Yeah, but it doesn't actually do that from what I've seen during my testing. What I get in my cluster seems to be pretty random.
Odd, that's the opposite of my experience. I've tended to find that the game pretty reliably spawns empires opposed to mine when I load up a new game. If I play as an egalitarian peacemaker, I'm usually surrounded by despots and slavers. When I play as a warmonger, my starting neighbors tend to be a bunch of space hippies. That's just anecdotal, of course.