I don't get it....can you help me get it?

[jjkrause84]

I'll start by saying I am very thankful to all the big modders out there...I'm just looking for help undertanding the whole thing.

I'm trying to enjoy AND and I'm finding it really hard. At first it was great having new decisions, etc. but now it really feels like 'content for content's sake'. The early game is very, very slow (been playing for maybe an hour and a half and can still only build spearmen!) and whlei there are a TON of decisiosn to make none of them seem very consequential. Is this just because I'm not used to AND yet and am stumbling blindly through or would it have been better for me to try smaller mods first before going from BTS 3.19 right into AND 1.75?

I really wanna like this and I've had moments where I feel like, "Wow! It really IS like a whole new expansion!"

Help me out!

EDIT: How can I turn revolutions on and why did the Arabian capital fall to 1 after the Aztecs held it for a while?

EDIT 2: I cannot tell you how impressed I am at all the new Wonder movies....amazing!

 

[Kwami]

The Revolutions Mod is an option when you create a custom game. It's almost pointless, though. I've never even come close to a Revolution in 1.75 and the AI seems to expand incredibly fast with no revolutions most of the time. I was rather disappointed in that.

I'm with you on the content for content's sake thing. The first few hundred turns really don't give you any option because if you don't do the techs right you'll fall behind and probably lose. Civics are too complicated, too. Most of them are useless because of the drawbacks or because you can't unlock them until very late in the game when you're already won or lost.

I like all of the civilizations, though, and I like a few of the other mods. So, I keep playing anyway. Plus, vanilla BtS is too easy now.

 

[Actuarian]

I actually like this mod a lot - the slow pace is inherent in the mod - it is supposed to be epic. Unlike most other mods there is no single tech or unit that immediately changes the balance of the game. Also, the more gradual pace gives me time to enjoy my accomplishments before they go obsolete; that's what I like.

There are other mods out there that I don't care for. For some reason I don't feel compelled to post at their mod folder, complaining about the entire basis for their creation, especially after someone has spent many hours working on them with no pay. Just sayin'......

There are some other faster paced mods you might prefer. Check out the Mongoose mod. It has the stated purpose of being the not-RoM mod (the mod maker even refers to RoM as a bloated mess). The Mongoose mod does expand the historical scope but maintains fairly quick gameplay.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

I have to agree with Actuarian after playing RoM I find some other mods and vanilla BtS too fast. I enjoy the fact that a RoM can take three eight hour sessions to complete and that if you don't have horses it is still possible to win.

 

[Spobe]

The Revolutions Mod is an option when you create a custom game. It's almost pointless, though. I've never even come close to a Revolution in 1.75 and the AI seems to expand incredibly fast with no revolutions most of the time. I was rather disappointed in that.

So says you.

I've come too close to a revolution in my last two quick games on Noble difficulty, all because I was expanding too quickly, I had a representative government, and my tax rate was too high. I couldn't adjust my tax rate unless I wanted to fall far behind in research, and I couldn't change my government unless I wanted to fall even further behind in that sense. I was screwed.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

The Revolutions Mod is an option when you create a custom game. It's almost pointless, though. I've never even come close to a Revolution in 1.75 and the AI seems to expand incredibly fast with no revolutions most of the time. I was rather disappointed in that.

Interesting, I see AI civs expand to fast, then split into factions. then they try and reconsolidate often doing better than the original leader. Some leaders seem more prone to revolutions than others. (I am playing C2C which is based on RAND 1.76b)

 

[Kwami]

I actually like this mod a lot - the slow pace is inherent in the mod - it is supposed to be epic. Unlike most other mods there is no single tech or unit that immediately changes the balance of the game. Also, the more gradual pace gives me time to enjoy my accomplishments before they go obsolete; that's what I like.

Gunpowder units? That's the first example that comes to mind. They completely obsolete everything else. I've been in wars where I'm getting my ass kicked, one of my workers finally connects that sulfur, and suddenly I'm dominating. It's silly.

