General A New Dawn discussion

val3 said:

May be I don't understand...But I always doing so. It is a simple hack - right after you get siege war build 10 catapults, go to the nearest barbcity and get as much free experience as you can. Do not kill barbarians if you can, it is source of experience! They can get 20 experience each or even more sometimes => 4-5 promotions. Also it is tons of scores for field generals. Also it many scores for great generals => more field generals. It is like the training before the real wars, it is necessary to not suffer losses in wars with civs.

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It's silly to me because the AI is actually trying to kill these units, not 'practice'. I've even witnessed a lone catapult spending more than twenty turns trying to kill a barbarian Lion that got trapped in their borders!

I understand the bit about it being useful for Commander units, but I've since stopped using those since it felt like cheating to me. The AI almost never uses them [properly], and enabling that option means they rarely seem to settle them, merge them with troops (Led by Warlord), or use for Acadamies. These Commanders they end up using as scouts, or have like three unpromoted Commanders huddling in a city, while I have a Commander-led army that has virtually every promotion available to the Commander and is walking from city to city razing everything and all the bonuses rendering the stack untouchable.

Field Commanders are a great idea in theory, but right now the AI just seems to have no idea how to use them, always converts their generals into Commanders, then lets them go to waste.

Rezca said:

It's silly to me because the AI is actually trying to kill these units, not 'practice'. I've even witnessed a lone catapult spending more than twenty turns trying to kill a barbarian Lion that got trapped in their borders!

I understand the bit about it being useful for Commander units, but I've since stopped using those since it felt like cheating to me. The AI almost never uses them [properly], and enabling that option means they rarely seem to settle them, merge them with troops (Led by Warlord), or use for Acadamies. These Commanders they end up using as scouts, or have like three unpromoted Commanders huddling in a city, while I have a Commander-led army that has virtually every promotion available to the Commander and is walking from city to city razing everything and all the bonuses rendering the stack untouchable.

Field Commanders are a great idea in theory, but right now the AI just seems to have no idea how to use them, always converts their generals into Commanders, then lets them go to waste.

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So very true.

I've even witnessed a lone catapult spending more than twenty turns trying to kill a barbarian Lion that got trapped in their borders!

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And most siege units when they bombard/try to kill, can only do a % damage. They can't outright kill the unit they are attacking.

For me it's gotten to the point that I don't build stacks of siege units anymore. A couple brought along to reduce defenses and that's it.

JosEPh

JosEPh_II said:

So very true.

And most siege units when they bombard/try to kill, can only do a % damage. They can't outright kill the unit they are attacking.

For me it's gotten to the point that I don't build stacks of siege units anymore. A couple brought along to reduce defenses and that's it.

JosEPh

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I wish I had your luck then
I've had so many times when I brought defenses down to 0 and still found I was only getting 40 ~ 60 odds on the defenders, or had my siege units gradually whittled down and killed off by suicide cavalry thrown at it. Would reach the city I was planning to raze with only a few injured siege units left, or none at all

Rezca said:

It's silly to me because the AI is actually trying to kill these units, not 'practice'. I've even witnessed a lone catapult spending more than twenty turns trying to kill a barbarian Lion that got trapped in their borders!

I understand the bit about it being useful for Commander units, but I've since stopped using those since it felt like cheating to me. The AI almost never uses them [properly], and enabling that option means they rarely seem to settle them, merge them with troops (Led by Warlord), or use for Acadamies. These Commanders they end up using as scouts, or have like three unpromoted Commanders huddling in a city, while I have a Commander-led army that has virtually every promotion available to the Commander and is walking from city to city razing everything and all the bonuses rendering the stack untouchable.

Field Commanders are a great idea in theory, but right now the AI just seems to have no idea how to use them, always converts their generals into Commanders, then lets them go to waste.

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I'm agree with you. It is cheating at the moment. But I use them anyway....
May be one can teach AI to use generals for example give exp for most productive city? It is easy to learn AI to do that ( well, easier than correct using), and it will give AI more advantages than current situation.

Everything is clear, huh?

Simple answer - don't play with 36 civilisations active.

Arakhor said:

Simple answer - don't play with 36 civilisations active.

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I haven't counted, but they should be 49+me, since 50 is the limit.
I use megacivpack (lite)

Sogroon said:

I haven't counted, but they should be 49+me, since 50 is the limit.
I use megacivpack (lite)

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Should be 48 Civs + Barbs + player = 50.

But you won't finish that game.

JosEPh

Sogroon said:

I haven't counted, but they should be 49+me, since 50 is the limit.
I use megacivpack (lite)

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And everyone isn't at war with everyone else? Boring!

Rezca said:

And everyone isn't at war with everyone else? Boring!

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Not if your Victory condition is Cultural, Religious, or Scientific. Or maybe even Space race. Not everybody plays Civ to be a war monger. Some play to be builders, which Sid included provisions for.

JosEPh

JosEPh_II said:

Not if your Victory condition is Cultural, Religious, or Scientific. Or maybe even Space race. Not everybody plays Civ to be a war monger. Some play to be builders, which Sid included provisions for.

JosEPh

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Yes, I am a "builder" and my game is set to Scientific and Space-race victory.

Should be 48 Civs + Barbs + player = 50.

But you won't finish that game.

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Why would I not? It is not that boring

JosEPh_II said:

Not if your Victory condition is Cultural, Religious, or Scientific. Or maybe even Space race. Not everybody plays Civ to be a war monger. Some play to be builders, which Sid included provisions for.

JosEPh

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And if you're both?

