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Most annoying "features" in A New Dawn

Afforess

The White Wizard
Joined
Jul 31, 2007
Messages
12,239
Location
Austin, Texas
I'm curious to here what bugs you, what seems wrong, silly, or just outright wrong. Candid opinions are welcome. Anything in the game, whether it be from A New Dawn, to some mechanic in Civ4/Warlords/BTS. Anything is fair game, from annoying Animal barbarians, to a lack of a Zebra resource. :p

Go at it! :mischief:
 
Everything, I hate everything about AND, please destroy it..... lol no, I love it, love everything about it.
 
Well, your installer won't let me install to an arbitrary directory; it apparently checks for the existence of something that is normally present in the RoM folder, and disallows installation if it doesn't find it!

This annoys me because I just want to view your files and then selectively merge some things and not others, rather than just having an installer overwriting everything!

I suppose if I made all of my personal changes to RoM/AND modular-ly, then I wouldn't have this issue... but I'm lazy and don't want to do all that work. :p


P.S. Keep in mind that I'm not necessarily asking you to do anything about my complaint, just that you said I should post about it, so I did...
 
Well, your installer won't let me install to an arbitrary directory; it apparently checks for the existence of something that is normally present in the RoM folder, and disallows installation if it doesn't find it!

This annoys me because I just want to view your files and then selectively merge some things and not others, rather than just having an installer overwriting everything!

I suppose if I made all of my personal changes to RoM/AND modular-ly, then I wouldn't have this issue... but I'm lazy and don't want to do all that work. :p


P.S. Keep in mind that I'm not necessarily asking you to do anything about my complaint, just that you said I should post about it, so I did...

Yes, it does. It checks for the mapscripts, to be specific. :p

My reasoning is that most of my components are very location oriented, everything will fail catastrophically if you decide to choose the wrong folder and proceed. While this ensures that the average user can't break their game horrifically, it will (undoubtedly) bother advanced users...

However, I suppose I can allow it to install to non-RoM directories. Just expect a nasty warning message for continuing. :mischief:
 
I find it very strange Objectivism requires Communism, rather than, say, Globalization. Also, Chain Stores can only be built by Russian-style corporate oligarchies, art galleries can only be built by pacifists, Subsidized nations can't built Welfare Offices, the IMF's branches are called World Banks (which is a different organization altogether) and nobody has combined and converted Vincentz and AAranda's corporations for use in AND. That's about it, pretty much all of my economy-related complaints have been dealt with in the economics thread, and technical problems are my own fault for having a crappy computer.
 
was planning to install (Linux-WINE-)Civ4-BtS-RoM-AND on a USB flash drive so I can take it everywhere but AND resists that violently
 
My main concern is the AI. I hope you'd stop adding new features for a while and review the old ones and test how they affect the AI.

I had another bad experience with AND Emperor difficulty. By 0AD I had basically won the game: I was technologically advanced, had good production and power and had 4 strong religious allies beside me. All that a bit too easily :(

Another thing that should be reviewed is the new buildings. They aren't annoying, but I'd say some of them are just not needed and clutter the building list. For example, all those animal farms in Domesticated Animals don't offer that much gameplay value to a grand scale strategy game even if they are very well done and carefully thought out.
 
I think it should be harder to spread religion across a border (at least without a missionary), and easier to spread within borders than it currently is. My reason is the last game (before the memory issue) I founded Judaism (which happens in most of my games, I guess since I pick early techs in about the same order every time), which by the time I founded and switched to Christianity (for King Richard's Crusade, but made the switch before building the Apostolic Palace), everyone (and every other civ was present) had Judaism as their state religion. In a giant world.

I'd like religion to spread more easily within borders because that whole "Your missionary failed to spread *whatever*" gets annoying after a while and it feels like natural religion spread really stagnates after a while.

I think I'll add to that the new civs spawned through Revolutions, who decide they can't attack my cities, so they run just to the other side of my border, steal my territory by founding a city, and defend it with a unit that got a bunch of free promotions that I can't put a dent in until about the time that I've got the civics to avoid instability altogether. Unless I have cities in the 4000 unrest range which never get better, where the only solution is to move the garrison out, let the fall to the insurgents, and then crush them. Which feels dumb, even if it's a valid way of gaming the rules.
 
