Most annoying "features" in A New Dawn

[Drake L. Dragon]

Well, I only play Civilization V with a New Dawn, but, if I had to criticize something, it would be the civics. Not because it's too complex, but because it doesn't go far enough. The most upstanding characteristic about a New Dawn and Rise of Mankind in general is its persistence towards intricacy. In the modmod, you really do feel like you set the course of your civilization. You decide its characteristics and its features. However, there are many things missing from the civics to allow me to visualize my control over my civilization. I can't control the educational system, the intellectual system such as objectivism or egalitarianism, the cultural system such as rural, urban, industrialized, etc., nor ESPECIALLY the foreign policy of my civilization such as imperialistic, non-interventionist, master government (As with puppet governments), etc. In order to incorporate these civics, I merely suggest to lower the maintenance costs of each civic category by a little in order to feature more civic categories for more specification and more control over your civilization.

The main thing, however, is that the Dynamic Names Mod needs to be more specific with names based on the civics chosen. As I stated on the main forums, the identity for the player is really important, and I think that more names such as Confederacy or Federation could be implemented into the game. In general, however, the reason I am a huge fan of a New Dawn is exactly because of how much better it is towards these purposes than any other mod I've seen. I hope 1.75 turns out well.

 

[fireclaw722]

Bumping this thread. Please Rant Away!

BEGINGING RANT!!!!
I hate how National/Imperial/Royal Gaurds was removed, so much so that I made my own modular modmod with them in it!

Well, I only play Civilization V with a New Dawn, but, if I had to criticize something, it would be the civics. Not because it's too complex, but because it doesn't go far enough. The most upstanding characteristic about a New Dawn and Rise of Mankind in general is its persistence towards intricacy. In the modmod, you really do feel like you set the course of your civilization. You decide its characteristics and its features. However, there are many things missing from the civics to allow me to visualize my control over my civilization. I can't control the educational system, the intellectual system such as objectivism or egalitarianism, the cultural system such as rural, urban, industrialized, etc., nor ESPECIALLY the foreign policy of my civilization such as imperialistic, non-interventionist, master government (As with puppet governments), etc. In order to incorporate these civics, I merely suggest to lower the maintenance costs of each civic category by a little in order to feature more civic categories for more specification and more control over your civilization.

Totally agree here, I mean the only one I disagree to is the foriegn policy(which is pretty much diplomacy).

 

[Afforess]

Well, I only play Civilization V with a New Dawn, but, if I had to criticize something, it would be the civics. Not because it's too complex, but because it doesn't go far enough. The most upstanding characteristic about a New Dawn and Rise of Mankind in general is its persistence towards intricacy. In the modmod, you really do feel like you set the course of your civilization. You decide its characteristics and its features. However, there are many things missing from the civics to allow me to visualize my control over my civilization. I can't control the educational system, the intellectual system such as objectivism or egalitarianism, the cultural system such as rural, urban, industrialized, etc., nor ESPECIALLY the foreign policy of my civilization such as imperialistic, non-interventionist, master government (As with puppet governments), etc. In order to incorporate these civics, I merely suggest to lower the maintenance costs of each civic category by a little in order to feature more civic categories for more specification and more control over your civilization.

There are ongoing thread on Education civics - have you seen them?

The main thing, however, is that the Dynamic Names Mod needs to be more specific with names based on the civics chosen. As I stated on the main forums, the identity for the player is really important, and I think that more names such as Confederacy or Federation could be implemented into the game. In general, however, the reason I am a huge fan of a New Dawn is exactly because of how much better it is towards these purposes than any other mod I've seen. I hope 1.75 turns out well.

A sneak preview of 1.75; which should make you happy:

Spoiler :

 

[Drake L. Dragon]

There are ongoing thread on Education civics - have you seen them?



A sneak preview of 1.75; which should make you happy:

Spoiler :

The Dynamic Names Mod seems to be perfected now, since, beforehand, it was just either Kingdom, Republic, or Empire. I also saw the Education civics thread now, which definitely seems promising. However, one of the main things about the civics is that they're rather disorganized or not diametrically opposed. For example, a civilization can be a Federation while being a Republic, although, for Dynamic Names, the federation precedes the republic. That's why I made my own thread with its own sort of twist on how the civics category should look like. I obviously don't believe any of that should be implemented in 1.75, but it's an alternative way to think about the civic categories and the civics therein for future installments.

