Evil races not expanding

I had that bug too, but I don't think it's just an evil alignement thing.

In one of my sandbox games I had both the Drengin and the Korath Clan, both evil races. The first finished the game with just two planets in his native system, the latter expanded regularly. The only difference that I spotted was that the Korath had colonizable planets in the nearby sectors, while the Drengin did'nt have any suitable planet in the sorrounding areas: a whole sector of empty space, lots of non inhabitable planets and a couple of planets requiring advanced colozation methods was what they had in range.

I don't know if this is the same for all civs, but is seems that some races won't have initial expansion if they can't find any class 8 or better planet in the nearest sectors, even though they explore and search for asteroid and resources far away from their native solar system.

EDIT: maybe it's a metter of spaceship range? Can the initial colony ship design travel two sector away from the planet if there isn't anything more near?

Yes admittedly I have noticed this with other races from time to time too!

It varies in severity but often they will only colonise habitable planets near their starting systems and not venture any further out (even though high quality planets may be very close by). They eventually get completely surrounded by good and neutral races (often the Torians) and fall way behind in research and military. This appears to happen in pretty much every game I have been playing since updating to 2.02 (although from reading other posts its clear this has been an issue at least as far back as v1.96).

Stardock previously acknowledged that this was an issue and were going to address it(https://forums.galciv2.com/318189/page/3/#replies).

I've noticed that the issue has gone quiet over the last while but there dosen't seem to have been any sign of a fix. Its such a serious issue though that it shouldn't be forgotten about.

I've also today reported the problem to support@stardock.com and hope a fix can be provided as this really does ruin a significant part of sandbox games.

On the issue of range the ai dosen't appear to expand even with advanced range enhancing techs - they just appear to be broken!

Can someone from Stardock please reply to this post and update us on this issue?

I came up with a decent, yet fairly lame solution.  I make a custom map and give the evil races more colonies to start.  It doesn't make that much of a difference, but it helps.  For example, in my current game, I have played for a week or so, reached the end of the tech tree, and the Drengin still exist.  They are a minor player though.  They control maybe 5 sectors while the Torian control 1/5 of a huge map.  I never noticed until I read this post...the good races dominate no matter how tough I make their start.  Has anyone tried messing with the numbers for the evil races?  I never experimented with the 300% computer usage, etc. 

Yeah what you've described is a classic example of an evil race's behaviour!

I've tried the max CPU settings for evil races however this dosen't seem to solve the problem.

One solution I've been tinkering with is setting the personality of the evil races to something like Krynn or Torian. This appears to largely solve the slow/non-existant expansion problem but I'm still experimenting. I don't believe this will give a true Drengin/Korath/Yor ai experience though.

This is an issue that needs to be formally fixed though as we shouldn't have to stop using certain ai personality types just to make evil races playable!

My problem is kinda the opposite. Some of the good races don't expand. Splink appears to be correct about the 'AI Personality' affecting it.

Drengin, Yor and Korath - Expand just fine. They do get a good territory, about 15-20 planets on a huge map.

Human, Drath, Thal and Krynn - Super expanders. They normally end up with a good 1/6 to 1/4 of the map, about 25-45 on a huge map.

Torian and Iconian -  Decent/super expanders... they end up with a huge territory, often colonizing worlds in the middle of other race's territories. Normally about 15-45 planets, depending on how close they are to the 'Human/Thal' personality types.

Arcean, Altarian and Korx - Lucky if they get more than 10-15 worlds on a huge map. I've had instances where they only colonize the other planet in their star system and that's it. Plus they never have any credits when I go to trade with them.

Well, I played an 8 hour session on Saturday.  I tried adjusting the settings.  I maxed out computer usage and I moved the Drengin from max evil to half way between evil and neutral.  Finally, It made all the difference.  They dominated the game.  They had twice as many systems as any other race, ( the closest second was the Yor who I also used this approach with.)  Early on I established an economic treaty with them and recieved 2500 BC each turn.  I'm sure this is old news to most of you, but this was by far the most I have ever encountered.  Anyway, around hour 6,( I always play on the largest map,) they decided I was of no further service, broke the treaty and entered my space with 7 fleets of 8-14 ships.  I was destroyed in less than 2 years.  Although I was upset as this was a very enjoyable game to have turn out as it did, I was thrilled as I seem to have discovered how to balance the play of evil races.

Hey I'm glad you got a good result!

I tried the same thing but unfortunately it made no difference. The best solution I've tested so far is to set the Drengin/Yor/Korath to Torian personality type. They make a real effort to expand then and do reasonably well but still end up being a bit of a push over.

Support@stardock.com have said they'll pass on the issue to the developers so nothing firm there.

I've also noticed another issue thats been raised in other recent posts. The ai seems to have an issue with creating a decent military in many games. Its very reluctant to research weapons/defence technology but when it comes under attack seems to create a reasonable military force in a matter of weeks. I have to say that so far its ship designs have been quite primitive in terms of their offensive/defensive capabilities compared to custom ones I have made (even late in the game).

Like I said this has also been raised in other recent posts and seems to relate to a problem with the ai not choosing to research what it perceives as expensive military techs.