Exclude extreme modifiers on Four Islands 🏝️

[FloPinguin]

Description:

I saw multiple occasions of 3h long four islands team games because of the 2x gold multiplier. For example here.
People just get too many SAMs.
Without the extreme gold amount, team games on four islands are actually fun.

This PR excludes goldMultiplier and startingGold25M from special game modifiers when the map is FourIslands.

Please complete the following:

• I have added screenshots for all UI updates
• I process any text displayed to the user through translateText() and I've added it to the en.json file
• I have added relevant tests to the test directory
• I confirm I have thoroughly tested these changes and take full responsibility for any bugs introduced

Please put your Discord username so you can be contacted if a bug or regression is found:

FloPinguin

[coderabbitai]

No actionable comments were generated in the recent review. 🎉

ℹ️ Recent review info

⚙️ Run configuration

Configuration used: Organization UI

Review profile: CHILL

Plan: Pro

Run ID: 65c5dd2f-6b08-4650-881e-01f6ed2664a3

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between 75f329f and 5abafc2.

📒 Files selected for processing (1)

• src/server/MapPlaylist.ts

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Walkthrough

Added map-specific exclusion logic in MapPlaylist.getSpecialConfig() to prevent extreme economy modifiers (goldMultiplier and startingGold25M) from being applied to FourIslands map in special-mode public games. Also removed a comment about peace time conversion with no functional impact.

Changes

Cohort / File(s)	Summary
Map-specific Modifier Exclusion src/server/MapPlaylist.ts	Added conditional logic to exclude goldMultiplier and startingGold25M modifiers when FourIslands map is selected. Removed obsolete comment about peace time duration conversion.

Estimated code review effort

🎯 2 (Simple) | ⏱️ ~8 minutes

Poem

🏝️ Four islands stand serene and bold,
No golden floods shall break their hold,
Modifiers tamed, the balance stays,
A fairer game through special days! ✨

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 3

✅ Passed checks (3 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Title check	✅ Passed	The title clearly and specifically describes the main change: excluding extreme modifiers on Four Islands map.
Description check	✅ Passed	The description is directly related to the changeset, providing context for why the change is needed and what modifiers are being excluded.
Docstring Coverage	✅ Passed	No functions found in the changed files to evaluate docstring coverage. Skipping docstring coverage check.

_{✏️ Tip: You can configure your own custom pre-merge checks in the settings.}

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[VolgaGerm]

Those lobbies almost always filled up within 10 seconds tops. Everyone loved them. This merge has effectively removed an entire game mode (where players build tall instead of wide) for what reason? Every other map has short, wide games, except for maybe Baikal.

The Four Island map with gold multipliers and starting cash needs to be MORE common, not removed!

[FloPinguin]

Those lobbies almost always filled up within 10 seconds tops. Everyone loved them. This merge has effectively removed an entire game mode (where players build tall instead of wide) for what reason? Every other map has short, wide games, except for maybe Baikal.

The Four Island map with gold multipliers and starting cash needs to be MORE common, not removed!

From the 52 Four Islands games which took longer than 2 hours, the biggest common reason was the gold multiplier (17 games).
Many of these 52 games ended at the 3 hour limit. Nobody won. Full stalemate. Thats just not fun, I hope you can agree?
I just wanted to protect against that.
But I might do another PR to improve this one, because my data analysis showed that startingGold25M is actually NOT a reason for these giga-stalemates. And the new water nukes also prevent them.

[VolgaGerm]

Ah, I wasn't even aware that there was a 3 hour limit. From my many games playing in that "mode" they always ended around an hour and a half in. I agree that stalemates aren't exactly fun, just never had one before. In any case, I do love the team vs team "tall" play-style and I don't want to see it effectively removed since it's already pretty rare.

[VariableVince]

And the new water nukes also prevent them.

Not getting into the rest of this discussion, i think the points are made :) But when it comes to water nukes: evan said we should only be using them on Compact maps for public games for now, because of the performance impact: #3604 (comment). So probably not for Four Islands until the performance is better. Maybe Vimacs or Mole could help/give tips.

[FloPinguin]

And the new water nukes also prevent them.

Not getting into the rest of this discussion, i think the points are made :) But when it comes to water nukes: evan said we should only be using them on Compact maps for public games for now, because of the performance impact: #3604 (comment). So probably not for Four Islands until the performance is better. Maybe Vimacs or Mole could help/give tips.

He tested on GWM, that one is always quite laggy... During todays Lewis-Stream and all the games which Valentino held, nobody complained about the performance, so it should be ok. But I will try to do an performance improvement PR anyway :)