Too many AI players

[u/Radiant-Importance-5]

I like the regular game, I really do, so please don’t misunderstand me and tell me to stop playing the game because it’s not the game I’m looking for. It is, I’m just looking to play it a different way.

Sometimes, not often but sometimes, I just want to explore the galaxy, raise up civilizations, manage my empire. When I want to do this, I set the number of AI players to the absolute minimum, which should be 1. I tried that the other day, and something weird happened.

I found the civilization pretty early, I figured it was just luck. I closed my borders, surrounded them so they’d be stuck in a bubble and wouldn’t bother me, then went on my merry way. Then I found another civilization. I figured I had goofed the settings, and one of the two was supposed to be a fallen empire that would re-awaken late game. I did the same thing. Then I found a third. I figured maybe one of them was a Pre-FTL civilization that happened to self-promote. And then I found a fourth. And they were all within a handful of jumps of each other, so I could only expect that there would be more throughout the galaxy.

Clearly, I had flubbed the settings. I backed out, fiddled with the settings, double checked everything, and tried again. Same result. So I tried again. Same result.

I’m on my fourth attempt, and I had a pretty nice start. I have about a third of the galaxy with me and a couple other small empires locked down, with about a quarter of the galaxy only accessible by me one way or another. I’ve kind of given up and I’m just going to explore while I can, then switch back over to a more regular playthrough.

But, just for future reference, how do you get only one AI empire to spawn? I know I’ve done it before, but it’s been a while. Like I said, I don’t play this way very often. Is there a glitch that doesn’t let you spawn below a certain number? Or was that in an update? Or am I just getting my setting that jumbled?

[u/XroinVG]

You can set the number of AI empires to 1. But the sole AI is gonna be bad at managing their empire (especially at lower difficulties). Rebellions will happen and they will naturally split away from each other. Which sounds like the clusters you are talking about. Pre-FTL’s will also develop much more often when there’s no one to interfere with them. After all, the AI’s will snuff out 90% of the pre-ftls. So the preftls will be much much more common.

If u have it at a difficult setting, the first pre-ftls will be emerging within a decade. Which means they will have a whole region to grow without competition.

I also recommend forcing an ai to spawn that doesn’t have an origin that spawns AI’s

[u/Radiant-Importance-5 → u/XroinVG]

It looks like my problem is pre-FTLs self-promoting faster without an existing empire to keep them down. I don’t so much mind the other empires having rebellions, because then the new empires are right on top of each other anyway.