Starting Civilizations

I just started a new game with the new version that just downloaded this morning as the Corporate Sector. I am only 58 turns in and I have already discovered 4 other major civilizations and one minor civilization in my starting sector even though I set "Number of Sectors" to "A Few" (the middle setting) and "Civilization Proximity" to "Distant". I have included 3 screen snapshots below:

the properties of my GalCiv4.exe file
what my starting sector looks like after 58 turns, and
what my Game Settings look like

Is this a bug in the new version? If not, how could you possibly pack more civilizations into a starting sector?

galactic civilizations iv

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I started another new game with the same settings and this time, after only 3 turns, I have discovered another civilization in the very next star system! Something is not right.

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I may have found a contributing factor. When I go to the "Opponent Settings" screen, it starts at 15 opponents so I just accepted that default. However, as the second screen snapshot below shows, when you hover over the top sections that says "15/15 Max Players" a little popup appears that shows that the recommended number of opponents is 8 for the "A Few" Number of Sectors galaxy setting.

Wouldn't it make more sense for the default number of opponents to be the recommended number of opponents for the selected Number of Sectors? Also, why wouldn't you make the recommended number of opponents more obvious? Why would you make the player find that information by accidentally hovering over the top box?

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