When making a new campaign map...

When making a new campaign map, there is something to remember to avoid a very intractable and infuriating failure:

NO PROVINCE SHOULD BEGIN WITH THE NAME OF ANOTHER

For example, I was making a new campaign map with 105 provinces and used the Viking notation system, ie

Quote:

DeclareLandRegion:: "ID_LANDREG_01"
DeclareLandRegion:: "ID_LANDREG_02"
DeclareLandRegion:: "ID_LANDREG_03"
...
...
...
DeclareLandRegion:: "ID_LANDREG_103"
DeclareLandRegion:: "ID_LANDREG_104"
DeclareLandRegion:: "ID_LANDREG_105"

It resolutely failed to load the startpos, even though I could call up the new map (after a fashion) from an unmodified Viking startpos. I went through everything time and again, and eventually pinned it down after a few days of intensive cut'n'paste trial and error, and found it worked fine up to ID_LANDREG_99. Then I finally twigged the cause and the fix.

Because I had an ID_LANDREG_10, all the provinces above ID_LANDREG_99 had to contain the string 'ID_LANDREG_10x' - and it was this which would not parse, and therefore prevented the startpos loading. My fix was to change the last few names to avoid this repeat:

Quote:

...
...
DeclareLandRegion:: "ID_LANDREG_98"
DeclareLandRegion:: "ID_LANDREG_99"
DeclareLandRegion:: "ID_LANDREG_C0"
DeclareLandRegion:: "ID_LANDREG_C1"
DeclareLandRegion:: "ID_LANDREG_C2"
DeclareLandRegion:: "ID_LANDREG_C3"
DeclareLandRegion:: "ID_LANDREG_C4"
DeclareLandRegion:: "ID_LANDREG_C5"

Once I'd done this (and of course changed all the references accordingly) it worked fine!

What actually tipped me off was looking at an earlier startpos I'd done with 108 provinces, to see how the heck I'd made that one work... and actually I had used the vanilla MTW notation for provinces, ie:

Quote:

DeclareLandRegion:: "ID_SCOTLAND"
DeclareLandRegion:: "ID_NORTH_UMBRIA"
DeclareLandRegion:: "ID_MERCIA"
DeclareLandRegion:: "ID_WALES"
DeclareLandRegion:: "ID_WESSEX"
DeclareLandRegion:: "ID_IRELAND"

Then all the provinces were renamed in other files, as usual. The clue that finally gave it away was when I dropped it into a spreadsheet to sort the names alphabetically, and I saw this:

Quote:

DeclareLandRegion:: "ID_AFRICA"
DeclareSeaRegion:: "ID_AFRIKA_COAST"

And I thought "Why did they change it to AFRIKA?" Because NO PROVINCE SHOULD BEGIN WITH THE NAME OF ANOTHER

Hope this can help others avoid the :wall: syndrome....