How can that be?

[Mustakrakish]

So I made a nice map and all, but can't do something I thought should be absolutely possible. I thought that to be essential.
I make the map and place predefined starting positions. As it is a fantasy map attempt (Tamriel), I want 12 civs to start in certain positions, right? Ok, that is easy, you just assign "random player" via edit plot option on 12 tiles you want. But the thing is I myself want to start on that one starting position I made specifically for myself, right. I can only achieve that by opening "scenario editor" and assigning the civ I want to "player 1" and then assigning "player 1" via edit plot option to the desired location.

Now the problem is that for that to work I need to "load scenario", but by doing so, I now have to chose other 11 civs in "scenario editor" or otherwise there will be only one civ - me. So I'm forced to chose other 11 civs, even though I wanted them to be random OR not "load scenario" and simply chose 12 civs (me included) in advanced settings, but then I won't start in that position I wanted to start.

How can that be!? Please correct me if I'm wrong. I'd love to be wrong, but dammit what the heck!?

I mean how come? Let's imagine the basic scenario in which someone decides to... um dabble with the world builder, right? Someone who's not a pro with it, he just decided to try it. He opens it and makes some kind of map... Quite possible he'll just generate a random map and just makes himself a nice custom continent, as he doesn't want to bother doing the whole world, right? So he makes himself a nice starting position, but naturally doesn't want to bother assigning and choosing other civs... just wants them to be random, right? Well, guess what pal? YOU CAN'T! Seriously WTH!?

 

[DragonBlood87]

I was actually just toying around with this in response to another thread (Edit: Oh, it was your other thread...), but adding in all civs to the scenario editor seems to work fine (except for minor civs). My first test was using only a single major civ spawn point on a Duel-sized map; I spawned with 4 minor civs and no other major civs. Then I tried it with two major civ spawns, and over three tests, I kept spawning with one other random civ and some minor civs.

Unfortunately, it seems like it auto-calcs the number of minor civs based on the map size (though one or two can sometimes get dropped if the game can't find room for them).

 

[Mustakrakish]

OK, I think I understand what you're saying. So in order for me to get the results I want, I just need to add all major civs in scenario editor, but only have let's say 3 spawning points. And by that I'll get 3 random civs every time? The problem I face yesterday when simply trying to put them on random is that they were put randomly, but they were put "randomly" in the same places over and over again.

Anyway gonna try that out now, CS shouldn't be a problem as I have predefined positions for them... Thank you for your help, it's very much appreciated.

EDIT: Nope, doesn't work! It just spawns all of them randomly on the map in addition to those pre-placed spawn points! What did I do wrong? I added all civs into scenario editor, but left the spawning points as they were just like you said...

 

[Mustakrakish]

I'm desperate here, someone plz help!

 

[DragonBlood87]

I tried running some more tests with various map sizes, and the scenario editor just seems to be pretty bugged on spawn points.

1) The human player will always get a "Random Player" spawn point if one exists. This is by far the biggest bug I've found so far with this. I tested this pretty extensively; even if I took the exact same map, with two of the spawn points being "Random Player" and "India" (the test civ I was using), and kept switching the spawned player for each, the game always gave India the "Random Player" spawn point over six tests (and dropped one of the computer players).

2) If you mix pre-set cities and spawn points, the pre-set cities are ignored completely. You have to either have everyone start from a spawn point, or everyone start with cities.

3) The game appears to place any human players first, then city states, then other major civs. I haven't been able to confirm for certain if this happens, but it appears to be the case; I've had plenty of times where there will be only one major civ besides my own (on a max size map), yet there are plenty of city states crowding the good spawn locations. This seems to be a bigger issue if the map has few resources, a lot of water, or otherwise limited "good" starting locations.

4) If you have no city state spawn points or no city states are enabled, then the game will autocalc the number of city states that should be present for your map size and add them.


Sadly, it looks like your best bet would be to do pre-set starting cities; it's the least bugged method I've found.

 

[Mustakrakish]

Sadly, it looks like your best bet would be to do pre-set starting cities; it's the least bugged method I've found.

Dammit! Well, pre-set starting positions with each civ assigned to their own specific positions works too as long as number of civs in description matches the number of starting positions (same with CS), but as you understand that's not what I want.

Not loading scenario and just choosing the right amount of civs and CS as is in description/and amount of starting positions is as close as it gets to the desired effect I want. But in this case I won't spawn in the place I want to spawn. In fact I have a 1/12 chance of spawning there (12 civs on the map), so reloading until I get the right place would be almost futile.

The map is pretty much designed revolving around the area where I wanted to spawn. (Cyrodiil in Tamriel, if that tells you anything ) It seems the only solution is to go back to the "drawing board" so to speak and redesign the map, so that every part of the world is interesting to start on. But then I have to balance it even more... Uh the tediousness.

EDIT: Won't work anyway...

 

[DragonBlood87]

Dammit! Well, pre-set starting positions with each civ assigned to their own specific positions works too as long as number of civs in description matches the number of starting positions (same with CS), but as you understand that's not what I want.

Not loading scenario and just choosing the right amount of civs and CS as is in description/and amount of starting positions is as close as it gets to the desired effect I want. But in this case I won't spawn in the place I want to spawn. In fact I have a 1/12 chance of spawning there (12 civs on the map), so reloading until I get the right place would be almost futile.

The map is pretty much designed revolving around the area where I wanted to spawn. (Cyrodiil in Tamriel, if that tells you anything ) It seems the only solution is to go back to the "drawing board" so to speak and redesign the map, so that every part of the world is interesting to start on. But then I have to balance it even more... Uh the tediousness.

Are you sure that it will start the human player in all of the random locations? From my experience, the human player was usually getting a consistent placement--I believe that the game calculates which of the available Random Player locations is the "best" and gives that one to the human player. So, if you just test it a few times and tweak things around a little to make sure that it is consistently spawning the human player on the correct location, it might not even be an issue. However, if you are making a Tamriel map, wouldn't you want the others to be starting in lore-correct locations as well?

 

[Mustakrakish]

Are you sure that it will start the human player in all of the random locations? From my experience, the human player was usually getting a consistent placement--I believe that the game calculates which of the available Random Player locations is the "best" and gives that one to the human player. So, if you just test it a few times and tweak things around a little to make sure that it is consistently spawning the human player on the correct location, it might not even be an issue. However, if you are making a Tamriel map, wouldn't you want the others to be starting in lore-correct locations as well?

Could be... could definitely be. AI civs kept getting consistent placement, that's for sure. It's what stopped me from using that option as the second best option...

 

[DragonBlood87]

Come to think of it, it might actually just be going by the start bias numbers, but a bug is forcing the human player to only use the "Random Player" spawning locations if they exist. After the human player is given their position, it then might be assigning all of the other positions based on starting biases, which results in them getting consistent placements.

 

[Mustakrakish]

Come to think of it, it might actually just be going by the start bias numbers, but a bug is forcing the human player to only use the "Random Player" spawning locations if they exist. After the human player is given their position, it then might be assigning all of the other positions based on starting biases, which results in them getting consistent placements.

I tried with start bias turned off... no difference.