General A New Dawn discussion

Well, In my recent playthrough I've encountered some kind of problem and need an advice. I tweaked some BarbCiv functions to make em less powerful and advanced, comparing to "old" civilizations, and played a while. But it seems I misunderstand something in BUG menu, maybe it because I'm not natural english-speaker, or so. So, new-borned civilizations started strongly busted in techs. In fact, one of them instantly became first in score and found a religion - right after becaming a "full" civ after being a "minor" one. It's also started in Classic Era, with Monarchy and Literature already, while most of civilizations (or all?) still in Ancient Era. That's weird!

Just what exactly BarbTech Fraction do? It is now about 0.8, so does it mean that new BarbCiv get all tech known by 80% of already existent civilizations? Because, damn, it seems quite a opposite - like all techs known by 20% of all civilisations! Or it gives 80% of techs corresponding to era? Or what? Daym! Sudden-out-of-nowhere civs with one or two cities with superior techs just ruined my immersion :/

Meanwhile, latest rev, but I've encountered that stuff a while ago, like two or three months.

Sorry for dubleposting, but I have done some investigation.

It is now clear to me what was reason of new BarbCiv technological advantage. I used editor and checked other civ's tech. And, well, no one of older civilizations have, for example, Iron Working and Literature techs, except... barbarians! Barbarians are, actually, most advanced civilization in the whole world for now! And new-spawned civs are at least of their technological level.

Just used editor to remove kebab advanced techs from barbarians. And newbies. L2P Ridiculous. I wonder know - it's intended to be so, or what? Because, you know, they are like, Barbarians. :/

UPD: Still trying to deal with Super-High-Tec-Barbarians. Started new game, disabled TechDiffusion now. Barbarians don't give a f***, still leading world's technological progress. Circa turn 400 (eternity gamespeed). Barbarians rekt lot of civ all around a starting landmass, including 2 civ near my borders, so I haven't any neighbors now (scary!). Because they already got Iron Working and spawn Light Swordsmans a lot, while most of civilizations still count on Javeliners and Warriors. If they'll come to me, I will fall, cause I've got literally nothing to deal with swordsmans now and in nearest future, cuz it will cost at least ~200 turns to discover Iron Working. They'll get a freakin Tanks at this time.

I think I'm doing something wrong, cuz it's kinda unplayable now :/ Also I expect barbarians doing a Space Victory any time soon.

Heh, that reminds me of when I was doing a Raging Barbarians game... Nine out of the sixteen nations in the world were defeated in the opening Ancient Era, all but three were gone before the Classical Era. Most barb stacks had 30 ~ 70 units in them (I had the cap at 80) and it was rare to see a tile in the wildnerness unoccupied by a barbarian. Me and my AI neighbor were valiantly holding off the hordes, but they were Pyrrhic victories more often than not.... Eventually, the barbarians had teched to Aquebustiers and left our Longbows and Light Swords looking a tad dated. When I saw them fielding Muskets (We still didn't have gunpowder units of our own) I called it quits. xD

A a guess, I'd say the problem is EVERY barbarian city is counted towards the single barbarian civilization.

the more cities they get, the more science/gold etc. They don't pay maintenance as they are individual empires, but ALL science/gold goes into one barbarian pot.

Its just the nature of the beast.

You play with extremes like raging barbarians, no or high stack limits, it'll happen.

I played one game, raging barbarians, unlimited stacks, (really set at 300 max, or close too), I was only surviving civ, 2 others had small stack of units on forest hill, that barbs didn't attack?? as I had on full elimination, Other continent, as was continents map, was barbs on EVERY TILE!!!!

I was fighting off stacks of 300+ every 5 turns in my high walled border cities, with my Great general attached units. I could expand, but just boring, fighting off 300+ stacks, having improvements pillaged on borders.

IPEX-731BA5DD06 said:

A a guess, I'd say the problem is EVERY barbarian city is counted towards the single barbarian civilization.

the more cities they get, the more science/gold etc. They don't pay maintenance as they are individual empires, but ALL science/gold goes into one barbarian pot.

