I don't know if this had been mentioned before, and maybe I'm just extraordinarily unlucky, but why does the game insist on placing as many opponents as possible into the same solar system as my own starting planet?
I was trying to start a game with 3 suns and 3 opponents in hopes of having 1 enemy to overcome while expanding, and then have 2 well developed empires to take on at the other 2 stars, but no matter how much I tried, they always ended up right next to me. Meanwhile the rest of the galaxy was empty. It might as well not have been there in the first place.