AND2 and SVN Bug Reports - A New Dawn 2 ONLY

[Moth Bones]

Buckbeach, I installed using the full dl yesterday. Took about 12 minutes to download, a few more to install.

45Degrees, please don't misunderstand me. I wasn't complaining that the game was too hard or anything like that; I was concerned that the AI may have been building massive stacks it had no use for while neglecting development in other areas. However, having played on a bit I don't think that's the case. As of turn 365 (1118 BC) three AIs are well ahead of me in score (100-110, while I have 72). They have 3-5 cities, while I have 3. As for tech research, they are quite varied but do seem to have prioritised Writing and Mathematics. I'm almost sure I was first to Bronze Working by some way.

It's actually pretty interesting and fun. I'm a long way from any of the AI civs and I'm running a skeleton military to concentrate on other stuff. (I have the GNP lead, and pretty sure I have the culture lead). If any of the other civs decided to send a stack over I'd be toast, but I think they're too busy fighting each other. The only annoying part is that I'm officially at war with everyone I've met because I met them all when we were still minor civs, and no-one is interested in signing peace even though the 'will sign peace treaty' message occasionally comes up. This could be due to my weak military. Now I've hooked up copper I might throw out some axemen and see how that affects my power rating.

By the way, I love this mod. It really suits my playstyle; I don't really pay attention to win conditions (I actually rarely finish games) but I like to see the dynamic fluctuations in civs' fortunes. It's why I can't get on with Civ 5 - no graphs, no Top 5 Cities, hardly any demo data. Thank you very much for continuing the development of this fantastic mod, and I shall continue to provide feedback as appropriate.

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

@buck beach: full installer should work is working (I've just tried and it's updated to rev658, in a few hours it will be updated to rev659, some small changes that Joseph uploaded via SVN); after Mantriur updated the script a couple of months ago, it always worked AFAIK.

@Moth Bones: don't worry, I wasn't offended or anything by your post
I think AI prioritize now techs leading to the next era (e.g. Math & Alphabet); we'll know better when we'll change the tech tree.
I'm happy to know you're enjoying the game. Undoubtely your strategy is looking good to me, as long as you can keep a safe distance between you and your opponents. And yes, the reason why they won't sign peace with you is probably because you're too weak. Especially if you're below 0.5 strenght ratio, AI will usually stay at war with you, unless this is causing war weariness to them.
As for finishing a game: I always suggest playing with Mastery Victory. Very often in my games the winner is uncertain until the very end of the game and you cannot neglect any aspect of a winning strategy (production/culture/military/science/etc).

 

[JosEPh_II]

Not really a Bug report, but a status on play report.

Just noticed that when you go into Anarchy from Civic changes that City Maint/upkeep is still applied. With the Anarchy lengths longer here in AND I'm not sure I agree with this. (see 1st screenshot) And anarchy lengths are chaffing in their longevity. 3 turns for each change and can be additive to boot. So 2 civics changed early game takes 6 turns of anarchy. I think this is too long early game. Later game it would make more sense to me as the timeframe/turn is reduced.

Overall (on Monarch and Epic) the City Maint and Unit Maint is rather high. (2nd screenshot). Gold is ridiculously hard ( impo) to come by in early AND. At this current rate with out a major break thru (which I don't see) it's just a matter of time before I go into Strike and start losing important defensive units and workers. The AI leaders are already 10 techs ahead of me and are out city planting me too (this is a real rarity as I'm an avowed eXpansionist). I really hate seeing (example) the river post give .6 gold instead of +1 gold, etc.. These % modifiers are used to balance but are used like thumb screws most of the time.

The AI is much improved in what I'm seeing so far in this new game started just a few days ago. The dread of defeat is looming large on this Monarch level game.

@45*,
Is the player still set at only producing 2 food a citizen while the AI gets 3? Or has that been evened out?

I'm not playing with REV On nor Using Vassals (really, really dislike both). I also do Not use Mastery Victory condition. I do use Space race, Scientific, Religious, Cultural, and either/or Conquest or Domination (but not both together). I've also experienced for the 1st time in ages Not being able to Found a religion. This is like heresy to me! There is only 2 left in the game at this time and I won't make it to either before the AIs.