Its just the nature of the beast.

You play with extremes like raging barbarians, no or high stack limits, it'll happen.

I played one game, raging barbarians, unlimited stacks, (really set at 300 max, or close too), I was only surviving civ, 2 others had small stack of units on forest hill, that barbs didn't attack?? as I had on full elimination, Other continent, as was continents map, was barbs on EVERY TILE!!!!

I was fighting off stacks of 300+ every 5 turns in my high walled border cities, with my Great general attached units. I could expand, but just boring, fighting off 300+ stacks, having improvements pillaged on borders.

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I've reduced research speed for barbarians in the last update I've just released; I've doubled cost of each tech for barbs and increased it to 4x when using Raging Barbarians or Barbarian World. That should do it. In normal games it shoud prevent barbarians from being technological leaders, when using those 2 options they should still be a threat although they should not be as advanced as they were in the last revisions. It should also probably mitigate the problem of barbarians discovering founding religions techs (without actually founding them).

45°38'N-13°47'E;14449179 said:

I've reduced research speed for barbarians in the last update I've just released; I've doubled cost of each tech for barbs and increased it to 4x when using Raging Barbarians or Barbarian World. That should do it. In normal games it shoud prevent barbarians from being technological leaders, when using those 2 options they should still be a threat although they should not be as advanced as they were in the last revisions. It should also probably mitigate the problem of barbarians discovering founding religions techs (without actually founding them).

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Just played 4 games a little, almost wasted two days of my life (eternity gamespeed, each game stopped on Classic era for various reasons, but latest one I find interesting and intend to continue, btw)

Well, I think tech should cost for them even more, a little maybe, since they are still have very rapid technological advancment at the start of the game even without Raging Barbarians and Barbarian World. Most of civilizations can parry it only to a mid Classic era (depending of settings). And, because of that, BarbCiv start higly boosted and most (if not all) pre-medieval religions are usually founded by them. Set higher population for cities to spawn a BarbCiv could do a thing, but It obiously mean less BarbCiv -> more empty map -> less interesting "geopolitics" and gameplay.

Since I've released the latest changes only 8 hours ago, I'd say to give players more time to report if barbs are still too advanced. Of course it depends on settings, but for example very very seldom in my games I had barbarians found any religion.

I've never had that problem, I rarely found a religion myself. I take them via conquest

Barbs being tech leaders, I do sometimes see them with swords early, as well as spears/axes. I just put it down to the world being more advanced then me.

45°38'N-13°47'E;14449566 said:

Since I've released the latest changes only 8 hours ago, I'd say to give players more time to report if barbs are still too advanced. Of course it depends on settings, but for example very very seldom in my games I had barbarians found any religion.

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Well, didn't noticed latest at at that moment, sorry :/

Just tried it out, think it's nice now. Don't tried Raging Barbarians... but it's intended to be harsh anyway.

Meanwhile, now I am feeling mad about Apostolic Palace - because it was finished by local religion which have present only in two states (founder and his vassal), while my own spread all across the world and already in more than half of existing civs. I think it's time to purge some heresy soon. I found razing holy city with enabled "religion decay" is suprisingly noice thing, two religions are already wiped out without my participation, and one more is dying now.

Eldve said:

Just played 4 games a little, almost wasted two days of my life (eternity gamespeed, each game stopped on Classic era for various reasons, but latest one I find interesting and intend to continue, btw)

Well, I think tech should cost for them even more, a little maybe, since they are still have very rapid technological advancment at the start of the game even without Raging Barbarians and Barbarian World. Most of civilizations can parry it only to a mid Classic era (depending of settings). And, because of that, BarbCiv start higly boosted and most (if not all) pre-medieval religions are usually founded by them. Set higher population for cities to spawn a BarbCiv could do a thing, but It obiously mean less BarbCiv -> more empty map -> less interesting "geopolitics" and gameplay.

