Map spawn location?

[Orion Pax]

Question:

Is there any way to control somewhat where one spawns on maps, or at least randomize it? I'm wondering how that works, since every time I play a pangea map I seem to start in a corner, like it's a default. Does it have to do with being in the first slot in the civ listing on the setup screen (custom game)?

It just gets a bit rote, starting with limited contact. Would love to be able to start more in the middle sometimes for more of a high engagement, "come at me bro," kind of game.

For kicks I loaded several pangea starts in a row just to see and used world builder - all were corner starts.

 

[f1rpo]

Could be due to the StartingLocPercent (Civ4HandicapInfos.xml) value of the difficulty level. E.g. the 70% on Emperor in a game with 10 players mean that the human player gets the 7th best starting location (to the extent that the game can figure out which locations are good). That said, on Standard-size Pangaea maps, I don't really see anyone starting in the center. The Jungle belt kind of blocks it.

 

[Ricci]

Just start on smart map or some other like it which lets you randomize starting location. I did start on middle ground on big continents, even pangea, on shuffle or standard map types though.