What is with the start 2 tiles from the sea?

[Hambil]

From a programming lua/xml/sql point I mean. Why is it doing this (I see Whoward even wrote a mod so you can still build a lighthouse) and how do we make it stop?

 

[whoward69]

See the 4 Civilization_Start_xyz tables, but it's probably a civ that wants to start in grassland / on a river and the best spot just happens to be a few tiles back from the coast. The one I really hate is "start on a coast that then turns out to be a 12 hex inland sea"

 

[Hambil]

Is there a start by a river near a mountain on the coast with marble near setting?

 

[Bobert13]

Both of these cases could definitely be fixed.

The first one would really only require a spiral iterator.

Psuedo-code:

If not coastal start bias then
 Spiral Iterator with a 2 hex radius writing all tiles to a table
  for #table do
   if plot type == coast then
    place = false
   end
  end
end

For the other issue (coastal start bias) you'd need lake detection. Cephalo has quite capable lake detection in PerfectWorld3, you'd just need to adapt it and maybe set it up to scale the minimum size considered "inland sea" for the map size.

Either of these may have weird results though. For example, instead of placing the civ one tile over and then adding in the fix-up resources (the second lux and usually at least one strat) it might abandon that (otherwise fertile) map division entirely.