Changes for v1.07

Some interface suggestions (some are already posted in the general thread, sorry for repetition):

- Don't ask me if I want to declare war on a foreign nation, if I land a unit on a plot with their unit on it. If I want war, I'll start it myself, thanks.

- In the city resource screen, when I drag a colonist there, don't ask me what resource I want to produce, just autodecide for me to do the most effective resource. If I want a specific resource, I'll double-click and select it myself.

- Could it be made possible to allow the player to put colonists in a colony even if it has a deficit in food. It's annoying that I have to allocate enough colonists in the colony to food production, then enter the new colonist, then allocate people back to what they were doing before.

- Allow ships in transit to Europe to turn back to Europe after having started the voyage to the New World before they arrive there.

- Allow double-click on colonists in the garrison box and show possible professions.

- Show all possible professions in the double-click-on-colonist menu in the colony (for colonists working resources), not just the production professions and the current. If my colonist is working lumber, I want to be able to let him choose ore in another field in the double-click menu. Like when you double-click on a guy who's doing some production.

- Add an option in game setup to not allow pirates in the random selection of players.

Mark_T said:

- Could it be made possible to allow the player to put colonists in a colony even if it has a deficit in food. It's annoying that I have to allocate enough colonists in the colony to food production, then enter the new colonist, then allocate people back to what they were doing before.

Click to expand...

I'm not sure how the mechanic works at the moment, but there is all sorts of exploit potential in here which could allow work to be done with no food cost by adding colonists well over the food capabilites of the settlement. There may be other solutions, but the only one I have off the top of my head is to increase the pushishment for starvation.

PLANTATIONS

Not sure why colonizations assumes tobacco, cotton, and sugar are so naturally plentiful. I'd rather see that your pioneer (or a cotton/tobacco/sugar planter) has to build a plantation improvement on a tile in order to get these resources.

you could just take the plantation improvement from civ4 too

To elaborate on the random hostile indians idea.

If you dont have good standing with natives, they should randomly raid you settlement to steal stuff or even burn down improvments.
You would have to attack the indian village to have it stop.

The European Kings demanding you attack settlements of other europeans and if you fail to take the settlement raise taxes and REF.

Have the other europeans use pirates more or attack with ships when at war.
I had no real sea battles until declaration of independance.

Add back in the Fountain of Youth discovered event.

The Great Apple said:

I'm not sure how the mechanic works at the moment, but there is all sorts of exploit potential in here which could allow work to be done with no food cost by adding colonists well over the food capabilites of the settlement. There may be other solutions, but the only one I have off the top of my head is to increase the pushishment for starvation.

Click to expand...

I think you already can manually allocate more food to be eaten than what is present. And the game handles that fine, by sending colonists outside the city.

Aye, but do the colonists get to work first? I don't have a copy of the source with me so can't check. If so by clever rearranging you could create a similar effect at the moment, though it wouldn't be so bad.

The Great Apple said:

Aye, but do the colonists get to work first? I don't have a copy of the source with me so can't check. If so by clever rearranging you could create a similar effect at the moment, though it wouldn't be so bad.

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Indeed it is possible to cheat this way. You can overuse food all you want, the colonists will just be sent outside the colony, but they will have produced what they were doing. You just have to send them back in each round. This oughta get fixed.

How about selling letters of Marquis?

Provides you with a privateer that attacks other nations but not your own but is ai controlled.

Faille said:

How about selling letters of Marquis?

Provides you with a privateer that attacks other nations but not your own but is ai controlled.

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Perhaps a better idea would be to provide a privateer, but he has to return all goods captured to europe and pays a much higher tax rate, so he's kind of on loan. After a certain time he becomes completely yours.

Alternatively, weren't LoM given against a particular country? So anything captured off that country could be sold at no/lower tax in europe.

Personally i hate microing privateers, and when i leave them on sentry they do not awake when other ships pass them, so i just do not bother..
Automating them may not be a bad idea.

The ability to select just part of a cargo when trading. As it is, if you have 200 guns on a ship you must put all of them up for trade. If a tribe has 400g they will probably offer all of it for however many guns you offer for sale. If you have to put up 200 guns, that's 2g per gun; if you could put up only 50 guns, that's 8g per gun and a good deal for you. Plus you can sell the rest somewhere else. This is a sorely lacking feature.

Privateers capture, rather than sink, ships. After capture you could load up their cargos and have the option of letting them go or sinking them (or even reflag them?).

