Guide for Dawn of A New Era

[rob_robinson398]

Tried to play the mod but have no clue on what I am doing. Have played RaR and throughly enjoyed it. Any link to a guide will help or I can just get my butt kicked through trial and error(but that's no fun) Thanks for your replies.

 

[M07]

Hello rob_robinson398,

I fully understand your issue. During years, we have done changes on the vanilla version, and now with DoaNE, we have a totally different game than the original.

So, let's start the tutorial.

Initialisation
When you start a game with DoaNE, the first thing you should know is that the game is divided in 4 eras.
So when you initialize parameters of your game, one of the question is what kind of victory you would like to have.

Spoiler :

It will determine the duration of your game. By default, "reach the era 2" is selected. It is the shortest victory game of DoaNE. (In average, I need 90 turns to finish a game in patriot difficulty)

More details about new eras here

Starting a game
You will start with 2 ships, one empty and the second one with a builder pack (mandatory to found your colony), a carpenter and an unit of your choice (personally I often choose a veteran soldier, but you have the choice).

With the empty ship, I start to discover new lands and a potential place for my future colony. If I found some native villages, I visit them with this unit.

Then I move my second ship to find a good place. Like this one below :

Spoiler :

You can wonder why it is a good place for me. I have two ocean tiles, at least one for wood and all others for yields production (in my case it will be mainly the cotton).
All the tiles with white stars will produce resources that I will sell in Europe.
It is the key of this game, more you produce, more you sell, more you are rich and finally more you are powerful

You can also see, that to found my colony, the ship with the builder pack has to to be close to one of my units. (Red arrows)

First thing to do in your colony
It is really important to put inside your colony your two units, in order to produce as fast as possible the carpentry. Don't forget to hurry the production, you will save two turns.
Another thing really important is to start the trade with natives. So with your carrack, you should load 25 tools in order to trade them against cottons, furs or whatever.

Spoiler :

The first era begins
After you will pass the turn, you will receive a message saying you have reached the first era.
You should not forget that in this game, we have chosen the "Reach the second era" victory mode. So it is already the next era to reach to win the game.
You can see bellow what is the button to display the next era criteria.

Spoiler :

After clinking on the button, you should see a screen like the one bellow.
There is two ways to reach an era :
- On the top right, you can see that I will automatically reach the era 2 at turn 130. If you remember well, my average in patriot is at turn 90, so you will loose, if you just wait.
- On the bottom right, you will see all criteria to reach this era. It is harder than the first way for sure, but it is shorter. If you want to win, you don't really have the choice
You have to be strong in all points (militarily, economically, religiously, and on the world discovering.)
It is important to see frequently this screen to see what are our weak points.

Spoiler :

How to make money ?
Except if you are on the poles, you should be able to produce something at the beginning.
Your only way to make money is to trade with natives. That's why I have told you just before to take some tools for the trade. With your carrack (with 25 of tools), you have to go in native villages to trade your tools. As you can see bellow, I have exchange 19 cottons and 1 tobacco against 5 tools. I just have to continue with one or two other native colonies and I will be able to sell goods in Europe.

Spoiler :

Let's go in Europe
Once your ship is on a Europe tile, you have the ability to create a seaway (see more details here). The seaway will be useful if you want to come in a specific part of the map. For instance, close to native villages for trading, close to Spanish colonies to plan an attack, close to one of your colonies...

Compared to the Vanilla game, We have divided the Europe in 4 screens.
On the top right on the screen (red arrow) You can see the 4 screens of Europe :
- Captaincy screen to have an overview of all ships in Europe.
- Ships screen to recruit sailors, repair, sell, buy, resupply ships
- Trade screen to sell or buy resources in Europe
- Immigration to recruit immigrants and asked them to come in the new world.

Spoiler :

 

[M07]

Immigration in Europe

On the top right of the screen, yo will see the "Call for Immigration part".
You have to select all units you would like to have in your colony. However, you have to do some choice, because at the beginning you don't have a lot of money.
I usually try to have fishermen, lumberjacks and mainly pioneers to build farms and roads.
You can see that the probability to have a pioneer is 25%. That's mean that every turn, I will have 25% of chance to have an offer of this kind of unit. This probability can increase if you are a strong leader or decrease if you are a bad one (see the colonial attraction on the top of the screen)

Moreover, I can have directly a pioneer if I have 15 immigration points.
I gain 1 immigration point every turn.

On the bottom, you can only see suggestion of units you could ask for immigration. It is not 100% accurate but it often helps.

Spoiler :

Once I passed my turn, I was lucky to see an offer of a lumberjack. I Have negotiated his recruitment price, but it can say no and then leave dock. Be ready to potentially lose him before doing a negotiation.

Spoiler :

Trade in Europe
As you can see bellow, I have a lot of native resources to sell in my carrack.
I will start to sell everything except my precious tools .

Spoiler :

Now, as I am not rich enough, I will continue to buy resources natives want and sell resources I will trade with them.
At the first era, they want mainly (tools, horses and trade goods). Trade goods are cheap in Europe but have the same value for natives than tools. Usually I take 7 tools and 23 trade goods for a carrack.

Spoiler :

Back to the new world
Now, in the captaincy screen, i will click on the seaway button just above my ship. Like that I will define its cap to the new world.

Spoiler :

And trade again!
You can go to the same native villages or others if you are lucky to have a lot of villages. Then, you keep trading with them.

Spoiler :

After your carpentry done, I highly recommend you to do a wagon train in order to have a commercial agreement with a specific village. Thanks to this agreement, you will have the exclusivity of all resources produced by this village. If an European is faster than you, he will "steal" your village .
To do an agreement with a village, take 10 of tools in wagon train and offer those goods to the village. The village will be happy and will be able to do bigger agreements.
For this particular agreement, the native village requires horses. Be sure to respect your agreement, otherwise the village could boycott you for several turns.

