Starting location

[Nelphine]

Snowball effect - capital determines how fast you can get the other things. Yes the secondary made them go crazy, but that AI would have been ahead without any if the mithril at all, just due to sheer speed he could produce settlers.

[namad]

So if production balance is so troublesome what about every player starting the game with an enchantment already cast on their capital that boosts production by say I dunno 40-50% for say 10-20 turns? this in theory should help improve those 0 mountain starts? it would cost a spell though from the game, and might not be possible in the first place, maybe I don't know enough about coding to come up with useful suggestions on how to balance production bonuses.


I feel like distance matters more than just about any factor, because it effects wars, moreso than production or food would.

That said personally I like how random the starts are, yes, it's not fair, but it's a good reason to keep me interested in playing the game over again with a new scenario.

[Nelphine]

I think that's the impoetant thing. If people like the random starts then all my talk of production is mostly pointless.

[Seravy]

Speaking of production, I wonder...

Terrain gold bonus has a cap of 3%/population. Terrain production does not. Which is probably the real problem.

[Seravy]

More importantly, I'd like to hear what people want to say about "1." first and foremost as that is the one already part of the next update, we just need to figure out the best numbers.

[Kaiku]

I think that's the impoetant thing. If people like the random starts then all my talk of production is mostly pointless.

I do like random starts. Some minimum food and production is fine, but probably nothing more. I like early game most, just because it's so interesting to explore and see what you've ended up with.

More importantly, I'd like to hear what people want to say about "1." first and foremost as that is the one already part of the next update, we just need to figure out the best numbers.

It hasn't been a concern for me, as I don't play with small landmasses. I honestly can't even say if I would prefer one over the other if it was a concern.

[Seravy]

Done adjusting the starting positions (food, distance), as there was no particular suggestion I picked what I felt works best and tweaked it until it generated a map in a reasonable amount of time even for the worst case maps. (Normal difficulty, Tiny and Dry)

This is what it ended up like :

-Fixed a bug in starting city generation.
-When rolling capital locations, the “neutral player” will no longer get one, as they don't need it and placing 1 more than needed reduces the chance of success.
-When rolling capital locations, the requirement of “at least 3 tiles from lairs” on the first try is removed and the normal “at least 2 tiles from lairs” is used.
-When rolling capital locations, the minimal required distance from other wizards is 16 (unchanged) but the minimal food is 12. If placement completely fails, both numbers are lowered simultanously, until they hit 8 tiles and 8 food. (Food is reduced by 1/2s, distance by 1s) However, for each level of landmass size above Tiny, the lowest amount is one step higher. Picking “Dry” reduces the food needed by 2.
-Swamps now correctly count as 0.5 food for starting capital placement.
-When the map is being generated, if all attempts to place capitals fail and all options are exhausted, the game will now re-roll all lairs to reposition them. The limit of not allowing cities adjacent to lairs and nodes is the cause for Tiny size maps where placing them is impossible and the game freezes, however, this limit is necessary otherwise AI wizards might find themselves walled in behind a lair with no tile for units to leave the city. With this change, map generation will always be successful, but if multiple lair rerolls are needed, it can be very slow, as each failed attempt takes about 10-20 seconds.
-When the AI picked an inappropriate race for their personality they will reroll the race only, instead of jumping back to position selection. (I wonder why this was set up so inefficiently, I guess it's because “repick race if elves not in forest jumped here as well in the original?)
-Easy lair amount is now 15+3*Land Size instead of 19+2*Land Size.
-Hard lair amount is now 8+6*Land Size instead of 12+5*Land Size.
This reduces the total amount of lairs on Tiny by 8, making it much more likely to successfully generate the map in a reasonable amount of time even with the worst possible parameters (Dry and 5 players on Arcanus), without affecting Huge and minimally affecting Fair landmasses. Even with this “low” amount, the density of lairs per land tile on Tiny is by far the highest. (65 on 300 tiles vs 101 on 1400 tiles)

A few example maps and what you can get on them (These are minimal values, the higher on the first pass, the lower on the last before rerolling lairs and starting over. So 12-16 means you can have any value 12+ but you will be given 16+ if possible on the map without moving lairs):
Huge, Fair : 12-16 distance from wizards, 10-12 food
Huge, Dry : 12-16 distance from wizards, 8-10 food
Fair, Fair : 10-16 distance from wizards, 9-12 food
Tiny,Wet : 8-16 distance from wizards, 8-12 food
Tiny,Dry : 8-16 distance from wizards, 6-10 food

The game will never generate wizards closer than 8 tiles to each other and even higher for non-tiny maps. (6 and 7 are also allowed in the current version. The original game required 10 or more but it never had tiny or dry maps and allowed wizards next to lairs.)

[Seravy]

I found the old starting location thread, and man, things are ugly!

Rivers and ORES are not on the map when the capitals are placed, and possibly other changes can happen to it afterwards as well.

Tiles that need to be replaced for being part of an invalid configuration turn into grasslands, and rivers are better than any other terrain type - you can get 10-12 pop better cities than expected, but not worse.

I totally forgot about that, so yea, that makes finding a good place for the cities all that much harder. Fortunately it does not affect this latest update - you can only end up with a better city than required, not worse.

But this was a good reminder why we can only have a minimal required amount, not a maximal. And why higher minimal amounts fail : the "good" tiles are not even on the map yet.
And this, btw, would ruin any required "minimal production" or similar as those hills and mountains might turn into rivers and grasslands later...fortunately one wasn't possible to begin with anyway.