Utility: SemiRandom version 095

[Wauthan]

This utility is very cool. Breathes new life into the all the tired old maps around. Thanks for sharing Ballbarian.

[Ballbarian]

Thank you very much for contributing Endoperez!
It looks like you have found a way to allow external defenders of "independent" forts. Very cool!

It should be able to appear in any hot or temperate forest that's medium to large. BallBarian, you seem to have done multiple versions of a single province type (even uniques), like this:

ENDO1_HOT_L_FST_U_R_.gan
ENDO1_HOT_M_FST_U_R_.gan
ENDO1_TMP_L_FST_U_R_.gan
ENDO1_TMP_M_FST_U_R_.gan


However, wouldn't that let it create four versions of the same unique province?

First let me point out that you are using _M_ to denote a medium sized or otherwise "Normal" size, which should be _N_. It will still work since _M_=Multi (opposite of unique) which is just a placeholder that can be omitted, but that I include in my gan titles for clarity. The same goes for _N_=Normal which is again just a placeholder and can be omitted.

That said, currently _U_nique provinces must have a specific terrain for them to be truly unique. Creating a single unique province that can appear on a variety of terrains is not an option right now, though I feel your pain and I am looking for an alternative approach. You are right. Using your example could create four instances of the same unique province on different terrains. There should not be any existing GAN's in the current set that use the same unique province with multiple terrain types. If you see one, please point it out because it would have been unintentional. (I did a quick scan and couldn't find any.) There are however "multi" type provinces with multiple files for different terrain types.

This utility is very cool. Breathes new life into the all the tired old maps around. Thanks for sharing Ballbarian.

Your very welcome Wauthan, and thank you for the encouragement.

[Endoperez]

Ballbarian said:
Thank you very much for contributing Endoperez!
It looks like you have found a way to allow external defenders of "independent" forts. Very cool!

First let me point out that you are using _M_ to denote a medium sized or otherwise "Normal" size, which should be _N_.

That said, currently _U_nique provinces must have a specific terrain for them to be truly unique. Creating a single unique province that can appear on a variety of terrains is not an option right now, though I feel your pain and I am looking for an alternative approach.

Yeah, I'm proud of coming up with that ownership change trick. It seems to work without any problems, too.

Thanks for pointing out the "Medium"/"Normal" thing. I'll remember it for the next one.

Good luck on coming up with an alternative.

[Gandalf Parker]

WOW THANKS for figuring out that castle defence thing! Do you mind if I make extensive use of that immeadiately on all my map routines?
(slap head, cant believe I didnt try that long ago).

Using special monsters will be ok for awhile altho Im pretty sure that something is planned for that. Did you test 23 (independents) to see if that worked. It might not since part of what it was doing originally had to be removed. And does 25 work the same? Im not sure of the difference in how the code plays #24 Special Monsters and #25 Special Monsters but Im sure there is something.
I hope Johan doesnt fix this now that we found it.

[Gandalf Parker]

On the algorythm for finding a start position, here are some ideas for programs to use it.

(A) Based on a comment by someone in another thread.. a 3 age scenario. The same graphic map (RGB) but zipped up with 3 .map files. For example a scenario for abit of extended roleplaying with Ermor.
Map 1: Early Era Ermor, a set starting position with one province.
Map 2: Middle Era Ermor, same as above but start with 3 provinces.
Map 3: Late Era Ermor, same as above but 9 provinces.

If the 9 provinces were the same on each map (same poptypes and sites even though you wont see the sites on earlier maps) then it might give a real feel for a 3 game campaign And it would give a real feel for Kristoffers work in giving storyline progression on some nations.

(B) The Pipeline or Tower maps. I like the concept of the Tower map (very tall but only wide enough to have one nation stacked above the other) but the concept of starting at one end and fighting your way thru successive nations gradually getting stronger and stronger seems to require preset starting positions.

Of course both of those can be done manually (If anyone wants to, please feel free to do it for us all). But personally its going to sit on my ToDo list for ever. But if it can be programmed you could make it available for nightly generated new versions in your web directory.

[Endoperez]

Gandalf Parker said:
WOW THANKS for figuring out that castle defence thing! Do you mind if I make extensive use of that immeadiately on all my map routines?
(slap head, cant believe I didnt try that long ago).

I don't mind that at all. The original idea I had for this province was just to make an example that would let others create their own castled, double-defended provinces for SemiRandom. It grew a bit from that.

[Ballbarian]

It's in the early stages still, but here are a couple of examples to give a visual of the start distribution.

This one is a 103 province map with 6 players and a 4 province minimum distance buffer.


This one is a 145 province tower style map with 9 players and a 4 province minimum distance buffer.


Both maps were processed using the current default SemiRandom settings of 15 provinces per player & minimum neighbor count of 4 land for land starts, or 4 water for water starts.

Until this weekend, I had been too busy to work on it more than 30 minutes here and 30 minutes there. Very hard to stay focused that way.

[Gandalf Parker]

It looks good. Excellent coding.
Personally Im going to want more of a spread than that.
Will it evenly distribute on larger maps?