Spoiler :

Let's do automation!
Thanks to your agreement you will receive frequently resources in your colony that you would like to sell in Europe.
In order to do it manually and save time, I suggest you to create a trade route between your colony and Europe.
Click on the related button on the top left of the screen, see below.


Once you will create your trade route, you will be able to choose what kind of resources you want to sell in Europe and which ones you want to buy in Europe.
I didn't do it in the screen below, but I should add on the right side the horse resources and set in the middle of the screen to assure the amount of 15 horses in my colony. Like that, each time one of my wagon train will take horses for an agreement, my trade route will take care to buy enough horses to maintain the specified amount.

Spoiler :

 

[M07]

As you were able to see, my trade route is not operational yet, because I didn't assign any ship to this trade route.
I have my caravel in Europe, and I will assign it to my trade route.

Spoiler :

One good thing also to create trade routes is for the immigration.
I will be able to say to an immigrant to embark into the next fleet in destination of a specific city that has a trade route with Europe.
When the caravel will have enough space, my immigrant will automatically embark into on of my ships.

Spoiler :

Let's produce by our own
It is time to produce resources to gain more money. Once our pioneers have done a farm, we have to use our agronomist on the farm. He will be able to plant known resources on our farms. (see more details here)

Spoiler :

It is really important to see the level of farm you could have for a resource. More you have level and more you will be able to produce.
To know a level of farm on a tile, you can :
- select an agronomist and point the desired tiles. You will see information in the bottom left of the screen.
- click on a button on the bottom left of the screen see screenshot bellow

Spoiler :

Moreover, you can see in this last screenshot an useful information for the discovering goal. Every scout that have discovered a land, will add it on his own map. Once a unit with a map comes back in Europe or in one of your colonies, the map will be revealed and the land discovered amount will be increased.

Have a frequently look to you new era screen, it is your main goal in order to win the game.

I hope this tutorial was clear enough, and if you have any question feel free to ask me.

Have a good game

 

[rob_robinson398]

Thanks so much. I am really excited to play and thanks for the visual screens. I will probably play on the weenie choice to get a feel for the game and experience.

 

[M07]

Thanks so much. I am really excited to play and thanks for the visual screens.

It is normal, I should do it before.

I will probably play on the weenie choice to get a feel for the game and experience.

Ah ah It is totally normal, you will see the game has a totally different game play.
That's why, it is for me, impossible to play to the vanilla version or some mods. I miss too much features, we have added with DoaNE.

 

[SimianMusings]

Have a question. When I start the game, I'm not seeing the initialization screen where you choose the VC era. Hence I'm stuck with the 2nd Era. I'd much rather play with the Independence Victory option. It there some other way of accessing this option?

 

[M07]

Welcome @SimianMusings,
Try to play a normal game and not scenarios (Single Player -> Play Now) and you should be able to see the option.

 

[SimianMusings]

Try to play a normal game and not scenarios (Single Player -> Play Now) and you should be able to see the option.

Actually, whenever I try to start a game using the Single Player>Play Now option, the program shuts down. Only way I've been able to play the game is to either play a scenario or to use the Custom Game option. Pity since I don't really care for the other Colonization Mods other than Religion and Revolution, which is great. I like DoaNE because it is different and actually plays very well and quickly (R&R drags terribly once you've been playing awhile. Almost as bad as Realism Invictus.

 

[M07]

Hello @SimiamMusings,
I will try to solve your issue. Would you download the following DLL https://we.tl/qzgHawjT67
You have to extract the file here :
C:\Program Files (x86)\2K Games\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization IV Colonization\Mods\Dawn of a New Era v5.21\Assets\

Then in this folder :
C:\Users\[username]\Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization IV Colonization\, you should find the CivilizationIV.ini file.
Open it with notepad, and change
From
GenerateCrashDumps = 0
To
GenerateCrashDumps = 1

Then save the file.
Now, you just have to start a new game. It should crash and should generate a file called MiniDump inside this folder :
C:\Program Files (x86)\2K Games\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization IV Colonization

You can send me the file via https://wetransfer.com/, send it to yourself, you will receive an email with the URL to download the file.

Thanks for your help

 

[SimianMusings]

Seem to have solved the issue. Deleted the game and reinstalled it, suddenly it started working. One thing was different. The screen specifying the era when victory is decided doesn't come until the last one before the game starts. Other than that, the game is now running as I'd hoped. May have found something I enjoy more than Religion and Revolution.

Now just have to stop playing it and read the guide so I know what the heck I'm doing.

 

[M07]

I am glad your issue has been fixed.
I have uploaded a new version of DoaNE. I have fixed a major issue for the AI.
Good reading and have a good game.

 

[Herskar]

I thoroughly enjoy your mod, but I cannot seem to train veteran soldiers - am I missing something, or is this as intended? Many thanks in advance!

 

[M07]

Hello @Herskar,
in DoaNE, we want to make veteran soldiers rare. That's why we cannot train them.
However, you have three possibilities to have those units currently:
- You can try to recruit them in Europe (but odds are very low)
- A colonist will be transformed automatically into veteran soldier if it has the same promotions than a basic veteran soldier.
- You can try to bribe a veteran soldier if he is inside a ship that you have just captured. (It works also with king troops)

For us it makes this unit more valuable.

Thanks for your feedback.

FYI, I still working on DoaNE, a bit slowly but still

 

[Herskar]

Aha, well, that is a perfectly good reason. And if you're still tinkering with the mod, might I suggest that you add a "Go to" command, bringing up a list of towns/ports (for land units and ships, respectively)? I confess, I am lazy...

 

[M07]

It's a good idea. I will try to add it.