[1.0.0.341] When a Civilization is not given a Starting Plot the game crashes to main menu

[Gedemon]

This was not the case before, allowing a map to load when the start positionner failed for some civs and allowing to reserve some players slots for later use in mods/scenario without spawning their units on first turn by preventing Starting Plot assignment during map generation.

The workaround for scenario is to give them a starting plot then delete their units on first turn, but this lead to unwanted civ-specific naming of geographical features around their starting location, and potential diplomatic meeting between civilizations that shouldn't in a scenario case.

Even if it's now simply "working as intended" in the code side and allowing slot reservation this way was never a planned feature, there is still an issue:

the error message says "One or more of the startup scripts has an error. See lua.log" but no error message is written in any of the logs, making it hard to debug.

 

[Gedemon]

Update:

this is also a problem for users of the Worldbuilder:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/worldbuilder-error-see-lua-log.648974/

And in some cases the game's core StartPositioner methods fail to place a civ, causing that crash to main menu, with no "error" but this

Map Script: -- START FAILED MAJOR --
Map Script: ContinentType: 70
Map Script: LandmassID: 1835035
Map Script: Fertility: 514
Map Script: TotalPlots: 238
Map Script: WestEdge: 12
Map Script: EastEdge: 25
Map Script: NorthEdge: 30
Map Script: SouthEdge: 14
Map Script: -- END FAILED MAJOR --
Map Script: -- START FAILED MAJOR --
Map Script: ContinentType: 6
Map Script: LandmassID: 2228257
Map Script: Fertility: 1047
Map Script: TotalPlots: 408
Map Script: WestEdge: 60
Map Script: EastEdge: 76
Map Script: NorthEdge: 41
Map Script: SouthEdge: 18
Map Script: -- END FAILED MAJOR --

If the return to main menu is the intended behavior, the lines above should be tagged as "ERROR" in the log.

 

[Gedemon]

From World builder users reports, this is still an issue with .341