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Wasted life lol, at least civ aint insanely stressful like ranked matches in solo queue on dota/league

Perhaps the barbarian technology advantage can be dealt with using Technology Diffusion somehow. Perhaps they shouldn't be able to develop a technology which isn't known to a real Civ? Not sure on the best way to implement this... Perhaps it's equivalent to a near infinite tech' diffusion rate TO them, but a near zero science rate. Not sure whether that can be done though...

aggri1 said:

Perhaps the barbarian technology advantage can be dealt with using Technology Diffusion somehow. Perhaps they shouldn't be able to develop a technology which isn't known to a real Civ? Not sure on the best way to implement this... Perhaps it's equivalent to a near infinite tech' diffusion rate TO them, but a near zero science rate. Not sure whether that can be done though...

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If you have tried the latest revision, barbs research has been slowed down.

It's been awhile since I've played 4. Was disappointed with 5 and kept coming back to it, never finishing a game. So I made my (third) purchase of civ 4, my usual ritual. Checked out all the big mods. But man I am crazy impressed with the changes to a New Dawn. Kudos really this is like the Civ 5 I wish we had.

Got back to playing CivIV. Installed the game and ran the updater, made my usual minor XML changes (Re-added unhealth to Jungles, removed Protective from a few leaders that didn't have it in Vanilla, etc) and started a game.

Noble difficulty, I had four cities, got some revolutions. First one asked me to change leaders. I didn't feel I had much to lose at the time, so went ahead with it. Thankfully, the automated AI didn't completely botch things, and I actually stuck with its civic changes. A while later, it demanded another ceding of leadership. This time I said no. A handful of barbarians spawned and were dealt with easily. I captured a city on the opposite side of this water channel where a barbarian-spawned America was starting to develop.

Eventually Roosevelt emerged and greeted me, and not too much long after declared war on me, marching an army up to the city I captured. I gifted it to the Ethopians so I could avoid the stability hit that would come from losing a city, and this pushed him up to Pleased relations. I had a few more revoltions and this time Egypt spawned. As I was fighting him, Roosevelt declared war on Ethopia too, taking the city that I had gifted him and then raving it.

Some decades after I got rid of the Egyptian rebellion they came back, but this time they actually took two of my border cities (Each with about 5 ~ 8 units in them) on the very turn they spawned, and held them for quite some time. Meanwhile, in my sole remaining extra city, they demanded I hand the city over and they'd make peace. I said no. The very next turn? EIGHTEEN units - most of them war chariots - spawned right next to it. Since I already had a large stack nearby I managed to deal with them, with the few stragglers deciding to pillage over attacking the barely held city. As I was recovering and got my stack healed up, the city revolted again - once more spawning a huge stack right outside it, instead of the usual scattered handful of units.

I lost the city, and for good measure the game thought it'd be cute to increase my Difficulty to Noble (Yeah, all this was happening on Warlord) while simultaneously lowering Roosevelt's, who was almost 300 points ahead of me, had seven cities to my only having just my capitol and a border city that just got swarmed, and was half an era ahead of me in technology. Fun.


I was actually enjoying the change of pace in difficulty, really. But when the game pulled that yoink move on me, I was fully willing to go into the Editor and "fix" this problem - wiping the 20 something units that swarmed that city and re-captured it myself with the two remaining injured units nearby. I didn't do anything about their northern cities they took nor anything about Roosevelt - I wanted to deal with those fairly (And I eventually did) but the game throwing such horrible events at me while I'm already struggling to survive with just two cities - and this at Warlord difficulty before it decided to push me to Noble as I lost my only extra city.....
Not sure what was up with all that tbh. Up until those "Let's spawn two dozen units that are better than anything you can field!" revolts, it was tough but fair. That on the other hand, coupled with the game pushing my difficulty up even higher, was not cool.


Other than that dark moment, things have been going relatively well. I'm still a dozen techs behind Roosevelt and Ghengis Khan and am still suffering revolts in my two border cities I took back from the Egyptian rebels, but I'm still enjoying that uphill fight.

My plan is to make number of units spawned during a revolution dependent on handicap, I don't think it currently work like this
If your level went up, your score was probably growing so that's OK.

