Civilisations entering from different locations and times

[Drunk-Monk]

This thread: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/north-south-east-west-starts-for-any-civ.499085/ suggests that its possible to have factions enter the map from different locations. I think this would be a good addition, as at the moment the AI factions tend to be at disadvantage as they settle and fight over a small amount of land whilst much of the map remains empty. Historically the Russians entered from the Pacific ocean.

Also, how about the possibility of some factions joining the game at a later date, but with more resources (ships, settlers etc). Historically many of the factions included like the Dutch, Swedish, Danish and English only settled during the late 16th and early 17th centuries.

[Nightinggale]

I'm not sure I like the idea of different starting dates. If you start 50 turns later, you basically lost already.

However different starting locations based on the civ sounds interesting. The game sets a Europe value to plots, which then looks up how many turns it will take to reach Europe from that plot. It's only used on an east/west basis.

I think we should add travel time to CivEffects. This means rather than looking up xml data, the game will use cached data in CvPlayer, making it equal or faster than the current implementation. Civ info can then provide a CivEffect, which changes travel time for each access point "group", positively or negatively. This will allow civs starting in west to travel fast home in west and slow from the east (hence mirrored).

Using CivEffects for this will allow changing this during the game with civics or similar. Also it allows traits and stuff to alter travel time too, all this without any additional code. It's part of the existing CivEffect system. Something we aren't using enough as it is (because I added it post 2.7.x)

[Drunk-Monk]

If the player were to start 50 turns later, then I agree it would put them at a severe disadvantage. But for the AI, I don't think that would be so much the case. We would need, for them to start with more ships, free resources, free FF points and free specialists to compensate.

[raystuttgart]

I really do not like the idea to have AIs start at different turn numbers in game. This will totally mess up balancing, is an incredible amount of effort for little benefit and could have lots of side effects and bugs.

---

"East/West"-Start locations, I don't mind but also don't care about. I looked at the code once from the old modcomp and it did not look difficult. We cannot however simply have Russia always start "West" and all others "East", this will be completely "forcing" players who like to play Russia to a certain gamestyle (playing isolated in the West). And Historically Russia is the only Nation where it really does make sense. So we would also need to have a GameOption for this which increases effort a bit - it is all doable though. But even now already if they like to they can either create a Scenario Map (with preset Start Locations) or simply use World Builder to place the starting Units to another location.

For me it would be wasted effort and I am thus not interested in spending any work on this. If somebody else wants to implement the pure capability in XML and DLL I would not mind though. Maybe some mod-mod migth like use it some day.

[Nightinggale]

M:C has all players start on land (except vikings). Supporting east/west starting locations and water/land start unlocks a bunch of interesting game options. However the same can be said about helicopters. We shouldn't spend time implementing features unless we know we it will actually be used.

I'm all for adding xml configurable starting locations if we actually had a need for them. Right now we don't and adding them will cause sideeffects like Russia starting isolated and will discover the Pacific during turn 1.

We could add an option to randomize starting location as in we openly state we ignore real world location of Europe, but either we get it right or not at all and it looks to me like getting it right will be too time consuming compared to what we gain right now.

[LibSpit]

China were poised to be the first civilisation to colonise America, but then they got a new emperor who began an age of isolationism that saw them get rid of their navies and colonial ambitions.

[raystuttgart]

As I said, I don't mind if anybody wants to code East/West-Start Options but currently there is little need for us to do so in WTP. (There is no China in WTP and will most likely not be - and at the moment there is also no mod-mod of WTP going on.)