I find it very strange Objectivism requires Communism, rather than, say, Globalization. Also, Chain Stores can only be built by Russian-style corporate oligarchies, art galleries can only be built by pacifists, Subsidized nations can't built Welfare Offices, the IMF's branches are called World Banks (which is a different organization altogether) and nobody has combined and converted Vincentz and AAranda's corporations for use in AND. That's about it, pretty much all of my economy-related complaints have been dealt with in the economics thread, and technical problems are my own fault for having a crappy computer.

Objectivism requires Communism because Objectivism is a reactionary political view that formed only after exposure to Communism. Ayn Rand, the founder of Objectivism, lived in Soviet Russia in the early part of her life, and spent the other half preaching about the virtues of Capitalism.

As for the buildings that require specific civics, the original idea was to give each civic a specific building that get's unlocked with it. Some civics, however, are hard to translate into a building that they support, which is why GeneralStaff and I made the "best" choices we could. I agree, many of them are not perfect, and I'd happily change them, given an alternate building to take their place.

was planning to install (Linux-WINE-)Civ4-BtS-RoM-AND on a USB flash drive so I can take it everywhere but AND resists that violently

I tried getting BTS to work in wine, and did once upon a time, but my latest attempts all failed.:p

My main concern is the AI. I hope you'd stop adding new features for a while and review the old ones and test how they affect the AI.

I had another bad experience with AND Emperor difficulty. By 0AD I had basically won the game: I was technologically advanced, had good production and power and had 4 strong religious allies beside me. All that a bit too easily :(

Another thing that should be reviewed is the new buildings. They aren't annoying, but I'd say some of them are just not needed and clutter the building list. For example, all those animal farms in Domesticated Animals don't offer that much gameplay value to a grand scale strategy game even if they are very well done and carefully thought out.

Yes, the AI is worrisome, and a major factor in my decisions for new features. I've done my best to ensure that the AI in AND at least have parity with just RoM AI, but that doesn't say a whole lot, since RoM's AI is not particularly intelligent. I'd appreciate you describing what you see as the biggest stumbling blocks for the AI, so I can focus on that.

As for your other complaint, I urge you to try using the "Recommended" install option in my newer installs. It only installs features that improve gameplay and the AI is proficient at using.

I think it should be harder to spread religion across a border (at least without a missionary), and easier to spread within borders than it currently is. My reason is the last game (before the memory issue) I founded Judaism (which happens in most of my games, I guess since I pick early techs in about the same order every time), which by the time I founded and switched to Christianity (for King Richard's Crusade, but made the switch before building the Apostolic Palace), everyone (and every other civ was present) had Judaism as their state religion. In a giant world.

I'd like religion to spread more easily within borders because that whole "Your missionary failed to spread *whatever*" gets annoying after a while and it feels like natural religion spread really stagnates after a while.

Good suggestions. I may make a "Realistic Religions" game option for future releases which does exactly this. Any other specific problems you have with religions, other than missionary failures inside your borders and slow religion spread?

I think I'll add to that the new civs spawned through Revolutions, who decide they can't attack my cities, so they run just to the other side of my border, steal my territory by founding a city, and defend it with a unit that got a bunch of free promotions that I can't put a dent in until about the time that I've got the civics to avoid instability altogether. Unless I have cities in the 4000 unrest range which never get better, where the only solution is to move the garrison out, let the fall to the insurgents, and then crush them. Which feels dumb, even if it's a valid way of gaming the rules.

I have seen very similar occurrences in AND 1.55. I assume you mean when the rebels have 3-4 units in a stack, but realize that they can't take the city because of all your defenders, so they "run and hide" outside your borders in perpetuity? While practice, it feels.... shallow. I'd imagine rebels being much risk-taking than ordinary attackers. I bet I can tweak this, we shall see.
 
Objectivism requires Communism because Objectivism is a reactionary political view that formed only after exposure to Communism. Ayn Rand, the founder of Objectivism, lived in Soviet Russia in the early part of her life, and spent the other half preaching about the virtues of Capitalism.

As for the buildings that require specific civics, the original idea was to give each civic a specific building that get's unlocked with it. Some civics, however, are hard to translate into a building that they support, which is why GeneralStaff and I made the "best" choices we could. I agree, many of them are not perfect, and I'd happily change them, given an alternate building to take their place.

