AoD2 strategy help and other questions

[rajwarrior]

Asked this in AoD2 thread and apparently nobody's home anymore. Hopefully, somebody is still playing it on this thread.

Can't seem to grasp a strategy for this mod. By mid-game, the AI has far outpaced me on expansion and already has 4-10 galleons while I'm still limping around with a caravel and (maybe) one galleon. Because of the number of buildings you need to build, I never seem to develop a good economy, either.

Any tips or advice on how to play this mod? Definitely not the same way as standard Col2!

Another issue I seem to be having with this mod (ver 1.12, btw) is that the rebel sentiment never seems to increase, no matter how long I have somebody in the town hall. However, the king adds units to the REF about every other turn. Am I doing something wrong, or is this a bug?

 

[Fistleaf]

AOD2 introduced a lot of unnecessary changes compared to 1.12, some are cosmetic changes whereas others seriously affect the balance of the game.
The AI expands ridiculously fast because of the advantages in immigration which borders on cheating. Probably you need to expand equally fast and spend money on immigration and muskets to match the AI. And declare independence fast before the AI declares war on you.
For increasing rebel sentiment, you need to put more statesmen in the townhall if you keep adding more population. Keep paying the King huge amounts of money (easier to earn money with AOD2), and the REF won't even increase fast enough to match your troops.

 

[rajwarrior]

After playtesting some more, found that RS does expand but SLOWLY. The AI expansion is crazy, even on the lower levels. As you said, everything seems to be geared toward fast, fast, fast play, which is kinda crappy because you can't ever seem to get anything developed into a working economy.

And that is why I don't agree that it's easier to make money in AOD2. With the increase in the number of buildings you have to build, the increase in purchasing citizens to make up for the immigration cheat, you never seem to develop any good economy before the AI is so far ahead of you that the game becomes pointless.

AOD2 fixes alot of what's wrong with Vanilla, but it adds it's own set of issues as well. This was tagged as THE Mod to get to make the game FUN, but the increased micromanagement involved with it makes it a total drag really, really quick.

Still, alot of people like it, so I'll ask again, what am I missing?

 

[Fistleaf]

The people who really like AOD2 do not respond in the forums anymore, so I do not know whether they play it enough to realise the flaws in the mod.

Regarding money making, AOD2 slows down both the tax increase and the price decay of silver. So if you trade a lot of silver, you can get very rich. Ships are allowed to "speak to native chief", so you can send your first ship to visit all the native tribes and get a lot of money too (I don't think the AI knows how to do this).

I believe the slower RS is because AOD2 added a telegraph building (another 100 or 150% bonus to bells). So if you build all the bell producing buildings, RS should grow faster than in vanilla.

REF increase rate is also slower, so if you keep paying the king few thousand gold, you can slow down the REF increase greatly.

The good things about AOD2 are the better balance in FF and the improved education system (although this is easier than vanilla if you educate a lot). All the other features are not necessary.

 

[rajwarrior]

I believe that all the AOD2 people are gone from these forums. Little or no responses anymore, so thank you alot for yours. Much appreciated.

I do like that that ships can talk with the chiefs. Wasn't aware of the silver slow down, though.

Truthfully, all the extra buildings is one of the things that bog down the game, IMO. It would be nice if each colony started with the new very basic buildings and you could build from there. As it stands, your primary colony and MAYBE one other are the only ones that become viable $$$ producers. The rest aren't anything but points makers.

On another point, I have found a bug in the final (1.12) version of AoD2. If you have a petty criminal as a soldier and he upgrades to a free colonist, the colony he is stationed in will show a -50 guns in storage. You have to go into worldbuilder to correct.

 

[Fistleaf]

The criminal soldier upgrade bug was mentioned before. I think this involves the C++ code and is not easy to fix.

You can fix the extra buildings yourself by changing CIV4CivilizationInfos.xml in the Assets/XML/Civilizations directory. Search inside the file for <BuildingClassType> and add or change accordingly depending on your preference. Compare the vanilla Col version of the file with the AOD2 version to get an idea of how to change it. Remember to make a backup of the file first in case you want to revert your changes.

