I find it takes away some of the fun of exploration, unfortunately turning off staggered starts just reveals the AI locations right from turn 1.
I find it takes away some of the fun of exploration, unfortunately turning off staggered starts just reveals the AI locations right from turn 1.
"Other" AIs? I must conclude Terminators are among us and have been distracted from the killing John Connor thing by CivBE.
So far I'm ok with knowing where the others land... it makes sense that I'd know that much in the context of the game. Landing on a planet is going to be visible and noisy. In general though, I like to have things as customizable as possible. And having to greet everyone when nobody has anything to trade will probably get old quickly.
I suspect that some factions would just automatically be secretive just as a matter of course. So make the arrival notification somewhat randomized. Some sociable factions would be blasting fanfare of "We have arrived!", but some others would try to arrive in stealth mode. Those latter ones you won't learn about until you actually have a face-to-face encounter. (Which may be in the form of an ambush, all things considered.)Having an option on game start called something like "radio silence" which disabled the meeting of other civs until you met them on land would be nice as well.
I'm inclined to believe that most/all of the Colony expeditions were thinking they would be the ONLY human settlement on their chosen planet. Really. Just look at the many, many, many different destination choices that were available during setup. That _all 8_ factions sent their Colonies to this ONE planet is kind of freaky when you stop to think of it. Why would a Colony Director willingly choose to share a planet with any other Colony? I'm sure that they would have tried to be secretive about their destination, trying to avoid turning the journey into a 400 year race to see who has first dibs on what passes for prime real estate. Which turns out to have worked against them, because I'm sure the Directors would have chosen a different destination. "They're going there? Then it would be best if we went to this other place."Things like tech to find radio signals-- are they really going to bring that instead of extra seeds, or personal or survival gear.