With the intention of seeing how the AI set themselves up in the beginning I have started 7 games since the patches, and I notice something odd about the galaxy editor:
- To my understanding it is improved to pace out the starting locations a little bit. Indeed it does that ... but only for the 3 default settings. Out of the 7 games that I started.
+ 5 games were with the Customize galaxy: 7-9 players, 35-40 planets, 8-10 systems. The game still pretty much put most of us together. I still started out with 2-4 other players, in fact, I think it put us even closer then before the patch. In all 5 games I started out with 2 other AI's capital with only 2 jump from my capital, and in some game another AI's capital 1 more jump away. And I notice another thing, it seems it put all of us on one side of the system and leave the other side of the system empty.
+ 2 games with Large/Medium galaxy: 5-9 players, 7-15 planets, 3-5 systems. Take the Large Galaxy for example, with same amount of players, smaller size but we're paced out very nicely. I only share the system with one AI and we're located at 2 opposite edges of the system.
- Also it seems the AI is a lot more agressive with their early exploration, and they have quite a fleet with their flag ship instead of a loner, so it's a good thing. Except that when we're close to each other these fleet of doom locked everyone into a death match situation from the get go. 2 out of the 5 games with custom galaxy things get ugly real fast, within a few minutes that game begin we already started blasting away each other capital planet and colony since at this state there is no defense against such a fleet ... unless the one's own fleet is in the system.
- These agressive fleet of doom exploration also take out the pirate pretty quickly, before the patch I almost always have to deal with pirate myself whenever I reach a new planet, but now sometime after 3 consecutive jump I still find empty sectors thank to the AI exploration. That's ok except that most of these sectors like I said, "empty". The AI is not half as aggressive in expansion as they are in exploration. Also it seems they colonize by random, not by priority. I jumped into the capital of one AI and I saw it sent the colony ship toward another sector while there is an empty Ice Planet (it already cleared that planet) right next to it. And it took them a VERY long time to colonize a second sector. understandable because they do have big fleet, but it seems right now they priority wipe everyone out rather then develop their empire.