 

[rajwarrior]

Thanks, Fistleaf! I'll check into the buildings file and see what I can do. I've already fixed the war galleon issue that's been mentioned (REF not returning) as well as taking out China, Russia and the Aussies, so we'll see what we can do with the buildings

 

[Fistleaf]

How do you fix the REF not returning bug? The best I can do is mod back cargo holds for the MoWs so that the REF lands all troops at one go (therefore not leaving any troops back in Europe).

Here's one more thing you can do to remove the AI immigration cheat. Go to Assets\XML\GameInfo\CIV4HandicapInfo.xml. Remove <iAIImmigration> and <iNumAIImmigrants> or change them to more reasonable values. I haven't tested this myself, but it should work.

 

[rajwarrior]

That's what I did, modded the MoWs back to original cargo. Thought about taking war galleons out completely but I'm not a programmer so don't know if any changes were made that would cause a crash if I did that.

I did adjust those numbers last nite on AIImmigrants but haven't played a game yet to see the results

 

[Elliot]

My strategy in AOD2 and the regular game, is to construct buildings only in 1 city. The only buildings I'll build in all cities are the first warehouse expansion(+50) and the town hall( can't remember name) upgrade later in the game to produce a few bells in each city. I'll also construct a few of the first tier cross buildings in a few other cities since it is so cheap. When the cities are done with those few buildings I'll just have them make political points or other points.

Basically you want to create a super production coastal city that imports all of its food and everything else and works food tiles only. All of your other cities are raw materials producers. Build cities as close as possible to take advantage of the freely worked city square. But don't build so that you have to pay the natives for land. The natives cities never seem to expand their cultural borders so they'll just have the 8 squares surrounding the city tile. Map out where you can place cities so you can settle the most territory without paying the natives. Build the minimum amount of roads at first but building roads is important so that you can work the most efficient tiles(resource bonuses and freely worked city tile). For example a city founded on a rivered plains or grassland will produce enough food from the city tile to support 2 citizens! It will also produce 4 cotton/tobacco for free!

Buy carpenters asap so that you can build the +hammer buildings more quickly. You need lots of production so that you can build factories, the most profitable building in the game.

If you set all of your raw materials cities to export all goods and the super coastal production city to import all goods and set trade wagons to fully automate you'll avoid going crazy from micromanagement. That way you can build as many cities as you want! However, this strategy tends to work well only with one "cluster" of cities. If you have 2 clusters that are semi close the AI will send the wagons over unroaded tiles to the other clusters. Late in the game you'll need multiple production buildings but try and keep them in your 1 "cluster" of cities.

Gain citizens by different means throughout the game. At first cross production is very profitable. After 30-40 turns though that drys up. Don't buy one of the 2k cross specialists(firebrand preacher), he's waay too expensive. Next you want to buy citizens with gold via Europe. Finally once tax rates are very high 60% or so I don't remember exactly you'll want to just grow citizens with farmers/fishermen.

 

[rajwarrior]

Appreciate the reply, Elliot
While your general strategy works for vanilla, it's not as effective for AoD2, especially if you're playing at higher levels. The super coastal production city is pretty standard fare, but it's a bit harder to get it up and running productively with AoD2 due to the added buildings.
Not only do native civs borders expand, but (at least in my games) they are EVERYWHERE. Makes it very hard to find good city sites where you don't have to pay. Add to that that the other European colonies expand very quickly and it becomes doubly hard to match their progress.
Costs for buying land from natives seems to have increased somewhat as well. I do know for a fact that if they are asking $2k or so and you DON'T pay, they will go to war.

Native wars can be very costly, especially early in game. Again, with my games, most natives have 10 to 30 villages. If you go to war with them early, you die, plan and simple.

I think one of the issues I have with AoD2 is that it boils down to a colony spamming race where you have several colonies that are good for nothing except maybe producing political points. To keep up with the AI, I spend more time founding colonies than I do actually trying to get the colonies already founded to actually produce something.

 

[Elliot]

You're not making sense. You say you focus on building the buildings in just one city like I do but you still have problems with not producing buildings fast enough? Maybe you need to get carpenters faster or rush buy lumber mills? There's almost nothing else I can think of to speed it up. Can you post some screenshots of your game? I don't have the game installed at the moment

If you're in an area with too many natives, maybe you should restart or scout the area before settling?

I find that my economy gets off the ground a lot faster in AOD2 because the immigrants from cross production come in so much faster. Not to mention the fountain of youth event giving you a free 10ish ppl.

