Annoying Map Creation Problem

[iceboy]

It would be so much easier if when you created a random map all provinces began as NO START. Then you could go in and put in your races starting province one by one. As it is now all provinces begin as a start province and if you want your races to be far away from each other you have to edit a jillion provinces to be NO START!!!

[Zylithan]

i wonder if they could add this, as a choice, to select either all provinces default to nostart or not. because i can see people wanting it either way. i mean, you can have a map be wrapped or not.

[Sombre]

I imagine someone could write a script to add nostart to all the provinces in the dm automatically.

Anyone?

[IndyPendant]

Well, if you're going to select specific provinces as starting provinces anyways, you can add the command "#start 1" (or whatever province number you want) directly into the .map file. Repeat until all the starting positions are accounted for.

Starting provinces will be chosen from those first, and only if there are more players than #start provinces will it become random again.

[iceboy]

IndyPendant said:
Well, if you're going to select specific provinces as starting provinces anyways, you can add the command "#start 1" (or whatever province number you want) directly into the .map file. Repeat until all the starting positions are accounted for.

Starting provinces will be chosen from those first, and only if there are more players than #start provinces will it become random again.

Thanks! What program do I open the map file with to do this? So if I have 20 races and 20 "#start 1" they will all start in those specific provinces? How do you tell what provinces are what number to do this?

[IndyPendant]

The .map file is a simple text file, which you can open with notepad or anything like that.

Put the commands at the end of the file, and yes then they would all start in those provinces. So it would look something like this:
#start 45
#start 72
#start 112

The province numbers are in the maps themselves. Load the map in the Dominions map editor, and make a note of the province numbers you want there.

IMPORTANT NOTE! If you save the map in the Dom3 map editor, you will <i>lose</i> all the commands you manually type into the .map file! I haven't bothered to figure out why this happens yet. I have taken to opening a copy of the .map file and copying everything I've added into the clipboard just in case.

[iceboy]

IndyPendant said:
The .map file is a simple text file, which you can open with notepad or anything like that.

Put the commands at the end of the file, and yes then they would all start in those provinces. So it would look something like this:
#start 45
#start 72
#start 112

The province numbers are in the maps themselves. Load the map in the Dominions map editor, and make a note of the province numbers you want there.

IMPORTANT NOTE! If you save the map in the Dom3 map editor, you will <i>lose</i> all the commands you manually type into the .map file! I haven't bothered to figure out why this happens yet. I have taken to opening a copy of the .map file and copying everything I've added into the clipboard just in case.

Ah got it thanks! This will make my games so much better! That and being able to set each nations pretender!

[theenemy]

Yea, I hate the fact that all the nations start so close to each other. Sometimes it bugs the crap out of me.