Pick starting location on map

@MS, can you please allow us to pick starting locations on maps?
Very often, I play games versus the AI on the largest map size, only to find out that they are placed right next to me…
This remains the case, even if I restart the game multiple times.

If I recall right, in AoE3 (and most other games), I was able to assign my own starting location, as well as the one for the AI.

Im not able to reproduce it, can you show your game settings?

Most RTS games allow me to pick my exact starting location on a map, as well as the one for my enemy. This allows me to make sure we are as far away from eachother as possible (e.g. the AI in the top, and I in the bottom of the map). AoE2 DE doesn’t allow this. As a result, even though I am playing on the biggest map size possible, the game puts us nearly always right next to eachother.

Can you show us too the minimap to see how close to each other map generations puts you?

Unfortunately, I am not behind my laptop right now, however can use the image under the link below to explain

When I play the above map Vs a single AI (1 Vs 1) on ludicrous size setting, the enemy and I are somehow ALWAYS positioned next to eachother. E.g. like red and blue are positioned on the image linked above.
The rest of the map, remains empty (as it’s a 1 Vs 1 match and not 4 Vs 4).

Why doesn’t the game assign me to e.g. the starting location of blue, and the AI to the starting location of the pink player of the example above? Then we would be much farther away from eachother, and not immediately run into eachother.

Why doesn’t the game allow me to pick the exact starting locations of the AI and myself?

Hi all,

I really like the real world maps - in particular Byzantium.

Me and some friends (4 of us to be specific) want to do a few 2v2s. We tried on Byzantium and it spawns all of us within very close proximity to each other, regardless of what options we pick. I have tried with AI as well and same thing occurs. I have also tried changing colours and nothing works.

Does anybody have an ideas how to sort this? Some of these maps are amazing and we can’t really play them like this. If we take Byzantium as an example, there are two large landmasses and in a 2v2 or 1v1, half of the Map is unused as we are all on the same island together. With Italy, in a 1v1, one player is on sicily and the other in south italy etc. The spread for these maps is not Random at all.

Any help greatly appreciated.

Have you figured a way? Or is there really no way to put A.I in particular spots on the map with color or selection?