I'm playing on a medium sized map.  I upped the number of AIs from the default of 5 to 6.  It's around mid-game (season 162) and I still have not even had *contact* with the other AIs.  I've explored about a fifth of the world map at this point.  I have about 4 cities and 3 outposts.

Not really sure what's going on with the AIs here.  If there was a no-fog cheat I'd just turn off the fog and take a look.

I am on a peninsula and there's that fissure area on the side that's near the land.  But it's possible to go around it.  My sov has explored around the fissure somewhat.  Still nothing so far.

http://imgur.com/y71Qg

I think that as long as there's no reasonably easy way to cross water, you're going to have a really hard time preventing scenarios like this.

Yet another pacing problem.

I'm not really sure why simple ships haven't been done to at the very least allow contact with other people in these cases (assuming the map generator can't prevent it).