#start and #specstart under 3.17

[Ballbarian]

I am at my wits end. (Not a long trip. )

I tried to start up a game on a map adjusted with my RanDom project (fixed for 3.17) and kept getting strange start placements with the #start province set aside for me (the human player) being ignored and finding myself placed next to AI home provinces. Spent a couple of days deciphering my own code (note to self: more comments and less hacking!). Finally I adjusted the code to add a no start value (512) to the neighboring provinces. Never had to do this before as long as every player had a preassigned start location. Now I find my nation using one of the #specstart locations reserved for another nation and the other nation swiping the start of yet a third nation. The result is a jumbled mess with only a few nations taking their assigned locations.

I have attached the map image and the map file to this post and trimmed out the GAN map code which only added defenders, sites, etc. since it should have absolutely no effect on start locations in this situation. Should make it a little easier to browse the file.

If someone else could confirm this unexpected behavior I would really appreciate it. I am hoping that I just have introduced an error in my code or something simple and not found a bug with the 317 patch. I found no mention of dom3's start placement code being changed in the logs, but maybe their were some unexpected effects caused by some other changes?

My sanity thanks you in advance!