Most annoying "features" in A New Dawn

[mussbu]

A) Be able to change the system once a game begins. IE to change a civs color (for better contrast with adjacent civs); to cchange game difficulty.

B) Revamp the Religion game (as previously mentioned in another thread:
Some problems have already been expressed, some have not (?). Here are some of my issues:

1) religion spreads inconsistantly. Once a rel spreads to a city I rarely see another one spread to it. Q). Once a rel spreads to a city, will another spread to it too, or only by missionary? If only by missionary, then this is a problem.

2) In most games I always win the rel game, in that my rel will always spread much more quickly than the AI's. I wonder if the AI is good at getting GP Prophets, and creating their own Holy City structure? If not, this is a problem.

3) I'm wondering what the value is in obtaining a later rel? By then all the other rel's have been founded and spread. Mayber later rel's should be more powerful (ie Christ overcomes Judism) etc.

4) AI greatly avoids founding religion's? There doesn't seem to be any urgency for the AI to get one. Ie I rarely see Budism or Christ get founded, and if so its very late in the game. And if so, they can't get it to spread.

5) I rarely see AI missionaries.

6) I rarely see cities with multiple religions.

I have a few suggestions that may be considered:

1) maybe the structure for the Holy City can be built normally by hammers like any other structure (as a Natl Wonder), so that GP Prophet isn't needed.

2) maybe Rel Buildings can produce missionaries just like how Wonders produce GP. A new Progress Bar can be added just above the GP Bar in the City View, lower right corner) so that over time missionaries are automatically produced, just like GP. The benefit is that the AI would automatically create missionaries to spread it's rel. This would create a plethora of reli activity.

3) if #2 is plausible, then maybe the spread of a rel would be a lessor extent of cultural spreading which I really don't understand, and more of missionaries that are automatically produced using a Progress Bar by rel structures adding various points.

4) maybe missionaries can do battle with other missionaries, or root-out another rel's ( maybe a weaker inquistion) pressance in a give city?

5) maybe some/all missionaries would be invisable like spy's. Would allow a missionary to convert a city that is at war with you.

6) maybe GP could be partly produced by regular buildings (ie a Temple produces .5 GP pt, a Fort prod .5 GP general, etc)


C) Flood plains too powerful?

D) AI selects poor spots for new cities, and missing spots that gather all available resources/ or on rivers.

E) Not being able to build a unit because I don't have the resource. IE even if I don't have 'Horse' I should still be able to build cavalry units (but at x2 or x3 cost).

These are just some things that have been on my mind for several years. It appears the BTS has taken great quantum leaps, and recently with RoM and AND it has catapulted to a truely reamrkable gaming experience. Now we have arrived at a point where the religious aspect of this game can be taken to a higher level. Thanks to all! Comments will be greatly appreciated.

 

[Draakon]

Hmm, i think MAF's and CTD's are the most annoying features. Else, everything is fine by me.

 

[oawiefga]

I'll throw a few things out there.

Some of the maps don't have normalized start locations. Every civ should start on a hill and river or coast. They should each have at least a single food resource in a non-forest/jungle plot.

The tech tree in RoM has a lot of paths which make it easy for a human player to beeline to a watershed tech that will give the player a unit that will dominate every other. For example, it is easy to beeline rifling by 500AD on a huge map at snail speed when the best the AI has is the maceman. The dominance is magnified by the difference in strength and the multipliers that riflemen get vs melee. To counter this type of runaway slaughter I think the techs need additional prereqs.

The AI leaders waste too many units on attacks that have little chance of success or just don't make any sense. The impact is pronounced on slower game sppeeds where the build times are much longer. Units wasted in a foolhardy attack take much longer to replace on slow speeds. I think the AI leaders attack courage needs to be turned down a notch or two. Along the same lines, city garrison units should not be attacking at all except maybe for archery and mounted units and others which don't get a defense bonus.

 

[NBAfan]

The most annoying thing is that Great People lightbulbing techs is to weak.

