General A New Dawn discussion

[Hafenguy]

I got it.
Here is the link:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/missing-religion-icons-in-new-dawn.546037/

Worked well

 

[<Nexus>]

Perhaps could you post screenshot about the steam settings that needs to be changed? Maybe we could even add it to so FAQ.

 

[Lykurg]

Previously, there was a limitation of combat random to 95%. With a 95% chance of winning, it was impossible to die. The remaining 5% were retreat.

In general, I would like to have a combat system of the probability of victory and defeat as in civilization 5.

Please tell me how to do this.

 

[Lykurg]

please tell me where the "treasures" come from?

 

[<Nexus>]

please tell me where the "treasures" come from?

The unit? Event spawns it on city ruins.

 

[Samson]

What I wonder is are you more likely to get the event if you have many city ruins within your borders, or do you just need one to allow the event and multiples make it no more likely?

 

[Vokarya]

What I wonder is are you more likely to get the event if you have many city ruins within your borders, or do you just need one to allow the event and multiples make it no more likely?

Not as far as I can tell. The only factor that affects the likelihood of the event triggering is <iWeight> which is 300 for the treasure spawning event. There are a few events that can be weighted for damaged units (Friendly Locals) or experienced units (Champion) but that is only for events that specifically affect units.

300 seems to be a middle-of-the-road value. The chance of any given event triggering is its weight divided by the total number of all weights of events that are possible to trigger. Values for iWeight range from 15 for the Meteor Strike up to 5000 for Man Named Jed (which reveals Oil prior to Scientific Method, if you end a turn with a Scout/Explorer/Adventurer parked on an Oil tile).

 

[robbyextreme]

I like tech new tech tree and building changes volkarya, before there was no point of ever getting Stargazing but now with storyteller circle and fire pit merged the standing stone is a good way to get to village halls faster.

Sailing and Pottery might need some buffs though, docks is not worth 120 hammers in the early game for 2 coins and is quickly replaced by by harbors anyway. And pottery seems really situational for extremely bad starts where there is no food and tons of plains tiles. Weaving is usually skipped too cause it's a gamble to find sheep and unlock weaver building which makes it ignored.

 

[Vokarya]

I like tech new tech tree and building changes volkarya, before there was no point of ever getting Stargazing but now with storyteller circle and fire pit merged the standing stone is a good way to get to village halls faster.

Sailing and Pottery might need some buffs though, docks is not worth 120 hammers in the early game for 2 coins and is quickly replaced by by harbors anyway. And pottery seems really situational for extremely bad starts where there is no food and tons of plains tiles. Weaving is usually skipped too cause it's a gamble to find sheep and unlock weaver building which makes it ignored.

I think we can safely lower the base cost of Granary from 60 to 50. It doesn't do as much in AND being lowered to 30% food storage and flat +1 health from 50% storage and +1-3 health.

Docks is also very overpriced at base 70 hammers when Harbor is 80. I think Docks can come all the way down to base cost 40. It takes 4 cities to even get 2 commerce/turn and it tops out at 3 commerce but you need 6 cities to get that far.

Weaving is a bit of a problem as most of the resources required to unlock the Hut require Calendar for Plantation. I don't want to add another improvement to the early game. I think it can be a tech that you don't need a lot of unless you want to start naval exploration.

 

[Vokarya]

What if we move the Furrier up to Weaving? Right now it's at Hunting but Hunting has a lot of other tricks already.

 

[robbyextreme]

What if we move the Furrier up to Weaving? Right now it's at Hunting but Hunting has a lot of other tricks already.

Sounds better because then people would go to weaving right after trade to unlock furrier if they have furs. Right now I'm only getting it to try and reveal sheep and pearls once the techs are too cheap to ignore.

 

[Eyestabber]

Hello, played a campaign with this mod until middle ages. At this point it is just a matter of mopping up the two remaining civs. Anyway, some random thoughts:

1) why does the AI consistently attacks my doomstacks with archers? This behavior is AND specific and makes my job much easier. AI constantly wastes its forces in pointless attacks. Maybe it's miscalculating something?
2) field commanders are a huge player-only advantage. Didn't see the AI using them and their bonuses are pretty busted
3) Slavery-Despotism-Warlords sounds like a pretty standard government for the Ancient Era but in AND it results in unmanageable unrest.
4) some models look mismatched. I had medieval looking knights (heavy cavalry) since 300 BC or so. And all my swordsmen (India) looked exactly the same, from Ancient to high middle ages (Heavy Swordsman).
5) Reformed is insanely busted. All other religion civs pale in comparison.
6) Penalties for drafting are too severe. People got drafted for centuries and society didn't colapse instantly, like it does in the mod.
7) Loved the introduction of Foreign Policy and Welfare, but don't see why changing these civics should result in a long revolution.
8) I don't understand guilds. Don't they have an exec? How do I expand them?
9) I played an entire game, 80% of it under Monarchy and I still have no clue how fixed borders are supposed to work.