In terms of welfare, however, I believe that there are three distinct civic categories for it. The first is Education, which will be added. The second is Health, and the third is Welfare to cover everything else in welfare. Health would deal with how hospitals relate to the citizen. Welfare, however, is essentially how involved the government is in people's daily lives apart from education and health, which are distinguishable aspects. For example, welfare that would neither involve education nor health is how France likes sending people to take care of babies for mothers after giving birth. Obviously, there are an unlimited amount of possibilities that would could occur when a government participates in the daily life of its citizens; therefore, it could just be generalized under one category, Welfare. With Education, Health, and General Welfare, the entire spectrum of civic categories relating to the services of the government to its citizens should be covered.

 

[Afforess]

The Dynamic Names Mod seems to be perfected now

Not quite - I also added "Provisional Government" for when players are switching civics and in anarchy, along with Principalities and Queendoms.

, since, beforehand, it was just either Kingdom, Republic, or Empire. I also saw the Education civics thread now, which definitely seems promising. However, one of the main things about the civics is that they're rather disorganized or not diametrically opposed. For example, a civilization can be a Federation while being a Republic, although, for Dynamic Names, the federation precedes the republic. That's why I made my own thread with its own sort of twist on how the civics category should look like. I obviously don't believe any of that should be implemented in 1.75, but it's an alternative way to think about the civic categories and the civics therein for future installments.

In terms of welfare, however, I believe that there are three distinct civic categories for it. The first is Education, which will be added. The second is Health, and the third is Welfare to cover everything else in welfare. Health would deal with how hospitals relate to the citizen. Welfare, however, is essentially how involved the government is in people's daily lives apart from education and health, which are distinguishable aspects. For example, welfare that would neither involve education nor health is how France likes sending people to take care of babies for mothers after giving birth. Obviously, there are an unlimited amount of possibilities that would could occur when a government participates in the daily life of its citizens; therefore, it could just be generalized under one category, Welfare. With Education, Health, and General Welfare, the entire spectrum of civic categories relating to the services of the government to its citizens should be covered.

I'm curious to see where the discussion in your thread goes.

To Everyone else,

I would like to hear anything that bothers you - I'm trying to perfect the final iteration of AND.

 

[Iceciro]

Silicon valley is STILL a world wonder. It needs to be a national wonder.

It gives the building civ an OBNOXIOUSLY HUGE unit advantage because its the only way to get semiconductors.

 

[Kurenin]

The game has too much bloat, I like that I have to choose what to build but because there are too many buildings that give bonuses, my oldest cities are FAR FAR more advanced than newer cities, the old ones never catch up (plus when I build a city I have an option of about 400 buildings to build).

Workers are annoying at this stage in the game, it's really hard to evaluate what improvements are best at any one time, before I would just build cottages and be damned, but there are now far too many and it requires either too much micromanagement or too much CPU time.

Turn calculation times! I've had to start playing without barbarians, barbarian civs and revolutions, but still turn calculation takes ages, I have a feeling that this is because of workers.

Multiplayer OOSes - i've never ever had a multiplayer game that was playable, we always end up OOSing at random points, or the turn times become even worse than single player and we have to stop. More often than not though when the turn times are really long we end up OOS after every turn.

Mainly though, it's really good and an improvement over vanilla civ but I feel it needs to be played on big maps at slow speeds, but doing so just makes turn times huge and the almost infinite number of buildings becomes very frustrating late game (sometimes I just won't make any more cities because I can't really fathom what to build if I start a new one - or I just queue up every possible building since it's so overwhelming)

 

[Kurenin]

Addendum!

On the city info screen I can't work out how to get the trade route thing to be less useless, if a city I trade with has a very long name, I will see nothing but the name, then some dots. If it's a short name, I will see half of the trade info, then some dots.

I might be stupid and this is fixable locally without any massive changes though.

 

[TowerWizard]

The game has too much bloat, I like that I have to choose what to build but
because there are too many buildings that give bonuses, my oldest cities are FAR
FAR more advanced than newer cities, the old ones never catch up (plus when I build a city I have an option of about 400 buildings to build).

 

[TowerWizard]

The game has too much bloat, I like that I have to choose what to build but because there are too many buildings that give bonuses, my oldest cities are FAR
FAR more advanced than newer cities, the old ones never catch up (plus when I build a city I have an option of about 400 buildings to build).

