Bug: Problem with LA start positions

[Zeldor]

Ballbarian:

I am 100% sure that #specstart simply does not work with LA Marignon and/or LA Atlantis present in the game. It may be playable with at least one coastal province, but it is not if there are none.

We had it in Preponderance - if you want to place LA Atlantis/Marignon on the map with #specstart with no coastal starting locations, you MUST edit the map, by adding a new water province and link it to their capital. Otherwise you won't be able to play the game. It will mess everything up and make 1 or 2 nations disappear [mari/arco will randomly pick starting location, resulting in other nations getting invalid #specstart, thus disappearing from the game after 1 turn]. It happens even if you use just ONE #specstart command in the map file, even if there are like 20 nations. It's enough to break the whole game.

[cleveland]

Does anybody have a comprehensive list of "coastal starters"?

The story so far:
LA Atlantis
LA Marignon
EA Fomoria
Vanheim?
er...?

[archaeolept]

not vanheim. none other that I can think of.

[cleveland]

Originally Posted by Ballbarian

Use:
#specstart


So for LA Atlantis to start in province number 135:
#specstart 66 135

I suspect what you are seeing is that another nation has claimed the coastal province (since it is a perfectly valid start for whichever nation got it) and LA Atlantis is picking from the left overs.

VERY IMPORTANT: You must also mark the province as nostart in the map editor!

If you don't, other nations with lower ID numbers can be assigned there first, whereby Dominions will ignore your #specstart command. However, #specstart overrides nostart when marked in the map editor, a key fact I wish I'd known about an hour ago.

So in the above example, you'd need to mark province 135 nostart in the map editor, AND include...
#specstart 66 135
...in the map file.

Another neat thing I figured out: #specstart is NOT age specific. For example, if you want to make a map that will always force Ermor to start in province 100, regardless if it's an EA, MA, or LA game, simply include the following code...
#specstart 1 100
#specstart 28 100
#specstart 50 100
...and it won't break anything! Of course, you'll also have to mark province 100 nostart, as stated above.

[chrispedersen]

Very very cool cleveland.
Should be stickied.