Impact of Sector

I'm in a similar situation playing as the Torians. I don't remember what settings I started with (except for Distant). I found myself alone in my starting large sector, the Arceans in a dead-end sector below me, the Krynn in the next sector up with a couple of minor races, the Baratak above them with one minor race, and I've just met a scout ship from the Onyx Hive, which must be in a sector beyond the Baratak. While I wonder like you if someone else farther away is snowballing, I like that I was able to establish some core worlds without having to fight for them, and the sense that this is a really really big galaxy that's going to take a long time to explore.

My current game (.77b) I have the large map size (8-12 sectors), medium sized sectors, with 8 civs total (that's including my civ). Difficulty set to normal, game speed normal, minor civs rare, pirates/monsters rare.

My starting sector had 2 streams out of it. The stream to the north lead to a sector that the Navigators were in, and was also where I met the Onyx Hive. It wasn't the Onyx Hive's starting sector, but they were already basically trying to push the Navigators out of their own starting sector by the time I got there. The stream to the east led to the Torian's starting sector.

I'm currently at turn 260. The Navigators died off pretty quickly, gone by around turn 100 if I remember correctly. I managed to maintain pretty good relations with 6 of the remaining civs up until I hit around 60% on the Prestige scale, then everybody seemed to suddenly hate me, except for the Torians. I only recently found the last remaining civ, the Baratack Grove or whatever they are called, and they seem to be very weak compared to all the other remaining civs. They also hate me. Despite the fact that everybody seemed to start hating me right around the 60% Prestige mark, nobody has declared war on me yet. I was ranked 3rd in military strength behind the Onyx Hive and the Drengin for a long time, and the Onyx Hive were trading with me and I had already bribed the Drengin into declaring war on the Onyx Hive. So maybe nobody declared war on me because my military might was already higher than anybody else except the 2 that were at war with each other? Anywho, the Torians of course ended up at war with the Drengin, and they asked me to declare war on the Drengin. Since the Torians were the only civ that didn't hate me at this point, I accepted their bribe and declared war on the Drengin also. Now I'm ranked 1st in every category (except influence) and at 73% Prestige vicory at turn 260. The Drengin being the only civ I have been at war with, and I'm the one that made that war declaration.

Some thoughts:

1) The Navigators seem to be pretty weak. This is the farthest I have made it in any game, but the poor Navigators seem to be at the bottom of the pile in every game I have met them. They might need some buffing, or maybe they just got really unlucky every game I have met them. Others observations/thoughts on Navigators?

2) The shift in relations with other civs for whatever the exact Prestige threshold is, seems way too sudden and severe. I went from having very high relations with all the other civs (was even at middle of the road average with Drengin), to having all of them show as hating me within what seemed like a span of around 10 turns (I usually check diplomacy and trades at every multiple of 10 turns). I'm not sure exactly what triggered the sudden drastic change in attitude, but it seemed to be right around when I hit the 60% Prestige mark.

3) On a related note to the everybody hating me part, I was very surprised that nobody has declared war on me despite the relationship bar being pegged at -10. For some reason only the Torians seem to be ok with me (relationship around 0 on the scale), the other 5 civs are locked on -10 with no signs of ever being recoverable. In previous Gal Civs everybody seemed to declare war on you the instant you surveyed an anomaly anyplace on the map, even if they had proclaimed their undying love for you 2 turns earlier. Now everybody absolutely despises me, but not even the Drengin would declare war on me? I think they may have over-corrected for how overly warmongering they made every civ in previous Gal Civs. I don't want the ridiculous warmongering back, and I think the relationships can swing negative too fast; but once the relations do hit extreme negatives, maybe bump up the AI aggression a bit?

4) Absolutely loving the game so far, even with it's bugs and stuff in current state. This one seems to be redemption for how disappointed I was with GC3.

Happy weekend !

This reminds me that I have never hit the Prestige relations level that triggers galactic hate.   My games are pretty much done about 50% prestige, and I start over.   Even then I am putting 30-40 hours in (according to the game).  I think playing longer isn't going to help anyone, and "winning" and "losing" in a beta is not even how one should be thinking about it, in my opinion.   Not that it isn't fun to be number 1 in everything.   You may have declared yourself the winner prematurely... so what?  If we get to the point that end game stuff is important to the game development, perhaps I'll think differently.