I could see the existing map, but each nation having one base SC and the other SCs being randomly chosen from all the potential land territories within range, not the presestablished ones. The challenge then would be coding the tables that determine disband distances, home SCs by nationality and what not as they would be specific to that game instance instead of having a static set of tables.

@fortknox - I'd give up some WoW and STO time to help with the coding on that variant. I haven't given up any time yet for the site cause I just haven't had the burning desire for any one feature, but this really piques my curiosity.

I'd be interested in helping with the random map as well. Imagine a new map every time you played!

excuse the language...but that would be quite bitching.

A truly new map probably isn't feasible, but the same map with all new SC locations... The real issue I could see is if somehow Austria's or Russia's territories were all landlocked. and how do we determine the open SCs, or do all SCs get divided up and we go truly random so that traditional regions mean nothing.

@Draug

After a brief search, I found a lot of map generators. Could we not use one of those for the basis of a new map? I'm sure we could come up with an algorithm to space 7 3-center countries around the board and add a couple more SCs, no? Of course, the game would need to start with a build phase and clearly, some countries may get royally fucked, but it seems worth thinking about.

How's this for a general approach:

1) Create a map of two colors (water and land), weighted such that there is more land than water.
2) Create an algorithm that places 7 centers as far away from each other (on land) as possible.
3) Place 2 more centers around each of the original centers in some random fashion.
4) Place 34-7*3 more centers around the board such that the distance between those centers and each of the original 7 centers is as close even as possible.

The real question is how hard is it to automate the Adjudicator? Can we write some code that looks at the color and boundaries of the map and knows what to do, or all all variants hard-coded for movement?

new to this idea, but the thing that jumps out to me is why? If you play one game and win or get stuffed, what have you learnt or done apart from made the best of your luck. It may be fun for 1 game, but devoting time to coding it seems crazy to me. You'd be better off playing first game on normal board game and distribute SCs by chance and then seeing how it plays out with 7 people in a room before you code something like this

@Maniac

1) It is an interesting problem to solve, which is appealing in and of itself.

2) It may strength your ability to quickly understand map dynamics, which is important if you play a lot of variants that don't use the standard map. Also, we would have the ability to save maps and who knows, we may get a really cool one.

Ora&I were talking about this last night.

As well as the gameplay specifications, I put some thought towards implementation. I came up with a method that would very easily allow many different games, each with a different map, without having to hack the webDip adjudicator too heavily. However, I couldn't see how you'd allow for convoys - everything else I could do.

In [very] short - as far as the variant code is concerned, the map is a complete graph. However, an abstraction layer between the database/adjudicator and the user removes any edges (ie borders) that are not wanted for this particular game. Then, the orders are stored in the database, which will see these moves and (since they're a collection of valid moves on the complete map) will accept them.
However, this means that server-side every territory would be linked, which means there are no sea's,only coasts, thus no convoys.

Figle nailed it with: "In [very] short - as far as the variant code is concerned, the map is a complete graph."

I haven't looked at the code, but the way I'd code an Adjudicator is abstract and should work for any map, given enough variables (granted, the Adjudicator system, itself, is a complex one). They are really two different systems, a map, and an adjudicator.

Speaking strictly on the map side, creating a random map isn't the hardest thing in the world, but there are a lot of scenarios to consider. First, you have to have continuity between sea and land. You don't want to have rivers or random islands as much as mostly land with sea splitting up a power or two... but it probably wouldn't be difficult to allow how much water is in the map to the creator (think about how the game civilization works... you can have a map that's almost entirely land or one almost entirely islands, and a few 'in between' settings).
Putting a few land areas together and making them a nation and putting SCs down isn't tough at all, but in more 'water' maps, you'd probably heavily weigh that you have at least one port SC.

The real difficulty comes in balance. There will be times when people are, in general, going to get royally screwed. Though stalemate lines should be relatively nonexistant, so solo'ing may become the norm...

Figle, I don't understand why you don't just have an graph spot with details like 'sea', 'coast', 'land', 'canal', '2-end coast'? This would allow convoys. It sounds like the code takes into account land, but not sea?

it means that the map as stored in the database for this variant is the same for each different game played. That means unless you only let one 'random' game be played at a time they are not new each time you start.

The point of this exercise (at least for me) was to create a variant where the map was different everytime so the 'learning' curve (ie figuring out what the balance is like or where the stalemate lines are) is constant, and tests a different set of skills, including explaining to other WHY the balance means it's clear that they should... blah...

a convoy-less variant would be less than ideal, but acceptable.

although, if everything is a coast then you can build an 'inland' fleet.

which means you'd be able to build your fleet but not move it...

Well, assuming the inland coast was attached to another coast (inland or real), then the fleet should be able to move to the next territory's coast.

Funny that is mentioned as I've been thinking about navigable rivers and doing a variant off the map from GSI's Middle-earth PBM game (aka MePBM). Lot's of navigable rivers on that map making inland coasts a possibility. I think I may open a thread up for that later tonight...

heh... draug has a point... fleets and tanks would be equivalent, so it would at least be entertaining to see a fleet taking over a land space. I guess it is a 'heavy river' variant or something? ;)

draug, the problem is with the hack to make this a map where everything is connected also means each territory is a coast, and you can't convoy across a coast, only across a sea.

it's not the ends it is the middle.

Actually that isn't true - you could easily ban inland fleets.

The abstraction I'm talking about would be to add another layer to the current setup:
Map in system - complete graph G
... load random Map, which is an incomplete subgraph of G
... All code now runs based on this subgraph, so as far as the user/orders are concerned the map is *not* a complete graph, and coasts/ land/ sea are appropriately handled.

When saving orders, their validity must be checked against the subgraph not the complete - this is the important step.
Adjudication would then run on the complete graph, since this is something it has been programmed to do, and as all move/support orders use these edges.

Another issue with convoy's would be the route-finding algorithm would have to be heavily modified to cope with coast/not coast options.

Just don't allow convoys over inland fleets.

You can make 3 database entries for every territory (1 for sea, 1 for coast and 1 for land) and just use the one you need and don't link the other 2.

@sleep - Convoy algorithm still wouldn't work, unless you rewrote it, since it would never need to build chain convoys, as on the complete graph one would do

It'd be very difficult to make a map which changes with each game. Moving supply centers wouldn't be too hard, you would just need to modify the code which adds units, which counts supply centers occupied per player, and places initial units, but changing the entire map would mean all code which references wD_Territories and wD_Borders would need to be redone within the variant.

The only simplification is that the adjudicator wouldn't need modification, since by the time orders are entered into the adjudicator territories and borders are irrelevant.

The javascript does not depend on the database-engine too. It get it's information from the cache-file, and it should be no problem to send a custom one for each game.
So the only files left are the "userOrder...".php files. And it shouldn't be that hard to make them use another source instead of the database.

In regards to the balance of water and land, and the size of the relative landmasses, there may be something you can look at. I know in Civ III when you play a random map you can select your percentage of water coverage on the map (60%, 70%, 80%) as well as the landmass type (archipelago, continents, pangea). I'm guessing that there would be a way to look up how they coded that. Probably a different language but it could give you guys some ideas at least.