This brings up the matter that I hope Vokayra's tech tree changes will help address. The religions are clumped to close together and too many are in line with each where the tech leader gets to found them like knocking over dominoes. This must change after 2.1 or 2.2 is released.

JosEPh

 

[IPEX-731BA5DD06]

If you want religious diversity, use the limited religions option. I also use the one, where single civs can't control multiple religions.

this stops one AI, hogging all the religions, though if they found one, and lose the holy city to an opponent, barbarian or AI, they still will get the next one in line.

Religions are what they are, they were all founded in a period spanning 2000 Yr's and you advance through the the time scale so quickly early on.

It is what it is.

On the difficulty, I'm trying a high to low game, raise up from lowest to highest and win on the 3rd time. I'm finding the AI's are substantially better, with 3 about 8 tech's ahead of me, one with only 3 cities, compared to my 10. The trading is hard, but I have on realistic trading, so..maybe I've made it too hard. I've dropped down from Immortal to try out option, and its challenging.

And yes, your right, it should be challenging and fun, I guess I'm too used to building up then steam rolling. I'm about to unleash the steam roller now, having gotten Catapults, Pikes and High walls.

We don't adapt well to change, but through change, we evolve.

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

Not really a Bug report, but a status on play report.

Just noticed that when you go into Anarchy from Civic changes that City Maint/upkeep is still applied. With the Anarchy lengths longer here in AND I'm not sure I agree with this. (see 1st screenshot) And anarchy lengths are chaffing in their longevity. 3 turns for each change and can be additive to boot. So 2 civics changed early game takes 6 turns of anarchy. I think this is too long early game. Later game it would make more sense to me as the timeframe/turn is reduced.

Ok, I'll see what I can do about it. I'd like to have more reports on this but I think that could come after we've introduced the new tech tree: I plan to start a massive balancing work with other players on the forum, but I'm still planning it.

Overall (on Monarch and Epic) the City Maint and Unit Maint is rather high. (2nd screenshot). Gold is ridiculously hard ( impo) to come by in early AND. At this current rate with out a major break thru (which I don't see) it's just a matter of time before I go into Strike and start losing important defensive units and workers. The AI leaders are already 10 techs ahead of me and are out city planting me too (this is a real rarity as I'm an avowed eXpansionist).

I suggest, as I did for someone else, to try a game with Noble level; just to make sure everything is working properly. Harder level could/should be fine tuned but what you reported could simply be a problem caused by a too high handicap level for your (and mine too probably) game style.

@45*,
Is the player still set at only producing 2 food a citizen while the AI gets 3? Or has that been evened out?

I don't remember, I have to check but I suppose it's always the same, I don't remember changing anything about it.

This brings up the matter that I hope Vokayra's tech tree changes will help address. The religions are clumped to close together and too many are in line with each where the tech leader gets to found them like knocking over dominoes. This must change after 2.1 or 2.2 is released.

While Vokarya's changes will help indeed, as IPEX said religions are founded mostly in the first third of the game in terms of turns. So I think that it's possible that this problem can't be avoided totally (unless you use limited religions, of course).

 

[JosEPh_II]

In reply to IPEX and 45* about Religions and spacing on the tech tree; This can be made better. It was done in C2C and I started the ball rolling there. The Poly/Mono/Bhudda line can be easily broken by simply changing a few Preq techs. There are also other means to keep player and/or AI from grabbing most religions from being the tech leader. Vokarya may remember what I'm referring to.

While Limited is an Option it is Not a solution to this problem.

JosEPh

 

[Sgtslick]

Played some more today (immortal difficulty) marathon speed. The amount of units the AI was building was huge. Most cities had like 8 javelins + 6 archers. Later they had stacks of elephants and spearman etc. Meanwhile I could barely scrape together 2 or 3 archers per city

Anyway, I was curious and saw that <iAITrainPercent>50< for deity + immortal, and <iAITrainPercent>55< for emp/mon/prince in handicapinfos.xml.
I think this might be too much.
I think Deity>65, immortal>70, emperor>75, monarch>80, prince>85, noble>90.

I like giving the AI advantages, but I think the AI having half price units means the game is just flooded with units. It kinda restricts the game style/strategy that are viable to players.

