koontz1973 wrote:Metsfanmax wrote:Take Classic. If I understand the XML guide, the game engine sees every territory as a legal starting position. Then the game engine randomly assigns control of each of these territories evenly to all players. Then the game engine assigns the remainder automatically to neutrals. We simply change the first step from "randomly assigns control of all of the territories to players" to "randomly assigns control of one of the territories to players" (for Conquest game-mode only). Then the second step proceeds as normal (there are plenty of 'remainder' territories now, though). The only part the XML plays in all of this is to tell the game engine which territories are legal to start on, which it already does for these maps.
3 problems for this, all are equally important and should of stopped this.
- The game engine sees territories as a default position as long as no starting positions are placed inside the xml. A lot of maps have starting positions so the engine will always assign those. You would need to remove all starting positions within all xml from all maps for this game engine modification to work.
OK, I'm glad we agree that the problem (if there is one) is going to lie with the not-Classic-style maps. I would have to see the game engine logic (either in pseudocode, or the actual code) to be certain, but I think there would be a simple way to craft this so that it doesn't mess with maps with defined starting positions. For example, on Feudal-like maps, we would have a switch that says, essentially,
- Code: Select all
if (Conquest) then
choose only one starting position randomly
else
default code
endif
- By changing the game engines default from dividing up all territories evenly between all players to only giving one out will effect all maps. There can only be one default.
Well yes, that's the idea -- every map in Conquest mode would have only one starting position. We would do something like the following:
- Code: Select all
if (Conquest) then
assign every player one starting position randomly
else
divide up territories among all players randomly
endif
assign all remaining territories neutral
What I want to know is, are there any maps where a game engine change would be completely incompatible with the XML? I think we're good for Classic-style and Feudal-style, but are there pathological ones?
- Lastly, gameplay would need to be worked out for each map. No way will a map like this ever get past game play in the foundry. You cannot assign a random drop like this for maps as it would be completely unfair 100% of the time.
This is a valid point. However, I don't think the Foundry should be considering this game mode strongly when working out new maps unless there would be an easy way to consider it, for consistency. The reason is that (because the drops are random) there's no question of unfairness. Of course there will always be better drops and worse drops (like landing in Oceania on Classic) but I don't see any way for this to be broken since, well, everyone starts with only one territory. You can't do much damage with only one territory -- it levels the playing field out for everyone.