Why does the game refuse to put distance between players?

[Tanaka]

Almost every map no matter how many times I reroll just seems to bunch up the players with huge empty spaces available? Yes I have the distant option enabled.

[zgrssd]

The game can only put minor and major regimes into places where the history and dissolution war phases placed cities.

Only wildlife will be in the middle of unpopulated areas.

[KingHalford]

Yes it's an issue with planet generation. Some might consider it a feature, so that's up to you to decide.

I think this could be easily fixed by allowing the player the option to manually place their starting city on the map. I expect this is something that Vic has considered and we do know he's working on game setup options in the future.