BobTheBull said:

The ability to select just part of a cargo when trading. As it is, if you have 200 guns on a ship you must put all of them up for trade. If a tribe has 400g they will probably offer all of it for however many guns you offer for sale. If you have to put up 200 guns, that's 2g per gun; if you could put up only 50 guns, that's 8g per gun and a good deal for you. Plus you can sell the rest somewhere else. This is a sorely lacking feature.

Click to expand...

I agree - I've never quite understood this limitation.

BobTheBull said:

Privateers capture, rather than sink, ships. After capture you could load up their cargos and have the option of letting them go or sinking them (or even reflag them?).

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This is a tricky one. Historically privateers wouldn't aim to sink enemy transport vessels, but instead aim to force them to surrender. A prize crew would then be put aboard and the captured ship sailed back to a home port.
I'd imagine a game mechanic would work so that a captured ship would either automatically jump back to home port, or move under privateer flags until it reached a home port. WRT combat I'd imagine if the privateer found itself being outgunned by a Galleon it would have quite a high probability of escaping... and if it showed signs of running I doubt many merchant ships would take the chance of destroying the privateer.

Those mechanics I've just suggested buff privateers quite a lot. Withdrawal chance + capturing ships => very good. I suppose this could be counteracted by implementing prize money - where you would have to pay to get hold of the captured ship + cargo.

To be honest I can see naval combat as something that could be greatly expanded without adding too much complexity to the game. Another thought is some sort of "prevailing wind". Sailing into the wind would cost twice as many movement points, while sailing behind the wind would cost half. A westerly would slow ships coming from Europe, and speed ships going to Europe. Every turn the wind could swing or stay the same direction. It'd remove a bit of the predictability I feel colonization has a bit too much of atm... and could add a bit of excitement into otherwise fairly dull naval stuff.

- More Indian chieftans - everytime you go to trade with an Indian village you speak to the relative leader, even though you can only trade with the village itself. This just seems weird to me. Could a random generic LH be created by the game for each individual village, with the main Chief as the LH for the capital and the direct diplomacy screen?
- When you build Printing Press or Newspapers you get updates (in the Trade Advisor presumably) on the prices other nations will pay for goods, to give more of a market feel.
- Change/remove some texts - eg when you move to a square with a foreign unit on it and you don't wish to go to war (Let me reconsider), or when you capture a unit (says unit has been destroyed, then says unit has been captured). Obviously I can (and have done) change this on my own pc, but would be nice to have them in the 'unofficial official' patch.
- Random events aren't random. This was the same in Civ4 and bugs the hell out of me. Can you fix this?
- Pioneers should use/deplete their tools as they build improvements.
- Can you activate the Enter Button when shift-moving goods to transports in the city screen. It's annoying as hell typing in a number to move then having to click ok!

That is all for now. I did make some other points in other threads so wont repeat them here.

- additional Hud button 'switch to city screen'

Thanks Dale,

at the moment I have only one wish, don't know if this is possible to do.

But it would be great, if we could get an additional hud button in the main screen, so that we can easely switch to the city mangement screen without weird searching and clicking on the city tile in the main game screen. That would be nice.

I would like to play as the natives. I know this is already possible by changing the XML, but right now, they're very boring to play with. Also, how about a conquest victory, which can be achieved by destroying all natives and europeans.

I wonder why Converted Natives can't become soldiers. I know this is a Vanilla WAD, but really I wonder why not. Natives were skilled warriors, so I don't understand why CN can't use muskets becoming soldiers (or dragoons with horses) in the late-game, just before DoI, for example.
Could one of the late FFs grant them such ability? Could they become soldiers through educational buildings, if a GG or veteran soldier is in the settlement for example?
This could enforce the 'missions' founding and preserving strategy.

You can educate them to farmers or smth, and then make them dragoons.

Mark_T said:

You can educate them to farmers or smth, and then make them dragoons.

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How to? AoD2 doesn't allow to improve them in a native village, am I right? Can I send them to school in a settlement? I never tried this before....

ambrox62 said:

How to? AoD2 doesn't allow to improve them in a native village, am I right? Can I send them to school in a settlement? I never tried this before....

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AFAIK, converted natives will never change. I haven't tried putting them in schools, but even if you could, it would probably take too long for it to be worth it. I always end up shuffling them to the smaller cities in my outskirts, and then moving them on to new smaller cities as soon as master farmers or planters become available.

No, AoD2 doesn't permit changing their professions in native villages, and you can't arm them with guns, so even if they could fight (never tried) they would be inferior to true soldiers. There is a founding father that increases their strength, but I've never taken him as I never saw the point of having them fight. In my games, they just churn out food, or sometimes sugar or cotton.

Cheers, --- Wheldrake

Yes you can teach them in schools (and by working a long time in a proffesion as of latest AoD2).