One solution to this would be to have the buildings be made cheaper for every building of the same type you have built already. So, if you have built a Forge in one city, it should be cheaper in the next city you build it in. Of cource, if you build multiple copies of the building at the same time in different cities this will not work. To put it simple: If, when you start to build a buildning, it have been finished in another city, it should cost less. How much less? 10% percent per city? If the price should become zero in this way, it should be built automagically in the city, allowing new cities to have a background of common buildings from the outset. Also, if you have hammers for it, you should be able to build multiple things at the same time.

This same logic could and should be applied to techs. If, when a civ starts to research a tech already successfully researched by other civs you have open borders with, it should be cheaper.

The principle behind this thinking is obviously that it is easier to repeat something done than to do it the first time.

EDIT: Also, perhaps buildings should be cheaper based on how long ago it was made available? Something like 1% cheaper every 10-15 turns since the time when the tech that allowed it was researched? This feature could be made availible in some of the new Education civics, maybe. The reasoning behind this would be that in time, new tools and/or methods/theories have replaced older, less effective tools/methods/teories, and this leads to shorter productions times. Buildings may be made smaller at no decrease in efficiency, workmen have more experience from other constructions projects and can work faster, etc.

 

[NBAfan]

One thing that could be fixed is the quests. Not all of them have been edited for RoM's buildings.

 

[JosEPh_II]

use of %'s for commerce vs integers, X building gives 5% commerce instead of, X building adds 1 gold

killtech's building chain, causes too many buildings to be unusable. Later bldgs become less useful than the early. And it has taken the fun out of much of the build process. I can't play it anymore.

the axing of Hydro's Farm mod

Now lets see who crawls out of the woodwork to rail against this post.

JosEPh

 

[Afforess]

Silicon valley is STILL a world wonder. It needs to be a national wonder.

It gives the building civ an OBNOXIOUSLY HUGE unit advantage because its the only way to get semiconductors.

Good Catch! I've changed it for 1.75.

The game has too much bloat, I like that I have to choose what to build but because there are too many buildings that give bonuses, my oldest cities are FAR FAR more advanced than newer cities, the old ones never catch up (plus when I build a city I have an option of about 400 buildings to build).

Workers are annoying at this stage in the game, it's really hard to evaluate what improvements are best at any one time, before I would just build cottages and be damned, but there are now far too many and it requires either too much micromanagement or too much CPU time.

Turn calculation times! I've had to start playing without barbarians, barbarian civs and revolutions, but still turn calculation takes ages, I have a feeling that this is because of workers.

Multiplayer OOSes - i've never ever had a multiplayer game that was playable, we always end up OOSing at random points, or the turn times become even worse than single player and we have to stop. More often than not though when the turn times are really long we end up OOS after every turn.

Mainly though, it's really good and an improvement over vanilla civ but I feel it needs to be played on big maps at slow speeds, but doing so just makes turn times huge and the almost infinite number of buildings becomes very frustrating late game (sometimes I just won't make any more cities because I can't really fathom what to build if I start a new one - or I just queue up every possible building since it's so overwhelming)

You can always allow the city governor to build buildings, if you feel overwhelmed. 1.75 WILL be significantly faster than 1.74.

Addendum!

On the city info screen I can't work out how to get the trade route thing to be less useless, if a city I trade with has a very long name, I will see nothing but the name, then some dots. If it's a short name, I will see half of the trade info, then some dots.

I might be stupid and this is fixable locally without any massive changes though.

Don't worry - I've fixed this for 1.75. You should be able to see much more trade yield information than before.

The game has too much bloat, I like that I have to choose what to build but
because there are too many buildings that give bonuses, my oldest cities are FAR
FAR more advanced than newer cities, the old ones never catch up (plus when I build a city I have an option of about 400 buildings to build).

FYI, there are only ~400 total buildings in the mod, so there is no way you could build them all at once.

I do understand though - especially late game, it becomes a juggling act - one I aim at fixing.

One thing that could be fixed is the quests. Not all of them have been edited for RoM's buildings.

Do you remember any quests in particular. I already updated them to consider Building Replacements.1

use of %'s for commerce vs integers, X building gives 5% commerce instead of, X building adds 1 gold

I don't really understand your preference to % gold instead of X gold, since it's much easier to see the effect of 5 more gold, than 5% more gold.

killtech's building chain, causes too many buildings to be unusable. Later bldgs become less useful than the early. And it has taken the fun out of much of the build process. I can't play it anymore.