 

[gramcrkr103]

It almost seems like the resources are often unbalanced. Typically, everyone in my games will have 2-3 sources of lead, but very few people will have coal. Often during the industrial age I will go into the WB and give people coal just so Im not fighting horses with tanks (at least all the time). Copper and bauxite ore seem oddly prevalent as well.
And I would agree that the AI just stinks at picking city locations, mainly away from coasts and rivers.
And while I am having lots of fun with the capture territory function, it seems the AI really go overkill with it when capturing ocean plots with resources. After a few century's of war, most AI wont have access to their ocean plots because they dont know how to capture them back it seems
And whats with the stacks of "Warlord" units showing up on my borders? they don't seem to be very effective fighters.

 

[Supercheese]

E) Not being able to build a unit because I don't have the resource. IE even if I don't have 'Horse' I should still be able to build cavalry units (but at x2 or x3 cost).

Wait, what? If you don't have horses... how can you possibly train a unit riding horseback?

 

[Khoukharev]

Hmm, i think MAF's and CTD's are the most annoying features. Else, everything is fine by me.

I'll stick with this, but I hope Afforess will get rid of them as modmod develops.

 

[fireclaw722]

A) Be able to change the system once a game begins. IE to change a civs color (for better contrast with adjacent civs); to change game difficulty.

I have to agree here(as I hate it when Greece and Persia are next to each other/Byzantium and Germany/America and Iroquois and France).

 

[kabooki108]

For me it's mostly civics. Monarchy is still too underpowered. A lot of nations had functioning monarchies up to World War I. In the game, only leaders with Hereditary Rule as a favorite civics stay that way, and then it's to their detriment.

The AI will stay in Barter even though Slavery has been beefed up. When I use autoplay, the AI will even take my civ out of slavery to go back into barter.

It would be nice if there were an early-ish improvement to give access to calendar resources, since they are used by a lot of early buildings. I know forts give access to resources, but they take forever to build and Math is only one step away from calendar.

BarbCivs tend to end up with a lot of Bandit Footpads. Which means they can conquer cities all over the world, but can't afford to pay for them because they're paying 40-80 gold per turn in upkeep in 1500 BC.

It's cool you have a thread like this. I'm sure it will help make this mod even better.

 

[kormer]

It almost seems like the resources are often unbalanced. Typically, everyone in my games will have 2-3 sources of lead, but very few people will have coal. Often during the industrial age I will go into the WB and give people coal just so Im not fighting horses with tanks (at least all the time). Copper and bauxite ore seem oddly prevalent as well.
And I would agree that the AI just stinks at picking city locations, mainly away from coasts and rivers.
And while I am having lots of fun with the capture territory function, it seems the AI really go overkill with it when capturing ocean plots with resources. After a few century's of war, most AI wont have access to their ocean plots because they dont know how to capture them back it seems
And whats with the stacks of "Warlord" units showing up on my borders? they don't seem to be very effective fighters.

Seconding this. I'm playing a huge game now and there's only 3 sulfur on the map with 20+ civs. I also used the trick of opening the WB and would give myself whatever I was missing plus 1-2 each to the top 5 rivals.

 

[generalstaff]

Two main things bother main, simply because I tend to conquer my way into new city rather than build them myself.

1. AI City Placement: They tend to miss rivers and resource. They also tend to have too much overlap or originally overlap forests, then destroy the the forests rather than use them for Perserves.

2. Wonder Culture: I never liked that fact that captured Wonders lose their culture (except for original owner). If you look at my Modular Wonders code, you will see they keep their Culture when captured. This is simply a personal preference; I do not care about balance at all in this instance.

As for AND, I have no complaints. Afforess designed it very well so that you can play with whatever you want. If a feature annoys you, do not play with it (or learn how to mod it so that it no longer annoys you).

 

[NBAfan]

1. AI City Placement: They tend to miss rivers and resource. They also tend to have too much overlap or originally overlap forests, then destroy the the forests rather than use them for Perserves.

It would be great if we could figure out how to get the AI to settle on rivers.

