New starting VP rule

[jchien14]

https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1758810/new-starting-vps-base-game-map

[jsnell]

This has been on the todo list for a long time. Things that would need to be done:

• Make the faction cost obvious in the faction selection UI
• Change the rating algorithm to consider faction strength separately for games with/without this option (and probably separately for each map too). This would also require changing the rating UI; maybe the thing to do would be to just hide.
• Make sure the stats page (and related things like the "tuning tool") allow properly filtering out games with/without this feature.
• Make sure that anyone getting game data from sources such as event logs will not accidentally group games with/without this option together.
• Make it impossible to accidentally apply the VP variants to the wrong map.

The path of least resistance for the last three points is probably to just make the VP variants separate maps with separate IDs.

[JamesWolfpacker]

"The path of least resistance for the last three points is probably to just make the VP variants separate maps with separate IDs."

This is probably the best thing to do and add If statements to differentiate between something like Original and OriginalAdjustedVP. The thing that concerns me is that if people start playing a lot with the adjusted vp, the data might show that the vp need to be adjusted. Maybe you could just add the 1st VP Adjusted map as a playtest map which does not count in ratings to confirm that the vp is balanced? Then you could worry about the ratings implications later.

To make the faction cost obvious in the faction selection UI, adding a text block with the faction VP list should do the trick.