Question: new game ideas

[Gandalf Parker]

OK it has been a problem with no working #scenario command. We couldnt coordinate between the pre-game settings and what the players were allowed to join.

But I have worked out a couple of things. I can allow people to join a game (with as many settings as possible pre-defined) and then on START the game crashes which allows me to make changes according to the selections made, then host first turn and put the game back up.

One simple thing this fixes is that in the games vs AIs on my server, people had to select around the pre-selected AIs in order to play the nation they wanted. With this code I can let them select anyone they want, and THEN add the AIs from unselected nations.

For Dom4 games I think it will allow me to put up a game where everyone can upload a pretender to any nation, and then have 2 randomly assigned disciple nations from what is left.

In my Chaos games it was always fun that the code would pick some provinces and give ownership to random nations. So after you start you might find out that you also started with ownership of some province clear across the map. With this code, after the players join THEN the code can redo the map to include things like random ownership spots, but equally to each player. Especially since Dom4 4 has so many nations in it now that the chance of YOU getting one of the random placements was much slimmer than in Dom3.

This code will also allow for much better AIs. Adding reasonably designed pretenders and scales for each nation didnt work unless you knew them ahead of time. Adding one for ALL nations didnt work because the game would overwrite player pretenders, and could crash if an AI wasnt in the game. With this code the AIs can be selected after players join which would also allow adding in a special pretender for that AI.

ANything else come to anyones mind for this?
or for new open-join games on the Dom4Minions server?