Being acquainted with TAC and RaR, I've played your mod for the first time in the last days. During play, I've assembled a list of feedback that might be of interest for you (or not, as you wish). I post it here, hopefully being the right place for that purpose.
Overall:
The mod excels in different aspects:
Having said that, I would suggest some minor adjustments for some of your concepts:
There are some details for which I would propose small changes:
And there is a game concept that does not seem to work (or at least I could not manage to understand it):
Being acquainted with the other big mods, I would also love to see some of their elements into DoaNE:
Finally, I have observed some minor bugs/issues (beyond the lame AI, of which you are already aware of course):
So, to sum up, thank you very much for having developed this mod. Keep up the excellent work!
Overall:
- This mod is marvelous!
- It was highly successful at dragging me back to Col even though I was tired of the mechanics in Vanilla and the other mods.
- It did so by simplifying cumbersome mechanics (mostly by automation) and adding new lightwight/interesting ones.
The mod excels in different aspects:
- Reduction of playing-time by removing some micro-management and adding era victory conditions.
- You were probably motivated to do so for allowing reasonable multi-player experiences.
- But even for a time-pressed single player, this opens up a whole lot of possibilities.
- I had played the RaR as a one city tiny world challenge in order to reduce the playing time / micro-mgmt.
- The mod forces the player to adapt his playing style to several new well-thought out concepts.
- The automation leads to focusing on what really matters.
- Acquiring and applying knowledge of crops is much more fun (and realistic) than Vanilla's model.
- Intermediate goals (reaching the next era not being a victory condition) provide for shorter feedback loops ("just one more era")
Having said that, I would suggest some minor adjustments for some of your concepts:
- "Piracy" on land
- Currently, the dominant strategy is to avert sea routes and use land routes which are super-safe even on long distances.
- Historically, even during the peak of pirate activity (1660), the Spanish still preferred sea routes and restricted land routes to an absolute minimum (Acapulco-Mexico-VeraCruz & PuertoBello-Panama).
- The best option would be to reintroduce Indian raids without declaration of war (even executed by neutral Indians) since, as a side effect, this would increase the mostly inexistent friction with the Indians.
- "Intelligent" pirates
- Currently, pirates swarm around the most lucrative sea routes but don't dare to attack if these are well-guarded.
- As a consequence, less lucrative but unguarded sea routes are not harassed.
- Historically, minor pirates never aimed at the treasure fleet but at small inter-city unescorted traffic.
- Proposal would be to aim the routes that have the best lucrative / strength ratio.
- Directed privateering
- Currently, there is no means of targeting the opponents' shipping lines without declaring war.
- In Vanilla and the other mods, one may use Privateer for this purpose.
- Historically (mid 17th), nations often sponsored (or at least tolerated) privateering.
- Proposal would be to re-introduce a Privateer unit or to add the mechanic of being able to define the policy towards pirates (accomodative? to which target?)
- Era requirements: Minimal overall population instead of min population per city
- Currently, the era requirements are "min 11 colonists per city" (era 2) or likewise.
- But other requirements (like revolutionary feeling) are on a global level.
- Historically, the new world's city sizes largely differed (major hubs like Habana/Cartagena vs. lots of plantation oriented towns on the mainland).
- Proposal would be to specify a minimum level of the overall population, being higher than the sum of the current requirement (eg., 25 for era 2).
- Then, having megacity hubs would be a viable strategy (as well as equally sized cities would be).
- You could still specify a minimum population per city on top, but that being about half of the current level.
- More elastic European prices
- Currenly, you can buy the last food for 20 gold, the premium to buying when there is lots of food available being negligible.
- But prices should be much more dependent on stock level (buying that last one should be really expensive), this is what I mean with price elasticity.
- Route definition: Define precedence of loading colonists vs. buying goods
- Currently, in Europe, colonists scheduled to be shipped are not taken aboard if there are some goods to be bought.
- Most of the time, boarding the colonists is at least as important as getting the goods.
- If making this configurable per route is too difficult, I'd suggest that colonists get precedence by default (instead of the goods).
- Route definition: Define destination's target stock for buying in Europe
- Often you have a situation in which you want to import some goods (tools,...) from Europe to your colony.
- But you only want to do so if the amount of this good at the destination (ie., colony) falls below some threshold (eg., 50).
- Currently, the route automation does not support this, as you could only specify how much is to be bought in Europe (irrespective of how much of that good is left in Europe).
- For inter-colony routes, such option is already available.
- Route definition: define by copying existing route as template
- Often routes are very similar.
- Hence, it would be nice if, within the edit route screen, there was a button "create new route as a copy".
- Icon for Indian settlements with which player has trade agreement.
- You could reuse the "connected to trade network" icon of Civ4.
- Icon would be placed on the map close to the settlement box/name.
- Allow for Indian trade agreements for food
- Currently, only the settlement's special good can be traded.
- Historically, the first and foremost Indian trade was foodstuff (think of the first years of Hispanola or Jamestown).
There are some details for which I would propose small changes:
- Lumber/food should be made much more expensive
- Employing farmers/fishers/lumberjacks does not make any sense economically (only gaining 100 gold/turn) and are only needed if there is not enough stock in Europe.
- Historically, colonies had to be (and mostly were) self-sufficient regarding foodstuff/lumber.
- Lumber was a sparse good in Western Europe (had to be imported from the Baltics).
- Best remedy probably to drastically increase ask/bid spread for these goods (as in Vanilla).
- Mines/lodges should be more useful
- a mere +1 on ore @ hill as difference between having a mine or not is definitely not enough (same for lodge)
- compare this to the plantations, for which a plowed field is the prerequisite for anything!
- Colonists may only join colony if there are movement points left
- I've seen this in other mods
- Very logical: Colonist cannot exhaustively move and then work in the same turn (which is currently possible!).
- A unit lacking movement points can even move again if changing profession to dragoon or the like.
And there is a game concept that does not seem to work (or at least I could not manage to understand it):
- Military convoy: Except of having more capacity (90 vs. 60), I was not able to perceive any difference to the standard convoy (military units cannot board it).
Being acquainted with the other big mods, I would also love to see some of their elements into DoaNE:
- Storms/attrition (RaR)
- Currently, ships can explore whole America without ever having to visit a drydock.
- Hence, this feels like navigating a calm lake but definitely not a continent between two oceans.
- Warehouse capacity restricts only the overall number of a colony's goods (RaR)
- Currently, the warehouse is partitioned into several (small) portions exclusively reserved for a specific good.
- However, goods may be mixed on ships as long as their aggregate number does not exceed the capacity.
- The same system would be both more entertaining and realistic also for the colony's stock.
Finally, I have observed some minor bugs/issues (beyond the lame AI, of which you are already aware of course):
- The Dutch aren't given a Merchantman at the beginning (neither do they have any specialist). Since the merchantman only comes in era 3, the Dutch could be given a second carrack instead of the caravel.
- The knowledge of cotton is not available at the beginning - but it should, given that it could be imported from India.
- The territorial influence button could be hidden until era 3 (otherwise, newbies will be irritated - the tutorial popup regarding this only comes with era 3).
- Europe continues to produce (but shouldn't) even if prices have fallen to 1/1 (I've seen this for ammunition that had a stock of 10000 and bid/ask of 1).
So, to sum up, thank you very much for having developed this mod. Keep up the excellent work!
. But as I said, it is always a pleasure to answer this kind of questions/remarks.
AI improvements would be great to share across many mods 