I figured as much for both. My main issue with Objectivism is not so much that it requires Communism, as much as it is that Objectivism was founded around the time of Globalization's RL discovery, whereas Communism is an Industrial era tech. One of my thoughts was to suggest both as requirements, but Objectivism condemns not just communism, but theism, and religion will inevitably be founded at some point during the game.

A previous idea I had for a Pacifist unique building was:
Peace Memorial
600 :hammers:
+1 :)
+6 :culture:
+25% war :mad: in this city
Corporatism is a bit trickier, but what about:
Corporate Sweatshop
500 :hammers:
Double production speed with Corporate
+1 :mad:
+1 :yuck:
+1 :hammers:
+1 :commerce:
+10% :commerce: yield from :traderoute: in this city
 
I always have thought that Free religion civic is too powerful. AI and even I always keep free religion until the end of the game... maybe free religion should be weaker than now or secular need to be improved.

my suggestion.

1. free religion need to be added nonstate religion penalty as like state religion, but more weaker.

or

2. a little science bonus(5%~10%) for secular.
 
One thing that bugs me is that some tech's don't have those little quotes, I really love them :D even learned most of them by now:lol:
 
One thing that bugs me is that some tech's don't have those little quotes, I really love them :D even learned most of them by now:lol:

What's that you say? Kidnap Leonard Nimoy? Stuff him in a van and take him to a recording studio? I like this idea.
 
I find it very strange Objectivism requires Communism, rather than, say, Globalization. Also, Chain Stores can only be built by Russian-style corporate oligarchies, art galleries can only be built by pacifists, Subsidized nations can't built Welfare Offices, the IMF's branches are called World Banks (which is a different organization altogether) and nobody has combined and converted Vincentz and AAranda's corporations for use in AND. That's about it, pretty much all of my economy-related complaints have been dealt with in the economics thread, and technical problems are my own fault for having a crappy computer.

Vincentz Corporations and Guilds are in AND 1.60Beta4.5. If you follow this link http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=349942, you'll see that I have converted AAranda's Corporations into a modular format (allowing you to pick and choose which ones to have in the game) which will work with AND, and I'm working on Vincentz' Corporations, and have some ideas for longer term.

EDIT: Oops, my bad. Apparently the modular corporations will NOT work with AND's provided Vincentz' Modern Corporations, due to conflict in loading and tags. At this moment, it is either just AND's Modern corporations, or the Modular Corporations (which is AAranda's). Once I iron out the bugs in the conversion of Vincentz and package together with the Modular, you should use that package instead. I might have it done by oh, next week, at the latest.
 
there isn't much to complain in AND except maybe for the difficulty. but if you ask straight, i can tell you some features that have no practical effects for the game.

Health :health:
practically there are so many + :health: resources and buildings that it's really hard to have a city with more :yuck: than :health:. and even when you managed that then the -1 :food: for every not compensated :yuck: is nothing due to the many + :food: boni. and finally we even have health care civics which make no sense right now. so i think to make :yuck: count again is to introduce some population size dependent :yuck: mali. maybe something like that: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8820515&postcount=25

Happiness :thumbsup:
same problem, lack of unhappiness sources although it has a stronger effect then too much :yuck:. but there's another problem: citizen of conquered cities don't seem to be too much concered to live under occupation - which is especially strange when you consider that these cities like to revolt form time to time. thus the possible fix: the gray revolutions bar could produce some population size dependent :thumbsdown: thus revolutions occur more frequent in cities with a rebellious population. this dependency should grow slowly through time i.e. technoligies like nationalism should significantly increase :thumbsdown: from revolutionary tendencies.

Revoultions Mod:
the mod failed to stop me from a domination victory in ~1500 BC on snail speed and Emperor difficulty. however the idea is indeed very cool. but in practice only the very first revolution i've encountered surprised me and i lost a town. ever since revolutions were just free xp for my units. this mod needs really a significant buff. rising more unhappiness as stated in the clause above would be a good start. or for a more specific description of the proposal see my post nr. 243 and the following discussion in here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=347469&page=13.

except for these there are some other minor issues but these are more my personal taste maybe:

Buildings:
RoM + AND introduce an uncountable amount of buildings. however the strategy remains the same: build everything you can, only the order is of some relevance. some more negative effects on buildings would be cool to make the player pounder whether to build something or not. considering the gold overflow in AND in the later ages maintenance costs for buildings seems to be a solution.

