Hello fellow MoOers,

the red star lanes usually box me in with 1 other race in 6-8 star systems. I seem to need 120 - 150 turns to reach the technology to pass the red star lanes. This does not feel like a space exploration game to me, more like a prison break :). In multi player if you get boxed in with a really aggressive other human you will either die or be so far behind in tech and development that you have no chance to win. This needs fixing.

The red starlanes locking you in to a sector of space is gimmicky and just frustrating. I'd much rather see the red lanes working as wormholes from the previous installments, going long distances to reach the other side of the galaxy. Using them to lock you in just feels contrived.

About 5 hours played, some initial thoughts on the galaxies:

1. Orion should always be towards the center of the galaxy. The game I played, it was way out on an arm. That's contrary to the tradition of the series and also gives whatever race starts close to it a pretty good advantage down the line. The point of having it in the middle is to create a race between the factions and encourage conflict as everyone gets closer to the center of the map.

2. I think the "small" galaxy is still way too big. In MOO2, a small galaxy was 8 systems and built for a really fast game. I dunno exactly how many systems a small galaxy is now, but it's considerably larger. I don't always want to play a game lasting hours, so a smaller galaxy size is needed.

3. As many others have said, travel is way, way too slow, particularly given the size of the maps. It shouldn't be taking me 8 turns late game to reach an adjacent star system.

4. There needs to be more contrast to the map when zoomed all the way out. It gets really hard to see who owns what. There also seems to be some sort of coding system that isn't clearly explained - some systems have multiple colored rigs around them? What's that mean? That there's a fleet in system? That there's a military base? It's totally unclear right now. That's bad.

Random Seed generator rarely has anything lower than 100,000. Low seeds can be interesting too - I like seed 137 for example.

How do those work? Like they do in MoO2, with average being average (shocking, I know), "young" being "mineral rich" and "old" being "organic rich"?

Well, first I was not so font of this starlanes but now after about 200 turns I really like it some how. Even the issue with the red warpholes but in a multiplayer universe it might be better without them, so maybe it would be better if you can switch than on or off before starting a game?

You kinda can. The galaxy type controls if they are present in game. Try switching to or from spiral.

It is really just a nuisance to the player for the moment. I've found that the AI is more competitive without them present. If they are present, you are generally forced to fight another race early for control of what ever cluster you are in before expanding out to the rest of the galaxy through the unstable red warp points. Maybe this depends on seed and size of the empire. I'm not sure.

This reminds me, Galactic Civilisation2 has a brilliant feature (Ctrl+N) if you just created a game, but are not happy with the galaxy. It generates a new game with the same settings you chose before and puts you right at the starting spot.

This is from the last version (43.4.1.0.40425)
I think the monster placement needs some work. In one case (spiral medium galaxy) i had a space eel guarding a Gas Giant - not a very valuable planet.
In another game (circle medium galaxy - 281282 seed) my neighboring star system had an unguarded medium planet with Gaia Biome and Ultra-Rich mineral desposit.

In MoO2 at least space monsters were always present on high quality systems and if such a system was present in the game, it was almost always the case that it was guarded. Which both meant you did get a reward for defeating the monster (access to very good planets) and also that you had to work for high quality planets as they were all guarded.

was the system just a single gas giant? I ask because unlike Moo2 monsters move in-system so effectively guard at least 2 planets. I haven't seen them in more than a 2 planet system yet.

While some of these complaints seem valid there's an undercurrent of "I want to win they way I want to win" isn't any victory a good victory. If you have to fight through enemies to get to Orion maybe you should be trying a different victory condition. geometrically "fair" starting positions are boring but I suppose it's an easy option to add for those that want it. 2 civs should never have to share a single exit system. that really does need to be fixed if it hasn't been already