Anyway, good mod. I was looking for a vanilla+ experience and this one fits the bill nicely. Well done!

 

[Vokarya]

Let me take a stab at some of these questions. I'll get to the rest later.

Hello, played a campaign with this mod until middle ages. At this point it is just a matter of mopping up the two remaining civs. Anyway, some random thoughts:
1) why does the AI consistently attacks my doomstacks with archers? This behavior is AND specific and makes my job much easier. AI constantly wastes its forces in pointless attacks. Maybe it's miscalculating something?

I don't really know. Exactly where were you on the tech tree at this point? Archers have the same AI routines (UNITAI_ATTACK) that they have in BTS. The "power" number has been recalibrated (it's unit strength ^ 1.3, not unit strength) but that should make the AI less likely to attack if it sees a bigger power difference. AI is not something I can work on.

2) field commanders are a huge player-only advantage. Didn't see the AI using them and their bonuses are pretty busted

It probably is mismatched. I don't think the AI knows how to use them either, but we don't have anyone who can help with the AI. You can turn this off in the Custom Game settings if you think it's unbalanced.

3) Slavery-Despotism-Warlords sounds like a pretty standard government for the Ancient Era but in AND it results in unmanageable unrest.

Is this just for you, or is it for the AI? One thing that is not well-documented, but isn't hidden either, is that there is a separate slider that adjusts the Revolution index for human players. It starts off at 5 and I believe it should default to 0. It's somewhere in the BUG menu. Otherwise, expansion in the early eras is supposed to be difficult. It takes a lot to weld a large early empire together.

4) some models look mismatched. I had medieval looking knights (heavy cavalry) since 300 BC or so. And all my swordsmen (India) looked exactly the same, from Ancient to high middle ages (Heavy Swordsman).

I haven't done a lot with unit models. The Heavy Horseman and Rider units are actually imported from the Charlemagne mod, where they are the Light Cavalry and Heavy Cavalry. I renamed and revised them to create separate, coherent heavy mounted (move-2) and light mounted (move-2, ignore terrain cost, higher withdrawal) unit lines but I never adjusted the artwork.

You are right that the Indian Swordsman and Indian Heavy Swordsman are the same unit model. They are stored separately so I did not notice. I feel like unit art in general could use some rebuilding but I'm not sure how much level of detail we really need. Somewhere there is a limit to how many unit models the game can actually use without memory issues, so I feel reluctant to get too specific.

 

[robbyextreme]

Hello, played a campaign with this mod until middle ages. At this point it is just a matter of mopping up the two remaining civs. Anyway, some random thoughts:
3) Slavery-Despotism-Warlords sounds like a pretty standard government for the Ancient Era but in AND it results in unmanageable unrest.

Those 3 are tough civics to maintain and are situational

Standard is going for Tribute and Caste, with Tribute you run tech slider at 85% to avoid taxation unhappiness and use the unlimited merchants from Caste to avoid negative gold penalty while having 85% into science. The point of these civics is to switch off from Tribal and Barter asap.

• Despotism you usually don't have to switch to if you play aggressive, capturing a 4th city will automatically switch to Despotism without anarchy.
• Pairing Despotism + Slavery adds a lot of unhappiness since they both give +34% and +25% to unhappiness from overpopulation (59% overpopulation running both) try to hold off on Slavery until Monarchy unless you are playing a Charismatic leader.
• Warrior Caste is situational depending if you are building an army. I sometimes skip it if I have Pyramids/Spiritual leader then I focus on graveyards. Unless I absolutely need units with kamikaze promotions to take a well defended nearby city. (Stable+Warrior Caste = +4 exp) so your units spawn with a promotion ready.
• Warlords is almost never needed. That 20% military bonus is very little hammers in ancient age and not worth the anarchy turn and revolution unrest it adds. I only get this if I'm switching civics during a golden age.
• Slavery is very strong but also a very greedy civic, make sure you can actually manage the unhappiness, if not go for Caste.
• Conscription I never got. Drafting units makes no sense to me with how much unhappiness it costs.

Tips for ancient age

• Play a Philosophical leader to get a great person from village hall in 50 turns and start a golden age then switch all civics during the golden age for no anarchy or revolution unrest.
• Switching civics one at a time adds smaller and more manageable increments to the revolution unrest.
• Build traders to pay for bribing your cities and reduce revolutions unrest
• Capturing cities is the easiest way to bring revolutions down
• Completing national wonders and world wonders brings down revolutions a lot. But are hard to get on immortal/deity levels unless you have Stone and lots of hammer tiles or a Great Engineer.