Main Civics:
maybe a more estetic problem on my side. however i don't see more in them then the boni they grant because they just seem to be a random collection of political terms shuffled into different civic groups without much of a concept. but that's just my perspective... and since you asked what bugs us...
 
Yes, the AI is worrisome, and a major factor in my decisions for new features. I've done my best to ensure that the AI in AND at least have parity with just RoM AI, but that doesn't say a whole lot, since RoM's AI is not particularly intelligent. I'd appreciate you describing what you see as the biggest stumbling blocks for the AI, so I can focus on that.

As for your other complaint, I urge you to try using the "Recommended" install option in my newer installs. It only installs features that improve gameplay and the AI is proficient at using.

I switched to AI nations in one savegame and tried to figure out what's wrong with them. To be honest, I didn't notice anything dramatic there, they all just were in quite weak position compared to me. That was on Emperor level around 0AD :(

They didn't have any advanced tech I didn't possess, and hadn't developed any "super" cities. Their units were quite weak, with the strongest being light swordsman, defenders were archers or town watches. Two AI nations were weakened by a revolution, and Gandhi was totally owned by barbarians due to having very weak military. On the whole, having weak military was common, and for some reason their teching rate was quite poor. I really would like to take the time and really debug my saves to pieces, but work and family disturb my Civ4 gaming quite a bit. :)

One specific thing I noticed that almost all AIs had built the "Elder Council" which isn't that good thing to build in all cities as it obsoletes quite fast. It's very cheap and good to build in early cities though so it shouldn't be that much of a distraction for the AI build queues. Only a few wonders built by the AI in this game too.

As for using the recommended options, I'm doing that and taking away Education and Sports buildings too from distracting the AI from it's true goal in Beta4 (crushing me, that is!).

PS. One "annoying" thing, what's up with the Morale promo on the Confuscianism Shrine? Isn't it a bit overpowered? I go for Code of Laws as my first religion quite often, so I've abused that OP'dness quite a bit. Some bit less extreme promo might fit there better?

PPS. Unrelated: how on earth do I close the console window??? My son keeps popping it on by pressing the keyboard on random :)
 
I switched to AI nations in one savegame and tried to figure out what's wrong with them. To be honest, I didn't notice anything dramatic there, they all just were in quite weak position compared to me. That was on Emperor level around 0AD :(

They didn't have any advanced tech I didn't possess, and hadn't developed any "super" cities. Their units were quite weak, with the strongest being light swordsman, defenders were archers or town watches. Two AI nations were weakened by a revolution, and Gandhi was totally owned by barbarians due to having very weak military. On the whole, having weak military was common, and for some reason their teching rate was quite poor. I really would like to take the time and really debug my saves to pieces, but work and family disturb my Civ4 gaming quite a bit. :)

This is one of my least favorite things of RoM, but I usually fix it by going into WB and helping the AI(also taking some things away from me).
 
I switched to AI nations in one savegame and tried to figure out what's wrong with them. To be honest, I didn't notice anything dramatic there, they all just were in quite weak position compared to me. That was on Emperor level around 0AD :(

They didn't have any advanced tech I didn't possess, and hadn't developed any "super" cities. Their units were quite weak, with the strongest being light swordsman, defenders were archers or town watches. Two AI nations were weakened by a revolution, and Gandhi was totally owned by barbarians due to having very weak military. On the whole, having weak military was common, and for some reason their teching rate was quite poor. I really would like to take the time and really debug my saves to pieces, but work and family disturb my Civ4 gaming quite a bit. :)

One specific thing I noticed that almost all AIs had built the "Elder Council" which isn't that good thing to build in all cities as it obsoletes quite fast. It's very cheap and good to build in early cities though so it shouldn't be that much of a distraction for the AI build queues. Only a few wonders built by the AI in this game too.

As for using the recommended options, I'm doing that and taking away Education and Sports buildings too from distracting the AI from it's true goal in Beta4 (crushing me, that is!).

PS. One "annoying" thing, what's up with the Morale promo on the Confuscianism Shrine? Isn't it a bit overpowered? I go for Code of Laws as my first religion quite often, so I've abused that OP'dness quite a bit. Some bit less extreme promo might fit there better?

PPS. Unrelated: how on earth do I close the console window??? My son keeps popping it on by pressing the keyboard on random :)

Pankration>Morale
 
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