Random Seeds

What is the random seed?

When creating a new game, you can enter a number into the "Optional random seed" field, and it will determine player order and the outcome of random events within the game--for example, which corporation's presidency comes with the Cornelius Vanderbilt private company in 18Chesapeake, or the order of the private companies up for auction in 1822.

Reusing a game’s seed

To get the seed for an existing game, open the game, go to the Tools tab, and click the "Copy Random Seed" button under "Game Data". When creating a new game, this seed can be pasted into the "Optional random seed" field, or you can paste it into a text file to save for later use.

Generating a seed for a specific outcome

TODO

Broken hotseat games

Before #10070, the seed only determined player order. Consequently, hotseat games created before that time have a seed in their settings which is incompatible with the latest code. Those hotseat games can be fixed by opening the browser console, copying in the code from migrate_seed_hotseat.js and hitting enter, then entering either migrate_all() or migrate_by_id() with the hotseat game ID to migrate, e.g., migrate_by_id('hs_onvmiaqn_146701'). Hotseat games on devices where the browser console cannot be opened are not able to be migrated. NOTE: always be cautious when pasting code into your browser console. If you don't understand the code you are executing, or any of the steps involved, it is safest to simply delete your old hotseat games.