

it can be unnerving to get a good starting position sometimes.

With the world seed 33761780 (archipelago, 80% water, arid, cold, 4 million years old) I have landed on that huge seperated southern island without evil neighbors, but in dire need of either Astronomy or the Big Lighthouse.



But start positions are also dependend on your civ and those of the KI (for example seafaring civs allways start on the coast). With the Greeks I landed on the middle northern circle island in another attempt.

And your start position will also differ as I have 12 instead of 8 players on a standard map.

I too get a bit frustrated with having other Civs start on my island in an Archipelago map, so what I did was reduce the number of my opponents - from 16 to 11 on a Huge map. This works quite well and it's not to difficult to get your own island. One recently was massive with rivers aplenty as well, which is right at the difficult end of the random scale to get. I found smaller map sizes tend to be more problematic than the bigger map sizes.

Yeah... just knock your number opponents way down at the start.