General A New Dawn discussion

[Hudos]

So I thought I'd join in with the whole talking about my current game business. This is how things looked for me this afternoon:

Spoiler :

So Dido and I were getting along great thanks to some early missionary invasions by me, but it was obvious what had to happen in the end. Although I was quite far ahead in tech (yeah, ruthless AI definitely does that), the fact that Dido's vassals were quite a bit stronger than mine made me feel a bit nervous about simply invading their continent. It was my fault it ended up that way, as I went way too far crippling my vassals before they capitulated. Should have either finished the job or left them with a stronger force.

I waited patiently for an opening, and I remembered that Egypt had stopped being Dido's vassal once before, earlier in the game. So my plan was to turtle on my continent, throwing ridiculous amounts of troops into my coastal cities and focusing on tech for a while. Then, as I had hoped they would, Egypt again became independent.

Unfortunately for them, I had about 20 boats full of my most dangerous units waiting right by their border. I destroyed two of their cities within five turns and made them capitulate. I bet they really regretted leaving Carthage's protection, heh.

After that, I was quite close to a domination victory. Instead of going straight for Carthage, I waited for Artillery, instantly upgraded all my cannons and then headed to Spain. Within five turns, I'd taken two of their cities and won the game through domination, without having to kill more than five of Dido's units.

Fun game, but I was pretty disappointed in the AIs reluctance to declare war on me, even when quite a few civs hated me with a passion and had similar military forces in the medieval era.

 

[Rezca]

Sometimes the AI's decision making with warring is just plain strange. I've frequently had friendly AI declare on me - even ones that, according to the XML, "will not declare war" at Friendly relations - and had quite a few cases where an AI would declare war shortly after that early game grace period is over, and either (A) do absolutely nothing or (B) march some warriors and slingers up to my borders and then sniper a worker before suiciding themselves on the nearest city.

Current game I had been declared war on numerous times before the Medieval.

Olmec had declared war on me five times, the Vikings twice, Anglo-Saxons three times, Arabia once (bribed into a war against me), and the Toltec three times. Eventually the wars died down a bit as things got shaken up over there and so took their attention off of me, but once I got the Apostalic Palace....

 

[Hudos]

I did have several garrisoned forts on hills near the civ-in-question's borders, so I wonder if the AI is actually smart enough to take that into account. I always do that and make sure that if a civ invades me, they have to walk across plains and grasslands to get to the nearest city. Maybe they just hated their neighbours to the north even more than me. He was a bit of a warmonger.

Starting a new game later on. Think I'm going to try and piss the world off a bit more, demanding tributes from weaker nations and going Imperium.

 

[Hudos]

More questionable priorities from the AI. Considering we all started with a worker unit, I'm wondering just what the hell they've been doing with him.

Spoiler :

And on top of that, some equally questionable city placing from my neighbour up north.

Spoiler :

Someone should probably tell him that my neighbours to the east planted a city in that exact location, to which my response was to rush light swordsman and turn it to rubble.

 

[Rezca]

So I'd been playing Realism Invictus with a friend recently, and it made me notice a few things....


One, it reminded me how great it felt to be able to use Signs again, marking plots on the map and naming landmarks/etc to further personalize the world I'm playing in and not having them disappear a turn later or after leaving the game... I can't remember when this was last brought up, but is fixing Signs still on the To Do list for the future?

And two, actually having AI demand tribute of me. I mean, I'm playing on Warlord in RI, but I haven't seen the AI in A New Dawn demand tribute from me for as long as I remember even on Prince or higher. This nation was equal to me in power and was only Cautious; I've gone centuries in AND games where an AI would be cautious or worse with me and be 0.3 ~ 0.6 in power and not a single tribute demand. Has anyone else been experiencing this?

 

[IPEX-731BA5DD06]

signs are fixed, you have to play a turn or two, without reloading or exiting the game, it will then save your signs. SVN 1032.

Demanding of tribute, depends on your military strength, whether the AI wants to war with you, if you refuse, do they need the resource/tech/cash. How are your relations etc.

I get almost no demands, more requests for tech assistance, which I 95% of the time refuse outright.

 

[Rezca]

signs are fixed, you have to play a turn or two, without reloading or exiting the game, it will then save your signs. SVN 1032.

Demanding of tribute, depends on your military strength, whether the AI wants to war with you, if you refuse, do they need the resource/tech/cash. How are your relations etc.

I get almost no demands, more requests for tech assistance, which I 95% of the time refuse outright.

Not for me they aren't :/
1032, I plant a few signs, then played ten turns and saved. Played one more turn, saved, then exited to the main menu and re-loaded. The signs were gone.

Freshly cleared cache, new ini, and all that sort of precautions - same thing. Signs haven't worked for me since I moved on from the archaic 1.75 AND, and they still don't



As for Tribute demands... Well I get lots of tech requests, but no tribute demands. Even a Montezuma at 0.7 minimum (Who had declared on me five times in the Classic era alone) never made a single demand. Sure, AI will declare on me all the time and beg me for tech gifts, but there's never been a single tribute demand no matter how strong they are or how much they dislike me.

 

[GreedyManul]

I remember Sitting Bull made a demand on me one time.

Sitting Bull, of all people.

Don't know whether to laugh or cry...

 

[<Nexus>]

Signs work for me perfectly.

 

[Rezca]

Signs work for me perfectly.

That's strange, why they work for everyone else but not me D:
I've tried using the latest installer, installing/running as admin, making sure everything in that direcory is not set to Read-Only, clearing cache multiple times, and everything else I could possibly think of - even if it might not even help - and the Signs always always disappear.

