Fair starting positions through SLIC

[J Bytheway]

There was a big discussion about the pros and cons of playing on a premade map for the purposes of fairness during the planning of the CTP World Cup, and I've recently been thinking about how to get the best of both worlds.

Would it be possible/easy to write a trigger which fires at the start of the game in a (probably only 2-player) MP game which copies half of the map onto the other half and moves the startlocations appropriately so that both players start in the same situation. I realise that strange things will happen round the coastlines at the border (the shelf/deep ocean/beach won't be correctly organised) , but can anyone think of any other problems?

Also, it would presumably take quite some time to run the trigger. Would this be a matter of seconds, minutes, or what?

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by J Bytheway
Also, it would presumably take quite some time to run the trigger. Would this be a matter of seconds, minutes, or what?

Of course it is also a matter of map size.
On my computer (Win98, Athlon 1333, 256 Ram), the good improve code of GoodMod need on a gigantic map 7 - 8 seconds to improve all the goods, (creating a temprory fort tile improvement, creating the main good improvement and removing the temporary tile improvement, on maximum good settings), Peter made a version of my code with an terraforming componet, he said it was a little bit slow. On an ultra gigantic map my code needs something like 28 seconds. There should be four times of the goods number on a ultra gigantic map than on a gigantic map, I think you have to modify more tiles on a gigantic map then you have goods on a ultra gigantic map. So my estimation is that it is a question of minutes even on my computer, of course you know more after a trial.

-Martin