I don't know exactly.. I personally just don't like having this huge amount of units in the game.

 

[buck beach]

Moth Bones and 45 degrees

Thanks guys

 

[aggri1]

Played some more today (immortal difficulty) marathon speed. The amount of units the AI was building was huge.

Summary: my experience is the opposite: very few AI units.

Interesting that you mention this. I'm playing an epic speed, normal-sized pangaea-type (very low sea level Perfect Mongoose) map game at the moment on version 657, and I've seen very few AI units. I'm at war with about half of the civs in the game most of the time (say about 7 of fifteen), but I've not seen any invaders at all, even though I'm sure that some of them can reach me (I've met their lands). I easily built five cities while the AIs had no more than two (most had just one city when I founded my fifth). I'm playing on Emperor, but it feels much much easier.

I am losing lots of money, about 160 gold per turn. However, building a worker or catapult or bombard (or two or three) each turn in my production city, and disbanding it (them), means I have over 4000 gold built up and have had science at 100% for pretty much the whole game. (I realise that this has been made less profitable in rev 658).

I have a power rating near 0.7 to the other leading Civ, the others are a lot weaker, despite the fact that I've been mercilessly disbanding all older and less-promoted units, keeping just a few per city. This tells me that no-one has many units (I am a bit more advanced than most AI, but still). I could achieve a power rating of several-to-1 against anyone within a few turns should I want to as my production city could pump out four or five longbows each turn. Why does no-one else have many units? Probably due to lack of gold - the trade screen always indicates near zero. A few times I've seen AI units (like, a small stack) just disappear - is that what happens when they don't get paid? (No, they didn't move into fog-of-war).

Putting all of this together tells me that gold is a massively limiting issue at the start, and that my 'cheat' of building-to-disband has effectively won me the game. If not for that, I'd be long-since broke. I checked the economy advisor, and the bulk of the expense was actually civics, not units, surprisingly.

I'm not sure what to do about this. If I were to avoid using my 'cheat', I'd be nowhere (like most AI, I guess), but what would my cities be producing, then? I suspect that the fact that cottages are pretty useless for a long time in AND exacerbates this gold-scarce problem.

So, how can we generate more gold at the start? Or, what can we do if we don't have gold? At the moment, units and more cities both require gold, so without it, what does a civ' do? Expand (no - cities cost), explore (up to a point, then the map becomes known), exploit (eh?), or exterminate (no - units cost)? Maybe a drastically-reduced unit-maintenance cost, so that early wars can happen?

Am I alone in this position? Thoughts?

 

[Sgtslick]

@aggri1 Try and use current revision. There isn't much point giving balance advice on a version that is no longer being used.

Rev 658 is completely different to 657 in terms of the balance.

 

[aggri1]

@aggri1 Try and use current revision. There isn't much point giving balance advice on a version that is no longer being used.

Rev 658 is completely different to 657 in terms of the balance.

Really? The list of changes (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=12709240&postcount=355) didn't suggest to me that anything drastic would have happened, other than that I wouldn't have earnt so much gold. I don't think it's just a 'balance' issue. Nonetheless, I'll be sure to update before starting a new game, and I'll see how it goes then.

Cheers, A.

 

[Sgtslick]

Really? The list of changes (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=12709240&postcount=355) didn't suggest to me that anything drastic would have happened, other than that I wouldn't have earnt so much gold. I don't think it's just a 'balance' issue. Nonetheless, I'll be sure to update before starting a new game, and I'll see how it goes then.

Cheers, A.

Everything is tweaked. So there are 100's of little changes that aren't going to be listed. They aren't 'changes' as much as they are adjustments.

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

@aggri1: it's exactly as Sgtslick described.

Now I have a question for some players: I need a report from people playing on huge maps at noble level; no matter what gamespeed, mapscript or options you're using, I need to know if you feel that techs are being discovered well before their "real" era. Specifically, I need to know which turn and year you or some other civ you've met entered medieval and/or renaissance era. I know it's a very specific question, but if someone is playing with this kind of settings, I could use this answer. If you have a savegame around that era, that could be very useful as well. Thank you in advance.

