Where would i go to change starting locations from low resource to supercharged?

There's no real good way to do this, because if you increase the "bad" starts, you'll also increase the "good" starts.

That will be fine as long as while it gives really bad starting locations the chance of giving higher is their as well.--where would i go to change it?

Go to TerrainTypes.xml and find all the stuff that looks like this

    <GameModifier>
      <ModType>Resource</ModType>
      <Attribute>TileYieldGrain</Attribute>
      <Value>1.5</Value>
      <PerTurn>1</PerTurn>
    </GameModifier>

   <GameModifier>
      <ModType>Resource</ModType>
      <Attribute>TileYieldMaterials</Attribute>
      <Value>1.5</Value>
      <PerTurn>1</PerTurn>
    </GameModifier>

    <GameModifier>
      <ModType>Resource</ModType>
      <Attribute>TileYieldEssence</Attribute>
      <Value>0.15</Value>
      <PerTurn>1</PerTurn>
    </GameModifier>

then increase their <Value> as you see fit. I'd start out with making all 1.5 values into 2.5, and essence into 0.5. You might also want to copy the essence modifier into all 3 terrains with <DisplayName>Plains</DisplayName> so every city gets some.

Obviously these are going to change all the positions on the map, not just starting locations.

I will give it a try thank you.

You could also change the resources to Dense and magic to Dense.  Since there will be more of them it might increase the chance of getting a good start.

I like playing on Sparse with monsters dense.  makes it feel more like a broken world.  Getting going can be a real pain in the ass the though.

It worked great thanks. Still heavily weighted towards grain but giving much better starting locations.

is there no way to increase the chance of higher yield tiles at starting locations only?

You could just attach bonuses to your Tower of Dominion, so your first city gets bonuses. That'd be by far the easiest.

The other way would be to have extra resources spawn near your sovereign. Resources also provide bonuses to tile yields, in addition to to the stuff you get from building improvements on them.

ooh that would work, how do i do that? lol

Which one?

the champion one, so i can play elves with it

edit:

what about a bonus to the capital itself? they are tagged aren't they.

Here is an example of how to add a resource to all Elven sovereigns (this is all you need in a separate mod):

  <AbilityBonus InternalName="Blood_ElvesAbility">
    <AbilityBonusOption InternalName="Blood_Elves">
      <GameModifier>
        <ModType>Player</ModType>
        <Attribute>StartPositionHasResource</Attribute>
        <StrVal>Resource_CrystalCrag</StrVal>
        <Radius>3.0</Radius>
        <Provides>Faction starts with a Crystal Crag nearby</Provides>
      </GameModifier>
    </AbilityBonusOption>
  </AbilityBonus>

you'll need to do similar things for all the "blood" traits. If you want to do different resources than crystal crags, check out CoreWorldResources.xml to find the InternalName of the resource you are after.

Note that you cannot use this method to spawn shards, as they are handled a bit differently than world resources. However, if you are really interested in having shards at the starting position, you can. What you have to do is create a new world resource that looks and functions like a shard. Let me know if you're interested in that and I'll show you how.

PS. There's no good way to do something using the capital city "tag".

im not concerned with more shards, though if i can make the addition of those resources a trait, rather than having to add it to each race, that would be nifty.

 On another note, there are times i want to raze the AI's city and rebuild, but the whole deal where you lose the tiled yields on the tiles city was built is irritating, you wouldnt happen to know of a way to make it so that razing a city doesn't remove the tiles yields?

Thanks for all the help.

You can of course make your own trait to have the same function, the above was only an easy way to attach it to all sovereigns of a particular race.

I don't know how to turn off scorched earth.

wow what fun--no more ctrl n until i want to punch the monitor.

Seems like some method of the Birth of Summer effect  would need to be applied after the razing, but I've no idea how to trigger that effect on the razing of a city. 

HF i dont understand how this adds it to all elven sovereigns, it doesn't seem to refer to elves at all except for the name of the ability.

also would multiple thingies spawning look like this:

  <AbilityBonus InternalName="Blood_ElvesAbility">
    <AbilityBonusOption InternalName="Blood_Elves">
      <GameModifier>
        <ModType>Player</ModType>
        <Attribute>StartPositionHasResource</Attribute>
        <StrVal>Resource_CrystalCrag</StrVal>
        <Radius>3.0</Radius>
        <Provides>Faction starts with a Crystal Crag nearby</Provides>

        <ModType>Player</ModType>
        <Attribute>StartPositionHasResource</Attribute>
        <StrVal>Resource_CrystalCrag</StrVal>
        <Radius>3.0</Radius>
        <Provides>Faction starts with a Crystal Crag nearby</Provides>
      </GameModifier>
    </AbilityBonusOption>
  </AbilityBonus>

or this:

  <AbilityBonus InternalName="Blood_ElvesAbility">
    <AbilityBonusOption InternalName="Blood_Elves">
      <GameModifier>
        <ModType>Player</ModType>
        <Attribute>StartPositionHasResource</Attribute>
        <StrVal>Resource_CrystalCrag</StrVal>
        <Radius>3.0</Radius>
        <Provides>Faction starts with a Crystal Crag nearby</Provides>
      </GameModifier>

      <GameModifier>
        <ModType>Player</ModType>
        <Attribute>StartPositionHasResource</Attribute>
        <StrVal>Resource_CrystalCrag</StrVal>
        <Radius>3.0</Radius>
        <Provides>Faction starts with a Crystal Crag nearby</Provides>
      </GameModifier>
    </AbilityBonusOption>
  </AbilityBonus>

The second one.

It adds the modifier to spawn resources when starting with an elven sovereign. The abilitybonusoption is the elven bloodline. Because all elven sovereigns have the bloodline, all elven sovereigns have the modifier.

ah thanks, i hadnt looked at the race files, so thought you had randomly named it .