That said, what do you mean by a more gradual pace? It's gradual for the first 50-100 turns, but then it just takes off ridiculously fast. Sure, it'll take you much longer to hit the future era than vanilla BtS, but the other side is that you don't need to get anywhere near that far into the tech tree to win a game. Most of my games are over by the time I hit the 50% turn mark. I tend to play on Epic, but I've found the same to be true in the few Marathon games that I've played.

There are other mods out there that I don't care for. For some reason I don't feel compelled to post at their mod folder, complaining about the entire basis for their creation, especially after someone has spent many hours working on them with no pay. Just sayin'......

Eh, feedback is feedback. It's not all going to be positive. There are parts of AND that I really like and parts that I think are poor.

Concerning Revolutions, I do see them occasionally. Certainly, you'll see Egypt form in the city of Athens and then expand on its own, or Carthage form in Boston only to rejoin the Americans ten turns later. Yes, this does all happen.

But there are two major problems with Revolutions in my games. First, they never affect me. Like, ever. The only time that I ever came close to a revolution was when I built a city much too far away from my capital, had a large unhealthiness penalty from flood planes, and didn't bother connecting a road for about thirty turns. Of course, I just rejected the rebel terms and proceeded to ignore it as I built health buildings and a road. Problem solved, I guess. That's hardly interesting, though, and it takes some extreme circumstances to trigger it. Indeed, I've only even seen revolutions dialogue that one time.

The other problem is that it seems to happen to the AI randomly. It's not at all uncommon for me to have an AI empire with 9-10 cities early in the game and no revolutions in sight. On the other hand, the little guy mostly keeping to himself with 2-3 cities will lose one when the Romans are mad, or something. It's annoying because the AI probably shouldn't be able to expand that rapidly early in the game when it would be almost impossible for a human player to do the same.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Gunpowder units? That's the first example that comes to mind. They completely obsolete everything else. I've been in wars where I'm getting my ass kicked, one of my workers finally connects that sulfur, and suddenly I'm dominating. It's silly.

That said, what do you mean by a more gradual pace? It's gradual for the first 50-100 turns, but then it just takes off ridiculously fast. Sure, it'll take you much longer to hit the future era than vanilla BtS, but the other side is that you don't need to get anywhere near that far into the tech tree to win a game. Most of my games are over by the time I hit the 50% turn mark. I tend to play on Epic, but I've found the same to be true in the few Marathon games that I've played.



Eh, feedback is feedback. It's not all going to be positive. There are parts of AND that I really like and parts that I think are poor.

Concerning Revolutions, I do see them occasionally. Certainly, you'll see Egypt form in the city of Athens and then expand on its own, or Carthage form in Boston only to rejoin the Americans ten turns later. Yes, this does all happen.

But there are two major problems with Revolutions in my games. First, they never affect me. Like, ever. The only time that I ever came close to a revolution was when I built a city much too far away from my capital, had a large unhealthiness penalty from flood planes, and didn't bother connecting a road for about thirty turns. Of course, I just rejected the rebel terms and proceeded to ignore it as I built health buildings and a road. Problem solved, I guess. That's hardly interesting, though, and it takes some extreme circumstances to trigger it. Indeed, I've only even seen revolutions dialogue that one time.

The other problem is that it seems to happen to the AI randomly. It's not at all uncommon for me to have an AI empire with 9-10 cities early in the game and no revolutions in sight. On the other hand, the little guy mostly keeping to himself with 2-3 cities will lose one when the Romans are mad, or something. It's annoying because the AI probably shouldn't be able to expand that rapidly early in the game when it would be almost impossible for a human player to do the same.

It looks like your difficulty level may be too low if you know you are winning by half time. At least that is better than Civ V, I can tell if I am going to win in the game before I place my first city!

 

[Kwami]

Maybe. I've been playing on Emperor, which is higher than I played for vanilla BtS. I guess I could go up another level, but it's starting to just feel artificial at this point. I'd much rather smarter AI and more balanced techs.