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

I recall them not working either, but I can't test now.

 

[<Nexus>]

@45°

Did the recent earthquake effect you? Do you live close or far that area?

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

@45°

Did the recent earthquake effect you? Do you live close or far that area?

No, I live pretty far from there, we didn't even feel it here in my town. I have some friends living in those areas but they are OK.

 

[<Nexus>]

No, I live pretty far from there, we didn't even feel it here in my town. I have some friends living in those areas but they are OK.

Good to hear that at least.

 

[aggri1]

Hi.

I've a comment about the unit upgrade chain. Specifically, the early tank and the automobile.

I'm playing a game in which I've recently discovered Automobile. I, and my rival Civilizations, can still build and are still making extensive use of Riflemen and Grenadiers. And most rivals also are still using Cannons, rather than Artillery.

Up until I discovered Automobile, I had a very effective strategy to deal with stacks of 50 or 100 or 150 Riflemen or Grenadiers or Cannons: flank attacks using light and heavy cavalry after I suicided a bunch of my own cannons or artillery to soften the enemy up. The flanking abilities of the horse units was absolutely essential to deal with stacks larger than my own armies. Sometimes this meant I had to retreat from a city so I could fight in more convenient terrain, but the border cities were not worth much anyway.

Unfortunately, the discovery of Automobile has resulted in a considerable downgrade of my military capabilities, because I can no longer build any units with flank attacks. I think this is a problem. Discoveries should not preclude the continued use of an older technology if it's superior. I want to continue to be able to build horse units (cavalry) alongside a small number of early tanks. The tanks are not only inferior (slow, no flanking, reduced XP available upon build), they cost a lot to maintain (+1 per turn per unit is considerable at this point of the game). Further, the early tanks are considerably inferior to elephant cavalry against other mounted units, due to the latter's 50% bonus. And finally; all it takes is a grenadier in the defending stack and the early tank is worse off than a horse, even leaving aside the latter's flanking damage advantage.

I think the upgrade chain should be re-done to allow the continued production of these late cavalry units, both light and heavy, even after automobile is available. I realise that unless we hide 'obsolete' units, the production bar will become unwieldy, but I would not define a unit which is still valuable as obsolete.

Perhaps one simple solution would be to have cavalry upgrade to one of the later tank units.

I would actually prefer that cavalry doesn't upgrade to tanks at all, so that you have to build tanks and armoured cars from scratch, like the machine gun line of siege units. It doesn't make sense to me that cavalry upgrade to tanks, but I suspect I'm in the minority here. Then we make cavalry obsolete (no longer buildable) some time in the early modern era when they really are superseded in every way.

Alternatively, we make early tanks not as terrible as they currently are. Some flanking damage, or collateral against infantry, or ... anything to negate their awfulness.

Thoughts?

Cheers, A.

 

[<Nexus>]

(...)
Thoughts?

Cheers, A.

Maybe cavalry could go obsolete when the first upgrade of the early tank appears.

I would actually prefer that cavalry doesn't upgrade to tanks at all, so that you have to build tanks and armoured cars from scratch,

Well... that does make some sense... but...
By that time you may have a great bunch of high level cavalry units - think of Noble Knights with Warlord promotion, for example.
Not allowing players to upgrade valuable cavalry would be very unrewarding and would lead to lot of from other players. And it would also cripple the AI IMO.

 

[aggri1]

Yes Zeta, your first suggestion was also my first inclination. And yes, I have a few Noble Knight-derived Cavalry which I would definitely like to upgrade. There is definitely that aspect... So yes, upgrading to Tank instead of Early Tank would be good.

Perhaps I can gift all of my Vulcanised Rubber to someone for a while. I think that's needed - at least for Armoured Car: so then I could build Light Cavalry again. But I find this work-around unpalatable.

Regards, A.

 

[Noyyau]

Sort of how all the various melee unit lines upgrade to muskets, not arquebusiers.

As I see it: the early tanks were not that good in ww i and plenty of cavalry still existed at the time.
The effective tanks came in ww ii and are represented by our light-medium-heavy tanks

 

[Noyyau]

Could we improve the rewards for this event? At this point even 6 free Musketmen are kind of useless, especially since they come without any promotion or XP.
Would it be possible to make the number of free units tied to your Power rating, or to the number of such units you already have?
Alternatively, have these new units get some unusual promotions, or at the very least the basic XP amount that is given by your civics.

Spoiler :

In all my playing AND this is the first time a vassal has ever left me (a capitulated vassal, in this case). Apparently he's been building so many military units that he managed to get to 80% of my own Power rating.

Spoiler :

 

[Rezca]

I've never had a military-won vassal break from me in AND before either, but I've had it happen to me a few times in the base game. Except for one case, their newly acquired military ended up being wasted shortly later, since while they had a nice power rating they didn't have the cities and infrastructure to replace lost units quickly enough


I do agree a number of events in the game have mediocre or underwhelming (Or even outright useless) event rewards. Like the ones that reward you gold for large shipments or gold veins? I think one of the 'good' results even gave you 37g. I'll try not to spend that all in one place
Quest Rewards tend to be better, though I've long since stopped bothering with Blessings of the Sea. It was a horrible quest in the original game, it's still a horrible quest. Even if you played on an island filled map with tons of one and two tile lands dotting the sea, the maintence costs from those spammed cities would kill you. I can't even remember what the reward was, but it couldn't possibly be worth it.