When creating a game, I don't exactly know how the Civilization Proximity setting works. If I choose "Distant" with several sectors, the game puts me in the same sector with 11 of the 16 AI civs. And if I select "Far", then the game puts me in one sector alone, while the most of the AI civs end up next to each other in one of the other sectors, and there are multiple sectors which are empty. And such unbalanced distancing ruins the game from the very first turn.
What is your galaxy size setting? Sector setting? I always set my proximity to far but I also play with about 1/2 the Civs. Not sure how the game determines AI Civ proximity from each other. The nice thing about empty sectors is that it does allow you to pursue an expansionist strategy without ticking off other Civs......
Try using less Civs and see how that balances things. Then increase.
I'll try to experiment with different settings, and I've rewritten some numbers in the "StarClusterSizeDefs" file (decreased the value of "MaxNumStartingLocations" line for each type of cluster). I'm curious how this will work out.
Hey, thanks for sharing!We are working on this, and it would be very valuable to know, the exact settings you used (like als o the galaxy size).Also I am eager to hear, if your modifications change anything
Based on my experience with the base game and with Supernova, the "Distant" setting is broken in Supernova. I used it all the time in the base game because it placed the other races the way I liked. In Supernova it puts most of them in the same sector with me, which is what you have seen. I suggest never using it.
The "Far" setting works the way it is supposed to by making sure no other race is in the same sector as you. It may not work well in other aspects of setting up the game. I never used it except for testing a few times.
Changing the values in some of the files may not work. I modified many of them in the base game and got what I thought were better results. Similar changes in Supernova don't seem to do much good.
You also need to be aware that the game generally ignores the xml files. It takes too long for the game to read and compile all the xml files to use them, so it reads pre-compiled files. Changes you make may not be read. Regular modding is not available yet in Supernova, so it is hard to get changes to work.
Making changes can work if all the xml files are compiled so that the game will read them. That is what I do. I don't like giving information on how to do that because I worry it may lead to complaints about "bugs" in the game caused by someone doing a bad job of editing the files.
The way to do this has been reported by some Stardock employees, and a number of players are using the method to make changes, so I will report it here.
After making changes to the xml files, go to the game directory and find the folder "Tools". Open it and find the file "CompileAllData.bat". Run that batch file. It takes about 45 seconds on my computer to compile all the files. When it is finished, you can run GalCiv4 Supernova with your changes. Just be careful about reporting any bugs that you may have caused with your changes.
It can be difficult to keep track of what changes have been made to which files, so I keep copies of all changed files in another location. In case you want to start over, use Steam to verify your files. That will reset the game to the default values.
I tried medium and large galaxy sizes, with a few, several or many clusters. I usually play with 15-17 civs. In most cases, the game either puts me in a cluster alone, or I start in the same sector with 8-10 other civs.
The problem is that when I quit, I still don't know where exactly the other civs start because I can't see the whole map after retiring from game (conceding defeat). But earlier when I played some games, after a few hours expanding and exploring, there were multiple cases when I realized that 12 of the 16 civs are in the same sector next to each other, while I expanded happily in a nearly same-sized sector alone, and that is quite unbalanced.
There should be a solution where all civs start EQUALLY distant from one another, depending on the number and size of clusters.
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