I've revamped a lot of the buildings. I hope you take a look at it in 1.75. No more unhappiness from banks, no lost production from universities, etc...

the axing of Hydro's Farm mod

Actually, I made that mod, and then I axed it. Afforess giveth, and Afforess taketh away.

Now lets see who crawls out of the woodwork to rail against this post.

JosEPh

No one has - this is the rant thread. Your rants are welcome, and expected here.

 

[Justin Cray]

I would love to see the buttons for buildings grouped by effect and sorted by build time, starting with all production increasing buildings (I'd group buildings that grant special people too since you'll always just chose engineers, priests or slaves), then food increasing buildings (granaries etc should fall into this group), then culture, military, science (these are just my opinion).

Having to hunt through the building list is a chore.

 

[Elucidus]

The game has too much bloat, I like that I have to choose what to build but because there are too many buildings that give bonuses, my oldest cities are FAR FAR more advanced than newer cities, the old ones never catch up (plus when I build a city I have an option of about 400 buildings to build).

One way to help with this with new cities may be to update the building list of the colonist and engineer, maybe add more varieties at different tech levels. Though that may just introduce other issues, I don't really know. Just a thought.

 

[commaehnder]

About the buttons for sorting the buildings. Is it possible to implement something like that? Because sorting it alphabetically like it is done at the moment doesn't solve the problem with the building list that well.

 

[Guardianz]

I recently gained the ability to use tunnels from modern works boats. And found it extremely irritating not having a "build route" button like the workers have for roads.

Also, I found it annoying that the AI for workers never (that I've seen so far anyways) build jungle camps. I choose the option for workers to keep forests and would prefer them to keep the jungle as well (either as part of the forest option, or as a separate one).

I've also found in my games that some luxury resources are completely ignored by the AI workers. (Like how a have a swarm build a mine on iron, but for Hemp or Tobacco I have to send them myself).

 

[JosEPh_II]

I don't really understand your preference to % gold instead of X gold, since it's much easier to see the effect of 5 more gold, than 5% more gold.

I could've sworn I said just the opposite. I don't like %'s I would rather have X gold then 5% gold. Maybe because I was "thinking" the question you posed, "What do you not like, find annoying?" so I said "use of %'s for commerce vs integers, (infered whrere)X building gives 5% commerce instead of, X building adds 1 gold (I prefer the integer approach)

Am I clearer now? Or did I muddy the picture more?

JosEPh

Ps I agree with Guardianz about AI workers never using/building Jungle Camp. Strange AI behaviour indeed.

 

[Afforess]

I would love to see the buttons for buildings grouped by effect and sorted by build time, starting with all production increasing buildings (I'd group buildings that grant special people too since you'll always just chose engineers, priests or slaves), then food increasing buildings (granaries etc should fall into this group), then culture, military, science (these are just my opinion).

Having to hunt through the building list is a chore.

About the buttons for sorting the buildings. Is it possible to implement something like that? Because sorting it alphabetically like it is done at the moment doesn't solve the problem with the building list that well.

Sorting is entirely possible - But I haven't a clue how to make it intuitive enough to be worth my time.

I recently gained the ability to use tunnels from modern works boats. And found it extremely irritating not having a "build route" button like the workers have for roads.

Also, I found it annoying that the AI for workers never (that I've seen so far anyways) build jungle camps. I choose the option for workers to keep forests and would prefer them to keep the jungle as well (either as part of the forest option, or as a separate one).

I've also found in my games that some luxury resources are completely ignored by the AI workers. (Like how a have a swarm build a mine on iron, but for Hemp or Tobacco I have to send them myself).

Tunnels have been on my to-do list since forever. I'll get right on that. And as for jungle camps and strange AI behavior - I'll correct it.

I could've sworn I said just the opposite. I don't like %'s I would rather have X gold then 5% gold. Maybe because I was "thinking" the question you posed, "What do you not like, find annoying?" so I said "use of %'s for commerce vs integers, (infered whrere)X building gives 5% commerce instead of, X building adds 1 gold (I prefer the integer approach)

Am I clearer now? Or did I muddy the picture more?

JosEPh

Ps I agree with Guardianz about AI workers never using/building Jungle Camp. Strange AI behaviour indeed.

Much clearer - thank you.

 

[Guardianz]

Tunnels have been on my to-do list since forever. I'll get right on that. And as for jungle camps and strange AI behavior - I'll correct it.

Awesome Afforess.