I never have any one set path in my games, even if I do set some sort of goal for myself. Even if I'm chasing a Cultural victory, even if Domination and Conquest are disabled, I still end up starting wars and going after my neighbors. Besides, everyone being at war doesn't mean you need to be taking part in those wars
Let the AI wear each other down and slow their tech pace while you build and research in peace.

I've seen enough to know that the AI can be considerably deadly if you allow them to be all friendly with each other and let a big love circle develop amongst them all. The chances of you out-teching them and beating them via culture or space in that case just doesn't seem that good. If there's no one to shake things up - be it an aggressive AI or yourself - then that's not good.

Now I've never played a 100% peaceful/builder's game, never used that option before. I've read about one game where he never built any military and went full on builder/culture and still made it through though.


I am a warmonger at heart, but I also love chasing culture. Back when the 'Absolute eight tiles of control' was still in effect, I found it very hard to play AND - at least with my usual playstyle (Which was an odd combination of peaceful building and constant warfare). I couldn't dominate and cripple neighboring AI's with cultural influence, and that took a huge amount of fun out of things for me. Traditional warfare was still there yes, but you can't exactly take that route when the AI you're tormenting is your vassal


In any case, my comment about everyone being at war wasn't a serious one. I always chuckle when I see the AIs declaring on each other, and when *everyone* is at war with at least one other person? Hah.

I love having mixed builder and wars games: you weaken them with culture, and then you leave the army do the rest. It's great to see warmongers who scared you in Classical Age to be left slumping and their cities converted to 50% of your culture by Renaissance...

Sogroon said:

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Why would I not? It is not that boring

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Has nothing to do with boring, but more with the 32 bit Civ IV engine. You may not be computationally able to finish that game with that number of Civs in the game.

Is Rev Option On? How big is the map? How many cities does each Civ avg now in this game? Are there Mil. units used? Is conflict allowed or is this a Peace only game?

JosEPh

JosEPh_II said:

Has nothing to do with boring, but more with the 32 bit Civ IV engine. You may not be computationally able to finish that game with that number of Civs in the game.

Is Rev Option On? How big is the map? How many cities does each Civ avg now in this game? Are there Mil. units used? Is conflict allowed or is this a Peace only game?

JosEPh

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Maybe not. I am in the industrial era on a gigantic map, eternety speed, Rev is on and it is not an Always Peace game.
There are 200+ cities in the game and the graphic settings are on high (exept for the Single Unit Graphics, that is on). I had no MAF yet, so it is quite promissing.
I'll report whether I can finnish the game or not

Been playing through a new game...

Noble difficulty, Aggressive AI, Huge Mapsize, Tortera?

200 turns in, most civs are running around with copper or even iron weapons, NO barbarian cities have spawned (Save for one way out on a 11 tile island millions of miles away from everuone) and animals - ANIMALS!! - are still spawning on the mainland.


Most of the main civs are in the medieval now, and I finally saw my first barbarian archer. Just one, and animals are still spawning.


I had to actually go in and add barbarian cities myself because the barbarian "activity" - if you want to call it that - was just so pathetic. I see this almost every game, regardless of difficulty or Raging Barbarians. The only way I get any sort of activity is if I couple it with Barbarian World. It's been like this since way back in rev600 days. BTS barbarians were lethal, but I often forget they even exist in AND.

I know, barbarians activity will be increased. By the way, are you playing on blitz?
The only problem I've seen with totestra so far is that resources don't spawn on mountains, but I plan to correct that

45°38'N-13°47'E;13434330 said:

I know, barbarians activity will be increased. By the way, are you playing on blitz?
The only problem I've seen with totestra so far is that resources don't spawn on mountains, but I plan to correct that

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Normal Speed at the moment. Usually I play on Normal or Epic.

Blitz goes by too quickly for my taste (Except on smaller maps. Sometimes I'll do a Tiny/Small "Play Now" game on Blitz) and speeds slower than Marathon take too long for me to stay interested in it


Yeah I saw that on the Big And Small mapscript as well. Might have been the map size (Tiny) but none of the mountains had any resources on them despite having Useable Mountains enabled.

Rezca said:

I had to actually go in and add barbarian cities myself because the barbarian "activity" - if you want to call it that - was just so pathetic. I see this almost every game, regardless of difficulty or Raging Barbarians. The only way I get any sort of activity is if I couple it with Barbarian World. It's been like this since way back in rev600 days. BTS barbarians were lethal, but I often forget they even exist in AND.

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To add a counterpoint to this, I played a MP game of AND last weekend and I had 2 barb cities appear next to me, and lost a escorted settler + archer to a pack of barbarian units that ganged up on me.

Barbarians are definitely around. Possibly the random numbers didn't roll in their favor for your game?

If you want hard data though, I could add logging so that whenever barbarian units spawn it prints the unit and total number of barbs on the map to the ANewDawn.log. You could actually see what the game says then.

Rezca said:

Normal Speed at the moment. Usually I play on Normal or Epic.

Blitz goes by too quickly for my taste (Except on smaller maps. Sometimes I'll do a Tiny/Small "Play Now" game on Blitz) and speeds slower than Marathon take too long for me to stay interested in it


Yeah I saw that on the Big And Small mapscript as well. Might have been the map size (Tiny) but none of the mountains had any resources on them despite having Useable Mountains enabled.

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Wait a moment, are you saying that on a Huge/Noble/Normal game most civs are in the middle age around turn 200? That's crazy, they're not supposed to be in middle age before turn 320-340! This is something else I need to check.