ouch... that explains it...

I have tried the fix suggested by the OP and it works very well.  Thanks!

I also noticed that if I wanted to save the old def file, I needed to move it out of its current directory, or the game would think that various things are defined twice.

This report led to us finding out a deeper issue and thus making the appropriate changes needed. I am happy to say that those changes made it into patch one and I sincerely hope help with the issue.

Patch 1 post: https://forums.galciv3.com/462989/page/1/#3534099

*checks MapSetupDefs*

Well looks different here. 

The new values are:

None: 10.0 

Rare: 2.0

Uncommon: 1.5

Occasional: 1.0

Common: 0.75

Abundant: 0.50

Yessss.  I think that will make a difference.

There's other values in there as well for things like stars, nebula asteroids, and well, just about everything that gets thrown on the map.

I personally find abundant planets to make for a ridiculously huge empire and a lot of required planet management.  That being said I'm glad it got fixed.

@BuckGodot:   Instead of abundant/abundant/abundant they should just call it Insane Level 4.    Like to see your result, perhaps you could post it sometime next year?!

I started a game on excessive with abundant habitable and I got lots of planets but not as many multiple planet systems as the screen shot. Luck of the draw I guess

One thing that may or may not be a problem, I am not a fan of extreme planets as they have appeared so far. I chose rare for extremes hoping to see how the patch had worked on them. Believe me they are not rare, and most of them are radioactive.

Can anyone confirm whether or not the barren planet bug was fixed by the patch? And, are they ever going to give us a visible on extremes? On these huge maps, it can be very difficult to mouse over a planet when you are zoomed out. Weren't they yellow or something in GCII. Maybe they could be yellow for the first level and green for the higher level.

Is this (or similar other) bug(s) still an issue for anyone?

Using the latest patch as of today (beta 5.3 I believe), with verified game cache in Steam, I saw this when changing frequency of Stars (not planets):

Small Map, Tight Clusters, Abundant Stars: 26 total

Small Map, Tight Clusters, Occasional Stars: 28 total

Even with random numbers, this is a little wacky.

OK, so I tried again just to get more examples and find a different issue as well: the map is not random.

First--Small, Tight, Occasional: 28 stars

2nd--Small, Tight, Abundant: 28 stars in exactly the same spots

I remember reading about this on the forum a while back, but cannot recall if it was addressed yet.

In mapsetupdefs the star frequency settings are  rare: 0,5, uncommon 0,65,  occasional 0.8,  common 0.9, and abundant 1.0.

So the number of stars is not much different.    I would expect that 1.0 would beat 0.8 most of the time, but it's not so different that a weird result might happen, since it's a random seeded thing.   Of course I don't know the actual details of how it's done, but still, the numbers are close.

Ok, so I purged my files and re-verified the steam cache for beta 5.3 and still had the same issue.

For today's beta 6 opt-in I went one step further: uninstalled via steam, then manually deleted some folders (my games\GalCiv3 and steamapps\common\galciv3). Then I downloaded, and then I selected opt-in which caused another download. Then I played.

Start GalCiv3

Main Menu-->New Game-->Small Galaxy, Tight Clusters, 4 opponents, Stars Rare-->15 secs to generate = 28 stars on the map

Main Menu-->New Game-->Small Galaxy, Tight Clusters, 4 opponents, Stars Abundant-->2 secs to generate = 28 stars on the map... in exactly the same spots

Quit GalCiv3

Start GalCiv3

Main Menu-->New Game-->Small Galaxy, Tight Clusters, 4 opponents, Stars Abundant-->15 secs to generate = 28 stars on the map... in new spots

I guess this time I will submit a support ticket.

Edit:

Same issue with beta 6 patch 1 opt-in. Ticket #DUO-459-35289