One or the largest contributors to winning at the 50% mark (winning, not knowing that I'll win) is culture. A cultural victory is trivial if you can sustain 5-6 cities in your empire. The only time it doesn't work is when you get screwed on strategic resources. Culture is way, way too easy to get in AND 1.75. I think that reducing some of the +x% culture buildings would go a long way toward fixing that.

 

[Actuarian]

Gunpowder units? That's the first example that comes to mind. They completely obsolete everything else. I've been in wars where I'm getting my ass kicked, one of my workers finally connects that sulfur, and suddenly I'm dominating. It's silly.

That said, what do you mean by a more gradual pace? It's gradual for the first 50-100 turns, but then it just takes off ridiculously fast. Sure, it'll take you much longer to hit the future era than vanilla BtS, but the other side is that you don't need to get anywhere near that far into the tech tree to win a game. Most of my games are over by the time I hit the 50% turn mark. I tend to play on Epic, but I've found the same to be true in the few Marathon games that I've played.



Eh, feedback is feedback. It's not all going to be positive. There are parts of AND that I really like and parts that I think are poor.

Concerning Revolutions, I do see them occasionally. Certainly, you'll see Egypt form in the city of Athens and then expand on its own, or Carthage form in Boston only to rejoin the Americans ten turns later. Yes, this does all happen.

But there are two major problems with Revolutions in my games. First, they never affect me. Like, ever. The only time that I ever came close to a revolution was when I built a city much too far away from my capital, had a large unhealthiness penalty from flood planes, and didn't bother connecting a road for about thirty turns. Of course, I just rejected the rebel terms and proceeded to ignore it as I built health buildings and a road. Problem solved, I guess. That's hardly interesting, though, and it takes some extreme circumstances to trigger it. Indeed, I've only even seen revolutions dialogue that one time.

The other problem is that it seems to happen to the AI randomly. It's not at all uncommon for me to have an AI empire with 9-10 cities early in the game and no revolutions in sight. On the other hand, the little guy mostly keeping to himself with 2-3 cities will lose one when the Romans are mad, or something. It's annoying because the AI probably shouldn't be able to expand that rapidly early in the game when it would be almost impossible for a human player to do the same.

I stand by all of my original comments. We obviously have different play styles and playing abilities. With me the story/play is more important than the results. I continue to think that relative to vanilla BTS and almost all other mods, unit and technological advances are much more granular and any single advance/unit has much less effect.

Feedback can either be defined as advice or criticism. If you meant it as criticism I'll stick to my original comment. If you meant it as advice, I apologize. But consider this. The AND mod is already almost entirely complete and I somehow doubt Aforess is going to strip out a bunch of content at this point in the process. The whole purpose he created this mod for was to add more content to RoM.

While I don't share his tastes, I actually liked how Mongoose described RoM. It was refreshing to read him plainly state that while he respected it, it just wasn't his cup of tea. Here is what he says:

"A bloated mess. I admire the design of something like RoM, and appreciate all the work that has gone into it; I really do. But in my personal opinion that approach is the way to make a better historical simulation, NOT the way to make a better game. I have extended and added to the vanilla system myself, yes, but always with the belief that extra complexity is something to be avoided unless absolutely necessary."

Peace.

 

[Afforess]

but always with the belief that extra complexity is something to be avoided unless absolutely necessary."

And that was where Civilization 5 utterly failed. By simplifying the game, they destroyed what made it fun to go to each next turn.

I don't deny that AND is without flaws, but it's in as good of a state as it will probably ever get. It has no major bugs, doesn't crash, and a fairly competent AI, considering the vast rule changes it brings (I know this is a point of contention - but half the fan base here tells me the AI wins far too often, and the other half that it's extremely easy to beat. Neither have offered solid proof.).

Kwami,

If it is as easy as you say it is to win - I'd benefit greatly from you posting a detailed playthrough of a game on Emperor difficulty.