 

[Vokarya]

Regarding Anarchy: I looked into this. The one change from unmodded BTS is that the AnarchyPercent for a given gamespeed has been increased. For example, on Normal, AnarchyPercent is 200 compared to BTS 100. However, the total game length is 2.4x normal (1200 turns on Normal vs. 500) so that means revolutions should take a smaller percent of your total game -- except that we also have 8 civic categories compared to BTS 5, and those revolutions all add up.

So redoing the math: (2.4x) game length * (5/8) civic categories = a proper 1.5x multiplier to anarchy, not 2x.

What this would do is to shorten all anarchy lengths by 25%. Does this seem reasonable?

 

[Vokarya]

Now, here are my current thoughts on Despotism/Warlords.

If we take the military happiness from Despotism and put it on Warlords, while deleting the military production bonus from Warlords and the unhappiness increase from Despotism, then we get Warlords with +1 happy/unit after the first (leaving the automatic +1 unhappy as a balancing feature) but Despotism doesn't do anything other than lifting the penalties from Chiefdom.

This seems like it would make Warlords viable for longer but may make it too good. On the other hand, would Despotism need something else to make it still usable?

 

[robbyextreme]

+1 happy/unit with Warlords would make the game too easy and tedious since we could run Monarchy+Warlords and unhappiness would be a non issue in every city, the strategy would become moving units between cities nearly every turn when getting growth/anger/luxury resources.

Of course Despotism already enables this playstyle but +34% overpopulation anger from despotism means half a players units will be fortified in their cities so they can't steam roll a neighbor while also abusing +1 happy/unit.

And switching to Warlords just to get +34% unhappiness isn't exciting.

On the other hand, would Despotism need something else to make it still usable?

The problem with Despotism is it does not compare to Monarchy's "No in capital city" which gives infinite capital growth without having to fortify a dozen units on the city. -10% city maintenance and -25% war wariness from monument of dictator is not worth having to AFK your units for.

Since it is a defensive civic it should enable that playstyle further, so people who play peaceful strategies will want to stay on Despotism.

• City Defense
• Culture
• Great General emergence inside cultural borders

This seems like it would make Warlords viable for longer but may make it too good

The reason Warlords is hard to balance is because it functions like Military civic yet it's under "Rule" category. Which means Warlords can't be buffed too much or else combining it with Warrior Caste would make military units too strong.

I have a few ideas but they are too complicated features to add so I wont bother writing it but I think it's core problem is like I said in the previous sentence.

 

[Vokarya]

The reason Warlords is hard to balance is because it functions like Military civic yet it's under "Rule" category. Which means Warlords can't be buffed too much or else combining it with Warrior Caste would make military units too strong.

I totally get that. I had to do a lot of tuning the XP curve so that certain XP thresholds were not possible to reach in a particular era without sacrificing Great Generals as Military Instructors. For example, like in BTS, only Mounted units can get 5 XP before the Medieval Era. In BTS itself, you can get that 5 XP from Barracks + Stable, while in AND you have to have Stable + Warrior Caste/Mercenaries. Other units can only get 4 XP from Barracks/Archery Range + Warrior Caste/Mercenaries, having to wait until the Medieval Era to add Asatru Monastery/The Sagas/Holy Order to get to the next threshold.

The current idea behind the "Rule" category of civics is "how many different possibilities are there for a society's upper class?" A long time ago I floated the idea of merging the Government and Rule categories but it wasn't liked so I abandoned it. So I thought Warlords was a good early Rule civic.

 

[Vokarya]

I also looked at the drafting issue. The key variable CONSCRIPT_POP_ANGER has not been changed from BTS's level of 3. I can certainly lower that. My only question if lowering it all the way to 1 is going too far. It would mean a lot of conscripted units, but conscripted units are almost always the defensive infantry units and not the offensive cavalry/artillery.

 

[robbyextreme]

My only question if lowering it all the way to 1 is going too far.

Conscriptions problem is that it's extremely punishing early game where happiness and population is too valuable. But late game it's probably too strong even as it is now, take a look at this game.

All my cities have 15-20 spare happiness despite being cities with 20-25 population.

• Divine Cult (-50% from population )
• 16 Luxury Resources
• Holy City/Buildings

And this is with 0% in culture I could put 25% in culture and all cities would get another +3 from Theater+Arena+Brothel. If i switched to Conscription in this game I could draft about 40 macemen in 5 turns, on top of the huge army I already have lol.

But I feel this civic will always be super terrible on maps with low food/happy resources. Except with Olympic Games where you have no penalty. And if you buff it for low resource maps then it will be too strong for high resource maps.

We could try making Conscription cost 1 in ancient/classical and 2 in medieval and 3 in renaissance and up. Or move Conscription to another era.