Hey people. Welp, on the recommendation of a friend, I picked this game up and when I first started my first game as the Automatons ('cause they seemed pretty cool. Clockwork people in space!), I left all the settings on their defaults, made sure the tutorial was on and leap into the Endless Space universe.



After reading all the text walls the tutorial could throw at me, what struck me at first was how pretty the game is for such a small download. What struck me second was how easy the management seemed to be. No information about what was being produced and why was obscured, and I could control it just by rattling the tax slider back and forth. I decided to go for a low tax, high production/science approach...



Exploring the nearest star with a special exploration benefit flag on it, I got a free tech. Looking at the new system, I was struck by how many planets I could colonise with just a couple of easily researched techs and immediately quizzed by friend as to whether Infinite City (or Colony I guess in this case) Sprawl was the way to go in this game like it was back in the Civilization games from Civ III and earlier. Her response in the affirmative, I waited 'till my homeworld hit its pop cap, then geared it up for the production of many colony ships.



And then... this happened...







A United Empire scout ship blundered into my first colony's star system. I moved my scout back and built a combat ship (figuring I'd try hunting down the scout to see if there were some tutorial text walls for the combat... and indeed there were), but I'd hardly wrangled the two ships into place when suddenly my colony was blockaded by the monstrously powerful UE force you can see above. I could only build ships with about 125 military power each and could only squadron them in threes.



Basically, then, this was game over scarcely two dozen turns into the game.



Now I have to ask, is this supposed to happen? Because it seems to me like being able to spawn so close to highly aggressive AIs on the game's default settings would be a pretty big deterrent for new players trying to get into the game... If it's intentional, I'd have to question why, and if not, I'd have to question when it's going to be fixed...

It does happen but it depends on the size of the galaxy and number of empires. I have not had it happen to me like in your screen-shot. I see another thread with the issue your are describing. Try different galaxy and see if that makes a difference if you choose one that has Arms you can have small section for yourself.



DarkMeph

It was bad luck to have them right next to you and even worse for them to be UE. As stated above try messing around with the galaxy settings, especially, in your case, size, shape, and number of empires.

If you set the number of constellations to "many" you will almost never have someone spawn right next to you.



If for example you play a "4 arm-spiral galaxy" with 8 players you are guaranteed to share your arm of the galaxy with someone else.

I am pretty new also to ES and learned a couple things. Try dropping the difficulty down to newbie or easy until you get a feel for things. I would also limit it to 4 factions. And start out as the UE because it gives you a leg up also. Seems playing the other factions is a bit more difficult until you learn the limits and advantages to each one.

Try avoiding the disk galaxys, i once spawned connected to the craver homeworld, it was not fun.

Yap its about playing with the galaxy settings but mostly its just bad luck.