 

[Rezca]

I haven't been playing as often because of some odd Profile troubles, but I can start up a brand new fresh game to try out those settings real quick. I'm not exactly the best player so my results might be a bit bland, but I can try - for science ;P

(Game keeps insisting on returning to a Default profile and setting all the graphics back to High which my current laptop can't support, as well as the "Press etc to customice A New Dawn" won't go away until I restart Civ, which takes about 2 - 5 minutes each time)

*edits* All right, started a new Huge Pangaea map on Noble, Epic gamespeed.
Following options, if this affects how the AI develops:
-Raging Barbarians (Even with this on the barbarians have been very tame)
-No Revolutions
-No Inquisitions
-No barbarian Civs
-No Tech Diffusion
-Advanced Espionage
-Meteorology
-Early Buildings
-No Fixed Borders
-Realistic Diplomacy

 

[IPEX-731BA5DD06]

Rezza, Create a new profile, with the settings that you want.

Then load and delete the default profile, the 4th tab option, it'll now load your newly created profile as the default profile, along with your preferred settings

Simples *Scretch*

 

[Rezca]

Rezza, Create a new profile, with the settings that you want.

Then load and delete the default profile, the 4th tab option, it'll now load your newly created profile as the default profile, along with your preferred settings

Simples *Scretch*

I've deleted the Default Profile before, I'm positive... Does the profile have to be deleted in every mod you use? I've switched between A New Dawn, K-Mod, and Realism a few times this week, and I've had settings default back to the originals every now and then when re-opening Civilization.


As for the test game, I'm about 290 turns in so far, and nothing too out of the ordinary. The first thing the Aztecs tried researching was Polytheism, and all but a few AIs headed straight for Math - skipping things like Wheel and Stone Tools. A few tried demanding it from me while wasting turns on Math, but that's typical of the AI.


I was the first to Iron Working and Alphabet, Meditation as well, but most other techs that didn't involve workers the AI beat me to. So far I haven't seen any Era-skipping yet, even when the Oracle fell to the Dutch.

 

[Sgtslick]

As you can see in the image below, this spearman has Arctic Combat 1 promotion which gives double movement speed in tundra. However, he can't move through this grassland/tundra tile at double speed. Promotion broken?

Spoiler :

 

[Sgtslick]

Came across this, i'm at war with korea and he's sent in these undefended trebuchets as you can see in the picture below. These are capturable I think, but either way its just stupid and a clear bug or AI deficiency.

Spoiler :

* Edit *: Note that it actually worked out fine for him because I have no horses, light swordsman (strength 5) are my strongest unit and trebs (strength 8) do fine vs them. If I had horses they all drop like flies. I doubt that the AI considered this though.. I mean what if I had been able to trade for horses for instance?

 

[Rezca]

Alright, so I've played through up until hitting the Medieval Era (Will continue on to the renaissance tomorrow) and as far as I know was the first to reach it - researching Engineering at turn 445 and approximately 78AD.



Ashur had been reasearching Fundamentalism back in 340 - 280 BC, but apparently switched off of it onto something else and has yet to actually get that tech, though I don't think it's one that advances to the Medieval so...



The only fiddling I did in this game was spawning a great spy per civ to get some Espionage points to watch what they were researching and when, planting a second city for Darius since he had never once bothered building a second (I found it silly he was just researching Animal Husbandry when everyone else was running around with Catapaults and Mounted Infantry ^^), and placing Pacal II as a Vassal of Ashur. That last one I sort of forgot I was supposed to be playing a "normal game", but nothing major seemed to come out of it other than Pacal trying to get me to declare on Holy Rome when Ashur and Charlemagne went at it.


I haven't exactly seen anything too far out of the ordinary yet, but this is just one game, and from a below-average player

 

[Zorn]

Oh, the picture with the spearman reminds of some strange behaviour that I have observed very often: If I give a stack a goto-order to some distant place, the game shows the way the stack will take as long as you keep the mousebutton pressed down. However, once you release and they start to move, they often take a very diffenrent route, as if it got recalculated immeadeately before starting. This can be quite annyoing, if your captured workers suddenly end their turn next to an enemy unit instead of on an safe tile (as suggested).
This is from a quite outdated build though (645).