Issue with starting mod-nation games in text mode

[llamabeast]

I guess this post is primarily for Edi's attention, but I am interested if anyone else has anything to contribute/suggest.

This is an issue that was brought up by Gandalf quite some time ago - however I didn't feel that he described it very clearly. I couldn't find it in the bug shortlist either.

Essentially the issue is this: The game does not appear to load mods before checking for the presence of pretender files in a game directory when creating a new game.

The general procedure for starting a new MP game for use in PBEM is to put all the pretender files in the game directory, then "Setup a Dominions Server", and once the game is started cancel it and run it as as PBEM. When starting the game, Dominions automatically includes all the nations with pretender files in the directory. However, it does not include mod nations.

In the GUI there is a workaround. If one first clicks "Create a New Game", this apparently causes Dominions to load the selected mods, because quitting that and then going to "Network" and starting the game as described above works fine. So this is all good.

The problem is that there is no workaround in text-only mode. It is therefore impossible to start a game with mod nations in text-only mode.

I would imagine that the fix might be quite simple. The game needs to load mods before checking for pretender files. It basically just needs to emulate clicking the "Create a New Game" button, which of course is impossible in text-only mode.

I bring this up now for two reasons. Firstly after the recent incredible flurry of modding fixes, basically all my wishes except this one have been fulfilled, so I guess I'm feeling hopeful. But more importantly, this is the only thing I'm aware of which stops me from fully automating the LlamaServer. I can't tell you how much time that would save. So for me, and for the LlamaServer, this would be a hugely important fix.

I hope that was fairly clear. This seems to be a strangely difficult issue to describe clearly. It's a very important one to me though.