So, I've been trying to get the Gold Star on Crazy (single player) challenge. Last night I had it in the bag, but forgot to add a +2 deploy to one spot, and the AI escaped (pushing me over the goal, to 23 turns).

After playing a few more times today, I noticed that when I started in the same place as that near-win, it was significantly easier. The reason seemed to be that it (Central America) is a spot that, when you spawn at it, the AIs spawn outside of America and might fight each other for a few turns before coming after you.

I'm wondering if anyone has noticed any patterns in how the spawn/picks system works for the map. Is it all completely random, and I just got lucky twice? Or is there a built-in logic that you've noticed? (e.g. picks are placed in groups of 2-3 per continent)

Where has everyone who got the Gold Star started? I saw some old videos of people who started in Eastern Kazakhstan or Jiangxi or Arkhangelsk, but those videos were old and I'm not sure if the challenge's system or AI has changed since then.

Edited 4/18/2015 19:55:26

The AIs never change. Only the luck settings have changed, from 75% to 0%. I think it's random auto picks.

...father?!

What a wonderful...reunion.