New Beginning type - "Random One-Region"

[Alathaea]

Alright, so at the moment we have two types of starting position - Conquer (where we each take turns to place) and Full Map (where the map is split randomly).

However, both of these suffer from disadvantages - Conquer tends to advantage the first few players on small maps (where they can take all the good positions) and the last few players on large maps (where they can see where everyone goes, then go in the least crowded/most advantageous spaces). Full Map suffers from a certain level of randomised advantage.

What I'm suggesting is a map placement type that combines Conquer and Full Map - you begin with only one region, but it's random. Though you still end up with a certain level of randomised advantage and first-turn advantage, the first-turn advantage is somewhat ameliorated by the random nature of your placement and the randomness can be counteracted through clever placement.

Certain algorithmic rules to determine random placement could be -

the random places will never assign first-places that are within two regions of any other regions (i.e, region-gap-gap-region) unless the map forces it.

If the map forces it, the algorithm will try to assign places that are within one-region gap (i.e. region-gap-region) unless the map further forces it.

Along with this, I think engineered maps could benefit from forced starting positions (i.e. the map maker determines start places, which are then randomised for each player). This way, a person can't deliberately join-unjoin to get a particular advantageous position, because the position you get within these determined start places. Joining and surrendering for a favourable place on that map is penalised by the xp penalty and also the time it takes to start each game.

I hope you consider this,
Thanks,
Alathaea.

[Joriom]

I like this idea. We could even go deeper into this. Instead of finding random postions on generated maps, this new start type could have its own map generating algorythm. It would start from determining number of starting positions equal to number of players and then build map around them (possibly even with similar number of fields around every starting position). When game starts players could only choose from first determined starting positions (shown with special background?).

Additional notes:
"Starting positions" could be clusters of regions so players still have some influence of where exactly they start, but every "cluster" can be populated only by one player at the begining.

[Lopdo]

I plan to do that

[balderr]

Great!