No Clustered Starts

◢ Uniform Empire Spread

On the Game Details screen, set Empire Placement to Clusters.

Updated for v4.5, if that is not the latest version please post in the comments! It is likely to continue working even if the launcher complains.

Some people report fixing issues by putting the mod at the top of the load order.

If you don't get good results using the mod in multiplayer, start the game in singleplayer and host the save.

◢ Other minor changes

This mod also makes the following 3 slight changes:

1. All galaxy shapes are enabled for small and tiny galaxies. No effort has been made to clean up the generation, so the shapes may be a bit messy.

2. Allows you to select 0 empires on the Game Details screen à la Singleplayer Game by oriramikad.

3. Allows you to select more than the standard number of empires and fallen empires.

These changes only affect the galaxy options screen. These changes were made to allow people to play with this mod despite compatibility issues with other mods that made these changes.

Additionally, the old map/galaxy/base.txt file is still in this mod. It might cause warnings in the Stellaris logs during startup but I have not seen it cause any problems, as the game no longer uses it as it was replaced by galaxy_shapes.txt. Leaving the file in makes the mod easily compatible with many more older versions of Stellaris without extra work by users.

◢ Updates

This mod is very likely to work for future patches without a mod update, so after a major patch (or a beta update) try using the mod even if the launcher yells at you for using an out-dated mod. Mod updates still continue to come if only for the compatibility flag. I might be slow and forgetful, though, so leave a comment.

There are old versions of the mod available for earlier versions of Stellaris:

• 1.4: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=950690151

• 1.9: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1309681830

• 2.0: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1392398852

• 2.1: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1584392090

• 3.5: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3417605879

• 3.7: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3417606448

• 3.14: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3696081945

• 4.3: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3745604369

I have made a version to work with Hydra's More Galaxy Shapes, it can be found here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3428784612 It is likely not up to date.

◢ How does it work

This mod functions by changing the cluster mechanic. It sets the number of clusters to 1, the center of this cluster to the center of the galaxy, and makes it almost as big as the galaxy. This puts all empires in the same cluster. The next thing it does is set the distance between empires much higher than normal to try to force the game to place empires as far apart as possible.

◢ Compatibility with other mods

If you have a mod that adds galaxy shapes and want them to be compatible with this mod, give me the names as they appear in the code (eg: spiral_3) and I will add them.

The mod is unlikely to be compatible with any mod that affects the galaxy map, including number of stars. Specifically, the mod is incompatible with any mod that edits the base galaxy shapes file (map/galaxy/galaxy_shapes.txt, this used to be map/galaxy/base.txt) or any of the galaxy size files (map/setup_scenarios). If you want to use an incompatible mod, I recommend making local edits to that other mod: explanation of how to do this can be found in the pinned discussions.

◢ Other mods that disable clustering

To help with this, here are a few mods that do what this mod does and more!

• PEST Multiplayer Spread aims to further improve empire spread primarily for multiplayer games. Hasn't been updated in a long time.

• Epic Galaxies offers galaxies with more stars, among other things. Hasn't been updated in a long time.

• Fallen Empires Expanded by Surfacerunner improves Fallen Empires. Hasn't been updated in a long time.

◢ A note on the screenshots

The screenshots featured above are almost but not perfectly accurate. The empires currently are not spread perfectly uniformly, but with some variance. This variance is much lower for elliptical galaxies than other shapes. This was a compromise to prevent gamebreaking bugs under some circumstances. This could be tweaked now that galaxy sizes are separately configured, but I have not done so. The screenshots are also from a time when borders were blobby circles instead of around individual stars.