Actually my score was dropping, even before I lost that city xD

I was on Noble pretty much the whole time, even as my neighbor to the north began planting cities on my borders. I manually switched to Warlord after a certain point but it pushed me back to Noble during those harsh moments. I'm guessing there's some OCC barb-spawned tundra locked nations out there with 32 score or something that's making the game think "Oh, in the long run I guess this guy's not doing so bad!"

Of course the guy ended up losing the two cities he planted on my borders eventually, one to Greece nearby and the other he gave to me because rebels were demanding he do so. I'm sure if he was at Cautious or something he'd just have declared war on me (Finally, a Friendly AI that is actually honoring the Friendly relations! T_T )


On a side-note, I only just noticed now - centuries after I accepted the demand I let someone else lead the nation for a while - that my leader hasn't changed back. I started the game as Augustus, and I'm playing as someone else now. Wasn't it supposed to change back to who you started as after the automated turns are over? I guess I should have noticed when the border cities demanded I give leadership back to the original, but it was late at night so I probably just glossed over that

Rezca said:

Actually my score was dropping, even before I lost that city xD

I was on Noble pretty much the whole time, even as my neighbor to the north began planting cities on my borders. I manually switched to Warlord after a certain point but it pushed me back to Noble during those harsh moments. I'm guessing there's some OCC barb-spawned tundra locked nations out there with 32 score or something that's making the game think "Oh, in the long run I guess this guy's not doing so bad!"

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Then someone else might have been losing more score than you were losing. Your level rises up above nobel when you are more than 1 standard deviation above the mean score and it lowers below noble when you are 1 standard deviation below the mean score. If you are lower than Noble, your level rises when you are less than half standard deviation away and if you are above Noble your level lowers when you are less than half standard deviation above mean score. So it doesn't only depend on how you are performing but also on how other civs are. Also, 1 city civs only counts up to classical era. After that, those are not being taken into account when calculating mean score. IIRC there's also some other adjusting factor that I've added to take small civs into account but I don't remember details now, although I've written that part of the code.

Rezca said:

On a side-note, I only just noticed now - centuries after I accepted the demand I let someone else lead the nation for a while - that my leader hasn't changed back. I started the game as Augustus, and I'm playing as someone else now. Wasn't it supposed to change back to who you started as after the automated turns are over? I guess I should have noticed when the border cities demanded I give leadership back to the original, but it was late at night so I probably just glossed over that

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No, it's not supposed to work like that. When you accept another leader to step in, you will keep using the new leader until there's another revolution/election changing the leader again. It's always been like that.

45°38'N-13°47'E said:

Then someone else might have been losing more score than you were losing. Your level rises up above nobel when you are more than 1 standard deviation above the mean score and it lowers below noble when you are 1 standard deviation below the mean score. If you are lower than Noble, your level rises when you are less than half standard deviation away and if you are above Noble your level lowers when you are less than half standard deviation above mean score. So it doesn't only depend on how you are performing but also on how other civs are. Also, 1 city civs only counts up to classical era. After that, those are not being taken into account when calculating mean score. IIRC there's also some other adjusting factor that I've added to take small civs into account but I don't remember details now, although I've written that part of the code.

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Yeah, out of the known world I was doing the worst, but there was more than ten other civs unaccounted for; including rebel-spawns and Barbarian Civs. Guess Flex.Difficulty can end up bitting me in some unfortunate times when taking those backwaters into account eheh...
"Oh you're doing pretty bad sure, but there's a few freshly spawned OCC's wallowing in misery over in the arctic circle so... Guess you're doing better than them so here's a Difficulty Increase for you - enjoy!"

45°38'N-13°47'E said:

No, it's not supposed to work like that. When you accept another leader to step in, you will keep using the new leader until there's another revolution/election changing the leader again. It's always been like that.

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Aaah okay, working as intended and I just never knew. I only ever accepted that demand once and never ever did so again until now, so I just never knew that's how it was supposed to work. Thanks for bringing that to my attention ^^

Sometimes I wish there was a button to globally reset Espionage priorities to zero.... For when the computer decides to do this to you without warning.

Strange... never happened to me.