 

[civ_king]

Two main things bother main, simply because I tend to conquer my way into new city rather than build them myself.

1. AI City Placement: They tend to miss rivers and resource. They also tend to have too much overlap or originally overlap forests, then destroy the the forests rather than use them for Perserves.

2. Wonder Culture: I never liked that fact that captured Wonders lose their culture (except for original owner). If you look at my Modular Wonders code, you will see they keep their Culture when captured. This is simply a personal preference; I do not care about balance at all in this instance.

As for AND, I have no complaints. Afforess designed it very well so that you can play with whatever you want. If a feature annoys you, do not play with it (or learn how to mod it so that it no longer annoys you).

maybe a delay of 25-50 turns for the wonder to provide culture to the new owner but yes I agree with your point

It would be great if we could figure out how to get the AI to settle on rivers.

HECK YES!

 

[oawiefga]

Instead of getting the AI to settle on rivers how about putting a river where ever the AI chooses to settle? Of course you would have to make the river connect to an existing river or outflow to an ocean or sea.

 

[civ_king]

Instead of getting the AI to settle on rivers how about putting a river where ever the AI chooses to settle? Of course you would have to make the river connect to an existing river or outflow to an ocean or sea.

seems like a MEGA PITA to code

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

I have a few suggestions that may be considered:

1) maybe the structure for the Holy City can be built normally by hammers like any other structure (as a Natl Wonder), so that GP Prophet isn't needed.

2) maybe Rel Buildings can produce missionaries just like how Wonders produce GP. A new Progress Bar can be added just above the GP Bar in the City View, lower right corner) so that over time missionaries are automatically produced, just like GP. The benefit is that the AI would automatically create missionaries to spread it's rel. This would create a plethora of reli activity.

3) if #2 is plausible, then maybe the spread of a rel would be a lessor extent of cultural spreading which I really don't understand, and more of missionaries that are automatically produced using a Progress Bar by rel structures adding various points.

A.1) Possible, you just need to change the cost in the buildings xml file. It could even be done as a module, I think.

A.2) That would require some work by Afforess. It would require a set an array for each city, one element for each religion. Each religious building would need to tag to say how many points it creates for its religion. There may be a problem latter when all cities have a religion and you already have the limit on the number of missionaries you can have. In my games most cities have most religions even the AAranda ones.

However Eusebius had a better way for religions to spread. They spread along trade routs and fast so that missionaries are not needed much. A new religion could spread to all your cities in a few turns.

 

[gramcrkr103]

This may not be an AND thing but it seems that whenever I try to load a game not directly from the main menu, it consistently crashes from an MAF.
While I think I remember that happening before with ROM, nowadays it happens 100% of the time.
Anyone else run into this?

 

[Retrospect]

Without having played any betas I would say that these points are of greatest concern:

1) AI competence is the most frustrating aspect. They seem under powered, have slow research rates towards the middle game and into the late. Their city placement is poor (but i don't think this is the main cause).

2) Happiness/ healthiness abundance.

3) Player tech rate seems to have increased significantly, allowing unreaslistic advances far too early (this is made worse by the fact that the AI struggles with research)

4) Industrial/modern/(and i assume transhuman and future) units are superceded too quickly, making wars seem a little comical. Although I believe the next version of ROM will have addressed this issue.

5) The plethora of buildings is great. Not having to build the same thing in every city every game is what this game should be about. Unfortunately more buildings doesnt solve this. Most of my cities still build at least 90% of all buildings. Perhaps increasing to build and maintenance cost could force a more strategic choice of what to build, assuming that this would not hurt the AI further.

There are a few individual civics/units/techs/buildings and other minor concepts that frustrate me but these are insignificant compared to the above.

 

[konradcabral]

One thing that annoys me is the lack of naval units between triremes and caravels. Former was used in the BCs and latter in the 1400s! It's kind of a big vacuum, don't you think?

 

[Retrospect]

I believe the unit to bridge this gap would be the cog or holk. Not sure what the other civ equivelants would be but these ships were common place in europe during the mdieval era.