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
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.DeclareLandRegion:: "ID_LANDREG_01"
DeclareLandRegion:: "ID_LANDREG_02"
DeclareLandRegion:: "ID_LANDREG_03"
...
...
...
DeclareLandRegion:: "ID_LANDREG_103"
DeclareLandRegion:: "ID_LANDREG_104"
DeclareLandRegion:: "ID_LANDREG_105"
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:
Once I'd done this (and of course changed all the references accordingly) it worked fine!...
...
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"
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:
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:DeclareLandRegion:: "ID_SCOTLAND"
DeclareLandRegion:: "ID_NORTH_UMBRIA"
DeclareLandRegion:: "ID_MERCIA"
DeclareLandRegion:: "ID_WALES"
DeclareLandRegion:: "ID_WESSEX"
DeclareLandRegion:: "ID_IRELAND"
And I thought "Why did they change it to AFRIKA?" Because NO PROVINCE SHOULD BEGIN WITH THE NAME OF ANOTHERDeclareLandRegion:: "ID_AFRICA"
DeclareSeaRegion:: "ID_AFRIKA_COAST"
Hope this can help others avoid the syndrome....
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