[Ballbarian]

If I have a random map, and lets say for whatever reason there are not enough provinces to follow the instructions I set on semirandom (say I want at least 4 neighbors and I want capitals to be four provinces away, but I select all nations and there just aren't enough provinces to do this)...what happens?

SemiRandom will first attempt to place human starts. These are '#start' commands in the map file which are completely neutral in that any nation can use them as long as they are not an AI nation with a special start location somewhere on the map.

If there are more human starts defined than places to put them, only the positions which fit the defined criteria will have a start placed and the remainder will be left out.

Next SemiRandom will select AI nations randomly from those that are enabled, and place them across the remaining available start locations with '#specstart' commands.

Just make sure that when you start a game that you do not use more nations than there are starts available or you could end up with nations starting right next to each other due to Dom3 having nowhere else to put the extra nations.

I'd like to know a rough guide for how width/height and provinces should go together. It makes sense that as I expand the number of provinces, the width and height (the size of the map I guess) should increase...but are there some established norms? I hate to reinvent the wheel. If nothing else, should the expansion be 1-1 (if I double province number, then I double # for width and height)?

This is pretty much a matter of taste since the Dom3 random map generator is great at scaling the image. If you increase province count without increasing the size of the image, the image quality degrades since it is squeezing more (and smaller) sprites into the same number of pixels.

Maybe a fair formula (by my own preferences) would be something like:
provinceCount * 20 = (height + width)
So if you wanted 175 provinces for a map:
175*20=(3500)
3500/2=1750
1750x1750

This would get you in the ballpark and then you can just shift some from the height column to the width column to get rectangular map sizes.
1700x1800 or 2750x750 etc...

Once you have the scale that you like, then I would certainly double the image size if I doubled the province count as you suggest in your example.

Does the randomizer "randomize" the enemies in a province, or is every special province hand created. I noticed some in my quick tests that seem random, like militia and claymen together, or just infantry and crossbowmen in a motte and bailey. They didn't seem "special" like the ones mentioned in the companion thread, with Xavier's school or Robin Hood and all that, just, well, random .

All of the provinces placed by SemiRandom are generated from '.gan' files. The gan files can act as simple scripts with randomized elements in them, and they can be flagged as being Unique (where only one of the given province can be placed anywhere on the map), or as Multiple (where any number can be placed as long as the terrain matches). The somewhat random provinces that you are seeing are just, well, semi-random.

Take a look at some of the existing gan files for an idea of how it works. They are just text files and can be opened with the text editor of your choice.

I take it the "fiddle" percentage is the amount of regions that are randomized? It didn't seem like setting it to 100% randomized every region though...some had what looked like standard defenders.

You are correct. The fiddle percentage can be increased over 100 which will cause SemiRandom to try even harder to fill all of the spots on the map, but run time will increase as well, and it may just be that it can't find a gan file which matches the remaining terrain or geographical patterns. It is also worth noting that it will never place a special province directly adjacent to a pre defined start position. It is no fun to start a game with Hellgate Keep parked right next door to your capital.

If I can repeat the previous error I will send testdump, but as of now my last few have been ok.

Thanks for the patience with the questions and creating such an awesome program. Bluewater Bay is niiiiiice.

Glad to here that it is working for you now!
Thanks for asking them. I am sure that for every person who asks a question, there are two people that haven't asked, but have the same question.

So far my favorites are the RuggedShores & GandalfPlains settings, but I like lots of chokepoints and rough terrain in my games.