Also if you produce enough bells in a city that is close to a native settlement that you culture flip the native settlement it will be destroyed. This does NOT piss off the natives. Actually it makes them happier usually because you aren't not encroaching on their territory because they don't have territory near you anymore! Try boosting bell production in that city or not producing any bells at all so that you don't get the "you are encroaching on our territory" diplomatic penalty. Try not to go to war with the natives early on until you're producing lots of guns and have enough money to buy horses.

 

[rajwarrior]

I guess we'll leave it with I'm just not making sense to you, Elliot.
To answer the question, though, as I stated, with AoD2 multiple buildings, it takes quite a while to get ONE city with true production buildings in place. You build a carpenter shop to speed production, then you have to build a town hall to build other buildings, lumber mill at some point to build more, city hall to get next level, etc.
No screenshots forthcoming as I'm a casual gamer these days (real life gets in the way, unfortunately) and bottomline AoD2 isn't really for the casual gamer.

See, I find that the increased immigrants and especially the FoY event throw everything out of wack, especially if it early, because then I have all these people and no place for them to go!

If you're not having the native problems with settlements that I'm having, then I'd guess that we're probably playing different game setups. This is not a once in a while happening. It's in every game, so restarting won't really fix the problem.

Culture flipping only works AFTER you've settled a colony, so it doesn't really help the whole buying land thing, unless you are planning on settling a 2nd colony on the other side of the native village you're trying to flip.

I will add this, in Vanilla, I never accepted culture flip villages because trading to them was more important. Not so in AOD2. Most seem to only want guns, which I don't sell to them in AOD2 or horses. With horses I've noticed that natives quickly won't even pay what it costs you in Europe to buy horses (even when they desire them), so that's not worth it anymore either. So, at least to me anyway, there is very little use for native villages besides the occasional convert.

 

[Fistleaf]

Because of all these irritating features of AOD2, I now only play vanilla Col, with 3 modifications:
1. Using the AOD2 FF tech tree (removing all references to the extra buildings)
2. Using higher prices for tools and muskets as in AOD2
3. Increase number of default players by 1 on standard map, ensuring all 4 civs will appear on Standard map size

I have no problems with the faster tax increase, faster REF growth (controllable with gold payments to king) and cannon/soldier/dragoon stats of vanilla Col. If the AI in vanilla is not aggressive enough, play at the highest difficulty level.

 

[rajwarrior]

ha! I guess I'm working backwards from you. Trying to make AoD2 a little less AoD2

I did tinker around with the AI and got it where the AI expansion is on par with most players expansion, though I might have to adjust their immigration back up a bit.

I think AoD2 has totally imbalanced the combat units. The dragoon is THE combat unit, while the cannon has been made primarily useless.

Haven't played around with this yet, but (if memory serves) guns and horses both started fairly cheap in Col1 but shot up almost every time you bought them. Is it possible to adjust them to something similar?

 

[Fistleaf]

I disagree with the combat changes in AOD2. Soldiers should be for defense and Dragoons for attack. However, AOD2 gives +50% attack to both units. You no longer need Soldiers (and cannons) anymore, just spam Dragoons.

I don't think cost increase of horses/guns have changed in AOD2. Only the starting prices have increased.

 

[rajwarrior]

Dragoons are about all you need, that's for sure. With their AOD2 bonuses, they tend to make better defenders than soldiers in some instances. Of course, editing can fix those bonuses!

Price increases are the only changes. I think prices should start lower and increase faster (muskets/horses/tools). That is how it was in Col1

Noticed something else in AOD2, as well. Native trade seems crippled in a way. If a village is wanting horses, for example, BUT you've recently traded horse to another village of the same tribe, then they'll only be willing to pay a small sum (usually less than it actually cost you to buy them) for horses even though they say they want them. So, you either have to sell at a loss to get another 'want' item up, or that village is a no-trader.

Guns seem to dominate the Natives want list as well. Even early in the game, you can frequently get as good as or better prices from natives for rum, coats, cigars, tools but they rarely want them. Guns on the other hand seem to come up every other time. Of course, with guns costing as much as they do, selling to them to natives is a losing situation.

 

[Fistleaf]

I think second trade of the good to the same tribe may have been intended to be this way. I can't be sure though.

Guns dominating the natives want list though, seems to be an AOD2 feature (I don't like this). The moment I switched back to Vanilla, I do not see this happening.