Clustered Starts?

[Stangle Khan]

Does anyone know if there is some sort of clustered start mechanic in the game? It seems like even when I'm playing on a Huge map (or even larger maps from YNAEMP) with fewer players than the base number for the size that 3-4 civs spawn right next to each other and then there are massive empty tracts of land.

Like in my last game I spawned sandwiched in between India and Sumeria. The AIs of Greece, France and the Aztecs all were crammed into a tiny peninsula as well. While there were massive empty areas of good lands in other areas of the maps. This is pretty much the norm as well.

If this is a feature and not just me having terrible luck does anyone know where it is located? And if it can be turned off?

 

[ELRACj]

I have noticed this as well. Last time game I played on small, every civ spawned on the southern hemisphere of the map.

 

[kampori]

Huge game with 4 players. I still had 2 of the other civs within 10 tiles of my capital. And 5 city states. Huge map and 4 civs, and I literally didn't have space for a 2nd city.

Ludicrous

 

[Red Menace]

I'm willing to bet that there's either a bug in the algorithm that chooses start locations, or they screwed some numbers up in said algorithm.

 

[teakbois]

I'm willing to bet that there's either a bug in the algorithm that chooses start locations, or they screwed some numbers up in said algorithm.

I'm betting its intentional. And I dont like it. Kind of takes the joy out of planning city locations when you realize most of your cities are going to be ones the AI founded first.

 

[contrasupra]

I find that I *either* get really crowded starts or really remote/lonely starts. It rarely seems to be well balanced with civs evenly spread about.

 

[Ramalhão]

In my last game as Pericles in a pangea tiny map, I had all three AIs capitals very close. Everyone was spawned in the western north part of the continent and I was forced to stay on the western side, while Japan and Rome blocked my expansion. As the game went on, I saw that the eastern part was mostly populated by barbarians. There is a lot of land to build new cities, but I just saw them trying to expand near to my cities. I had some wars to avoid their expansion and I filled all space I had.

In my opinion after some games, I think that AI can not deal with barbarians (in part because they send settlers without an army) and AI keeps building cities three tiles away one from another, even with a lot of free space available.

 

[gunnergoz]

I've had this happen about 80% of the time. The remainder I've had more room than I could use. Go figure. Crowded starts happen too often for my taste, however. I would like to see it fixed in the next patch. Firaxis, are you reading this?

 

[spherejoint]

There is a sort of bug in the algorithm, at least with Huge maps. As you may know, they are smaller than Civ 5 huge maps and yet contain the same number of Civs and city states. There are some solutions in this thread: http://forums.civfanatics.com/threa...vilization-part-of-civilization.602284/page-2. You can adjust how far away you start from other Civs and other city states in GlobalParameters.xml in the source files.