Warlords Team Map Generation Bug

[Xentropy]

My friend and I played a lot of Warlords team games vs teams of AI, and were constantly plagued by a bug that seemed Warlords related (did not occur in our many vanilla games before buying Warlords).

In vanilla, starting a team game would always put a given team's capitals all on the same continent (at least, for non-archipelago games). In Warlords, we would VERY frequently be split, as would the AI teams, making continent-only wonders and trading very annoying; in most cases we wouldn't be able to trade resources at all until we could trade across oceans!

My main question is: Has this bug been fixed with Beyond the Sword? I can't even find mentions of the bug related to Warlords on this forum; I doubt many people play team coops against the AI.

[snoopy369]

I'm not sure if that's not intentional (ie, i'm not sure it's a bug). Have you tried some of the other map types like custom continents? Those are more intended for team play, I think. Lots of people play team coops - either vs AI or not - but i'm not sure continents is frequently used for that. It might be an option, also; a lot of map options were added (quite possibly including start together, which is an option for some map types).

You (or someone who knows python) could fairly easily change that anyhow by editing the python scripts. I'd be shocked if there aren't ones out there already.

[Xentropy]

I was mainly lead to believe it was a bug since before installing the Warlords expansion, every single continents game forced teammates to start on the same land mass. Dozens of games. Then after installing the expansion, in about 90% of games we'd be halfway across the world from each other instead of neighbors. And at least in Warlords, I never saw a "start together" option.

As for "custom continents", the main issue there is while you can use "team continents", which gives each team their own continent, we found this made the game too easy, as the safety afforded by an oceanic moat gave us the opportunity to boom without fear from anything but barbarians--and not even them if we built the great wall.

We eventually just started playing pangeas, as it was the only reasonable way to not be totally alone, yet also not be separated from each other. I find games with at least two large continents far more interesting, though, for the aspects of tech differentiation that occur before the two continents finally meet one another. That option isn't possible (or wasn't when we last played Warlords), since even with two large continents and 16 civilizations, 8 civs each, team continuity would be rather random; 3 of the 8 teams would be on the same continent, wihle the other 5 teams would be split, one member of each team on each continent, both destroying resource trade between teammates *and* removing the entire tech differentiation that makes these games interesting, since tech is autoshared across teams and thus the continents, without even sailing across the oceans, had methods of magically trading tech. The AI handles being on two different continents even more poorly than a human team does, as well.

I seek a return to the Vanilla map generation method, where multiple teams could be on the same continent, but you could simultaneously be guaranteed same-continent starts with your own teammates. I was just wondering, before I make a purchase, whether Beyond the Sword fixes the bug (or, if it was an intentional change, goes back to the Vanilla method of map creation with teams on continents).

If this is indeed something that could be fixed with scripting, I'll have to get some suggestions on who to ask to do such a thing, since I really don't have the time nor inclination to delve that deeply into Python.

[Xentropy]

Hmm, well, the lack of reply would seem to indicate no one else plays team games on anything but pangeas. Ah well.

[snoopy369]

Many of us play team games on other maps than pangaeas (i'd never play one on pangaea tbh) ... inland sea and team battleground, for example Archipelago is also an interesting one, or 'snaky continents'.

BtS has some interesting new maps, I couldn't tell you if they have team start together or not.

You might see if you can find Sirian, or failing that one of the folk that creates custom map scripts (look through the directory or over at CFC) and ask them where it's done in python. Perhaps ask in the Creation forum here?

You probably also could use the Vanilla map script, i'm not 100% sure where it is but look in the python folder in assets, it's probably there; take the vanilla one, copy it over into the warlords folder (i'd rename it instead of copying over the real warlords one), and it should still work - I don't think map scripts changed dramatically between vanilla and warlords.