 

[vincentz]

I think the "lack" of challenge in AND goes back to a RoM update. I cant remember the version (could it have been 2.8x) where, from being a really good AI, it just kinda fell apart. In my work with my own mod I have come across some weird AI behavior, where a single change could throw it into a permanent dark age. I remember especially changing the GlobalDefine for food needed per growthstep from 20 to 40. This single change completely broke the AI in my mod (it wouldnt grow its cities and wouldnt buy settlers), even though I didnt have any problems handling it. With the amount of changes in RoM+AND that single modifier that threw it offguard could be nearly impossible to find, and with the huge amount of customization and the different playstyles the input from players would be the Babels tower construction iykwim. New players to a megamod would find it difficult to play even though there was no ai present at all, while seasoned players would go on the "right" path making the AI sink behind quickly.
For me though it wasn't so much the fact that I would quickly rise to be #1 on the scoreboard, but the init/load time (which I would have alot of when modding) and especially the turntimes. It caught me by surprise that in my own mod (that doesnt have any speed optimizer, nor BUG, BULL, REVDCM, BetterAI etc etc) the turn times would be a couple of seconds in 1600AD even though I had a couple of Aggressive AIs turning out 100's of units. In RoM (and/or AND) it would have been a couple of minutes. That being said, I dont have nearly as many features as RoMAND.

 

[Actuarian]

And that was where Civilization 5 utterly failed. By simplifying the game, they destroyed what made it fun to go to each next turn.

I don't deny that AND is without flaws, but it's in as good of a state as it will probably ever get. It has no major bugs, doesn't crash, and a fairly competent AI, considering the vast rule changes it brings (I know this is a point of contention - but half the fan base here tells me the AI wins far too often, and the other half that it's extremely easy to beat. Neither have offered solid proof.).

Kwami,

If it is as easy as you say it is to win - I'd benefit greatly from you posting a detailed playthrough of a game on Emperor difficulty.

Aforess,

Just making sure you know that quote wasn't my opinion; I just like it when people say what they really think instead of beating about the bush. Thanks for an incredible mod! In my opinion, it is simply the best around.

Totally random and off the subject, but my favorite aunt went to university with your real-life avatar, where she acted in several plays with him. She's suffering from Alzheimers now but she can still recall her acting exploits - seeing your posts always makes me think of her in her better days.

 

[Hogar313]

The Revolutions Mod is an option when you create a custom game. It's almost pointless, though. I've never even come close to a Revolution in 1.75 and the AI seems to expand incredibly fast with no revolutions most of the time. I was rather disappointed in that.

I'm with you on the content for content's sake thing. The first few hundred turns really don't give you any option because if you don't do the techs right you'll fall behind and probably lose. Civics are too complicated, too. Most of them are useless because of the drawbacks or because you can't unlock them until very late in the game when you're already won or lost.

I like all of the civilizations, though, and I like a few of the other mods. So, I keep playing anyway. Plus, vanilla BtS is too easy now.

I'm in a 1.74H game right now, and my overseas colonies are starting to get pissed just because of religion. They're all Christian and don't take too kindly on Muslims, because the surrounding civs spread Christianity to them. The difficulty level is Warlord... I hate it though that until you really start to slaughter your citizens they won't start rebelling on your own soil. It is also disappointing that they will never demand a change of goverment to republic from monarchy, for example, which was present in the first versions of RoM.

In 1.74H, although the revolutions are kind of weak, I had a blast playing with them with my spies. They can basically start a revolt anywhere, and ruin my enemy's empire. That is what you get with 1.74H, so if you like it, you can install it instead. I'm still mourning over the loss of the capability to build towns in forests and constant revolutions, but seeing those two aren't present in 1.74H either and that I can handle it, I will probably convert to 1.75 in th future since the above mentioned was actually my sole complaint about 1.75.

Cheers!

 

[Antmanbrooks]

Just out of interest as I'm about to start a new game of AND, is there a recommended speed, map size and difficulty setting to play AND? I want to play it on the settings it was made to be played on.

 

[Hogar313]

My personal favorite is snail on a normal-large map. Turn on everything you like, nobody can give you a recommendation about that.

