Does anyone play the Galactic Empire maps with pre-existing Alliances?

[The Founder]

I prefer to play on small worlds. There are at least a few Planet traits that come with a fixed number of players in a pre-existing alliance or "hug box" as Paradox players like to call it:
ELOP colony: 4 Players
Marked for Reassembly: 3 Assembly, destined to war on everyone else
Cult of Khansu: 3 Prometheans, going for Doomsday Victory, -200 Relations to all others

While those come with a victory condition, it is a very tall order to go up against a alliance of 3-4. With my preference to go for small planets it is impossible - basically it is 3 or 4 vs me. I would have to play a larger planet with a lot of other factions to even get a chance to form a equally strong alliance. And that asumes all the other players would actually want to ally with me. So basically I do not play planets with those traits ever, fighting such a drawn out war just seems annoying.

My questions:
How are those in practice? How many do I have to kill for a victory? Do other AI like to ally agaisnt them or do they join the hug-box?
Does anybody else feel like those are more annoying that interesting?
Does anybody else think the number of Alliance members should be more variable, based on the number of total of players?
Anything I overlooked?

 

[Sandman25DCSSS]

I am playing ELOP game on a planet which has invasions trait also. I hoped the invasion would break the alliance. Surprisingly I became allied to all 4 members of ELOP via diplomacy. I killed 2 other AIs, became first in military/science ranking. I see everything they do due to shared vision. Their armies are quite weak (no tier 3 built despite they are extreme and it is turn about 50) so I decided to attack one of ELOP AIs. I am killing it while still being allied to 2 members of ELOP and having peace with 3rd one. Quite stupid situation, AI became weaker after the patch I guess I can win even before invasion starts.

 

[The Founder]

I am playing ELOP game on a planet which has invasions trait also. I hoped the invasion would break the alliance. Surprisingly I became allied to all 4 members of ELOP via diplomacy. I killed 2 other AIs, became first in military/science ranking. I see everything they do due to shared vision. Their armies are quite weak (no tier 3 built despite they are extreme and it is turn about 50) so I decided to attack one of ELOP AIs. I am killing it while still being allied to 2 members of ELOP and having peace with 3rd one. Quite stupid situation, AI became weaker after the patch I guess I can win even before invasion starts.

At least for the Kult of Khansu that propably does not work. -200 "Enemy ofthe Cult" relation penalty. And this penalty can not be negated with "Overcome Dislikes".

 

[Melikat]

I don't mind the alliance planets and will often opt-in to them for the extra exp, but I find myself turning down the # of AI when I do play them. I'd rather play 1v4 or 1v1v4 than 1v1v1v1v1v4. In the latter scenario there will occasionally be an AI or two who will maintain an alliance with me but more often in my experience they will denounce and start to break pacts as soon as I've killed one of the pre-made alliance's leaders (who is was at war with them too, no less!). And if I can't maintain peaceful relations with the other AI then they're just another set of operation points to cancel my Ops and steal my energy while I deal with the alliance!

 

[Draxynnic]

I've played a map with Cult of Khansu. Managed to form an alliance of every faction that wasn't part of the Cult, while picking off the Cult members one by one (the first one was on my starting continent, so I took them out without meeting the other two. When I started fighting one of the other two, the other decided that he'd prefer to stay out of it than get drawn into his ally's war, so I was able to focus on each of them individually).

Got a Syndicate Allies map pending, but I'm holding off on starting that one properly (the characteristics suggested playing Dvar, but I'd just finished a Dvar game - the Cult of Khansu game, incidentally - and wasn't in the mood to play Dvar again, so I'm waiting until I am in the mood for Dvar again before actually completing that planet).

 

[Ethorin]

I did a map with the Kir'ko alliance... then one of them declared on me and the other one said "nah bro, he has Troopers with Brimstone missiles, I'm out!"

That was a short war... Still wound up declaring on the other Kir'ko cus he was sitting on top of the Grail Anomaloy without the Cipher's to finish it and I wanted that damn Grail.

Then it was the one Config I already had, Unity... fml.

 

[Sandman25DCSSS]

Fighting alliances is my favorite type of planet traits, it makes me feel fair when I pick some really overpowered stuff. For instance, I had Plague Lord on turn 4 on island map in my current game as Shakarn Xeno, previous game was with Parasitic Symbiosis on most units before turn 20, it was hilarious to double HP of tier 1 units.