Spartans on 1x1 island on Giant map

[bvanevery]

Details my pet Spartan

my pet Spartan

You'd think the world generator could place other factions a little more reasonably?  This is a Giant map, 256x128.  Not only did the computer stick the Spartans on a 1x1 island, but it stuck their capitol right next to my capitol!  That's totally lame.  The problem is, I don't know how bad these setups are going to be when I first start the game.  Yes I know the Hive was stillborn, as he had a flat line for his faction.  I'm guessing that means he was summarily destroyed by a mindworm or something, because Sparta was at least on the graph, with that horrid 1x1 island start.  I guess I'll find out someday.  Maybe the game is not a complete loss because the Caretakers, Usurpers, and Pirates will persumably have infinite room to grow, and the University seems to be doing fine too.  In essence a 5-way instead of 7-way game.

[bvanevery]

Details damned if I do

damned if I do

Here is the irony.  Since we're allied, I can't raise land to touch her city to free her.  If we were enemies, I could, but then I'd want to keep her locked up!  I wonder if I put a sea bases next to her border, if that would exert a strong enough influence in the water, that I could then raise the land?

[bvanevery]

Details touch me

touch me

Yes it will work.  Soon it will be done.  My great sacrifice to free the oppressed Spartans, in the year 2258.  They've done nothing this whole game because they ran out of minerals and were never given a ship!  I wonder if the first thing they will do, is hate me for my Wealth.

[Buster's Uncle]

I do not understand what these are doing here.  Your purpose?

[bvanevery]

I'm rescuing the Spartans from complete and utter stagnation!

Details with friends like these

with friends like these

I finally connected their 1x1 island to my mainland.  Santiago now owns 2 land squares.  Technically she could settle the 2nd land square with one of her original Colony Pods.  I wonder if she will do it in practice?   Will she even move at all?

For performing these glorious engineering feats on her behalf, she thanked me by renouncing our Pact!  That's going to make it a lot harder for her to move, I think.  Well, I imagine she'll still be willing to push the Colonists to somewhere.

[bvanevery]

Well, the point is moot.  I quit that game.  It was supposed to be about carpeting my enemies with fungus, and the reality is, I wasn't going to get even remotely near my enemies for awhile yet.  I got The Maritime Control Center at 1 AM and thought, no, this isn't worth any more mouseclicks.  So the fate of Santiago will have to be imagined.

2 humans were stillborn that game.  The other 2 humans didn't do especially well.  The Caretakers and Usurpers were well placed, but locked in deadly combat from the beginning of the game.  They were on adjacent large continents, separated by only 1 square of water.  They didn't manage to build any Secret Projects.  Earlier on they tried, but I got lucky fishing about 4 starting pods out of the water and got Industrial Base.  I was able to complete The Merchant Exchange before they did.  Then I got lucky with Doctrine:Loyalty, which I wasn't even trying for, and managed to beat them to that as well.

[Buster's Uncle]

So your purpose is to discuss gameplay issues and such, not to entertain, so here and not in AARs.  Makes sense.

[bvanevery]

Yeah I only wanted to make mention of the most interesting or unusual thing that happened in the game.  The best way to "rescue" a stillborn faction is probably to restart the game.  I wonder if there is any world generation setting that can stop the 1x1 starts from happening?  I currently have "Islands=1" but I've seen the 1x1 phenomenon on all kinds of big maps in the past.  I don't know that it'll help, but I'm going to try "Islands=9".  The default is 36.

[Petek]

You've run into a bug that occurs in SMAX, but not in SMAC. On really large maps, factions will spawn on one-tile islands, or simply be stillborn. I wrote about this problem probably 15 years ago, but can't find the posts now. From memory, I speculated that "landing site" algorithms were changed in SMAX because some of the factions land later than turn one. The developers had to allow for these late landings, especially on the smaller maps. That is, they had to reserve landing spots for these factions. However, on larger maps, this had the unintended consequence of relegating the early-landing factions to small islands or just eliminating them. The solution is to use pre-made maps, in which the problem doesn't arise. I created a number of really large maps for this purpose, which may be found here and here. I also wrote somewhere about how to create these maps (it can't be done without modifying alphax.txt). Please post again if you're interested.

[bvanevery]

Could you describe your steps to "pre-generate" a map?

[Buster's Uncle]

b, M'man Petek there is a SMACX oldtimer of the first water, and God of All AC Troubleshooting; just so you know, and give 'im more respect than you do me.  (Not a complaint, just advice.)  He's almost never ever wrong when he claims to know something.

[Petek]

Could you describe your steps to "pre-generate" a map?

I couldn't find the article that I wrote many years ago on the subject, but here's what I remember:

* To create and save a map for which both dimensions are 256 or less, start a new game, select CUSTOMIZE RANDOM MAP, then CUSTOM SIZE and input the desired dimensions. Specify the remaining map options as you wish. When the game starts, open the Scenario Editor (Ctrl-K), go to EDIT MAP in the MENU, and select Save Map. To use this map, start a new game, select LOAD MAP FILE and choose the map you saved. Note: Although you can input dimensions larger than 256, the maps created this way will never actually have either dimension larger than 256.
* To create maps whose dimensions are larger than 256, open Alphax.txt and locate the #WORLDSIZE section. Modify it as follows: Increment the "5" at the beginning of the section by one for each custom size that you add. Then add a new line at the end of the section that looks like

Gigantic Planet,                 305,  305

Save the file.  Now when you start a game, you should have a new option to create a Gigantic Planet (or whatever name you like). Save the map as explained above. I chose a 305x305 size map because that's the largest map that won't crash the game when generated this way.
* It's possible to create even larger playable maps using the Scenario Editor (I once created a 1024x1024 map), but I'd have to try to recall how to do so.

Please let me know if you have any questions or run into any problems.

[bvanevery]

That sounds logical.  I already knew about editing alphax.txt to add a menu entry.  Recently I defined "Giant" planets as 128x256.  I had a lot of trouble with continent generation, 1x1 island starts, and dropped factions, as I detailed in the Modding subforum.  What I'm curious about, is whether I'll be able to perform the "Save Map, Load Map" exercise without seeing the map myself.  I will experiment.

BTW I did manage to suppress the problems for maps of size 80x160, by altering alphax.txt world generation settings.  That's larger than a Huge map, although not by much.  Currently I'm calling it a "4X Standard" map, for lack of a catchier title, since Standard is 40x80.  160x160 also works, but deviating from the 1:2 ratio makes the minimap look stupid.  So in 1:2 format, 80x160 is the highest I believe one can go without manifesting the problems.  Notably, 100x200 doesn't work.