 

[BobTheBull]

@ antmanbrooks

I have gotten back into Civ4 after a years hiatus and instantly migrated to RAND and found it to be just what I have been looking for. I am currently playing a standard size map, due to hardware limitations, on marathon speed. The purpose of this game is just to get back into the game and learn the intricacies of RAND. Based on my experience so far, you need to match game speed to map size. I am ~350 turns of 1600+ turns and am dominating my, for me, small world. There is no way I will get to 2000 AD in this game. However, since this is a learning game that's OK

Don't really have a feel for the right matchups, but the smaller the map the shorter the GS as far as I can see.

@ Afforess

No it ain't perfect, but it's the best there is. When I dropped out of Civ4 I was working on a modmod of ROM incorporating many of the mod features I felt made for better game play, like multiple production, mountains, DCM, etc. and having some success. But circumstances dictated other usage of my time for a while. When I came back, BANG , you had done it all. Well maybe not all, but as close as anyone could come. And having done some of that myself, a thousand hours must be very conservative.

@jjkrause84

Dude! I have been playing my current game for 2 months and 2 days now. After a few hours? After a few hours you haven't really gotten stated yet. And if you are completely new to RAND you should do like it am, play a game just to see what everything is. Try everything in the game (well, you can't really try everything in one game) and don't be afraid to make mistakes. Save every turn and go back if you make a mistake so big you screwed your game.

 

[jjkrause84]

Thanks for all the replies.

It sounds, thus far, like RAND is simply not a fit for me (speed-wise, more than anything), although I'll give it a game or two to see how it goes.

Afforess: This sounds absurd but, thanks again for your fantastic effort. You have built a phenomenal mod, that much is very clear. If you ever want ANY help at all with historical stuff (units, quotes, concepts etc.) please do not hesitate to drop me a line; I'm a history professor. My area of expertise is the French army in WWI but I am pretty firmly comfortable with more or less any European military history topic (My first three lectures for one class this year were "Warfare in the Middle Ages", "Warfare in the Early Modern Period" (really just the 30 Years War and a bit after), and "Sieges".....what a blast those lectures were!)

Cheers!

 

[Arkatakor]

And that was where Civilization 5 utterly failed. By simplifying the game, they destroyed what made it fun to go to each next turn.

I don't deny that AND is without flaws, but it's in as good of a state as it will probably ever get. It has no major bugs, doesn't crash, and a fairly competent AI, considering the vast rule changes it brings (I know this is a point of contention - but half the fan base here tells me the AI wins far too often, and the other half that it's extremely easy to beat. Neither have offered solid proof.).

Civ4 + ROM + AND is simply the best strategy game available imo - its virtually a simulation of history as well as that of a possible future. My only regret is that there are so few people out there who play mods, especially this one.

While I have not played in the last 4 months, the only issue I had with the last version I played was with the "building upgrades" option which to be frank made the game suck in many ways. But fortunately it was an optional install and when I removed it every issue I had with the newer AND version sorted itself out. So besides that, no I don't agree with the new content being cumbersome.

The level of depth in this mod is astounding and the unique benefits for each religion (an example among many other features), add greatly to the replay value of this game. Though I have not played Civ5 yet, I understand depth is exactly whats lacking - perhaps Firaxis got too busy simplifying things to give civ5 more mass market appeal. We have to remember that though most of us in these forums love the likes and complexity of the ROM + AND mod, our mindset represents a minority of the playerbase. This is because we could be considered hardcore gamers since we like complex games. Unfortunately for us, most gamers out there are casual gamers who don't like sharp learning curves, this is why I believe the simplicity of civ5 was no accident - it was likely a conscious move by Firaxis.

 

[BlueTemplar]

Well, there are a lot of other excellent strategy games : Starcraft 1&2, Alpha Centauri, Space Empires 5 (+ Balance Mod), Sword of the Stars, Spring... I honestly have trouble deciding which one of them is the best... especially since the whole "strategy" field is so wide!

Otherwise I agree, except that I think this mod has the potential to get even better!

BTW, what is the "building upgrades" option?