Suggestions and Requests

[Leoreth]

Yeah, it's not new but there is a rule that closely placed cities can get destroyed on collapse, which I think can sometimes be a bit overzealous. There are some protections against being razed like population or culture level, so I am surprised highly developed cities get destroyed. Maybe I should also introduce a check for wonders in the city.

 

[SultanRedSnake]

can we not have Natives move on the turn they spawn cos losing 6 workers to a Mahawk that appeared out of nowhere into the middle of your colony is not the most fun experience IMO

View attachment 681173

It's been a long time since i played DoC but the last time I played, natives couldn't move on the turn they spawn.
(It did happen on RFC:Europe, and it was horrible)

With respect I shall defend the current implementation for both balance and historical reasons. Balance-wise, I see it as a necessary limit to exploitation of NA by requiring player to invest in protection and think strategically about military/civilian deployment and infrastructure choices. Historically I view these supremely able units as the best possible way to represent the ever-looming threat of native resistance as an alternative to fully implented civs and to model the slow rate of colonial development. Otherwise, one might say NA would simply be unbalanced; too rich a prize for too little effort, and I'd even call it a chop-spam-snooze-fest.

Fortunately the spawns are predictable and subject to conditions, here's the Mohawk code and related snippets (from Barbs.py):

def spawnUprising(iPlayer, iUnitType, iNumUnits, tTL, tBR, sAdj=""):
''' Leoreth: represents uprisings of Natives against colonial settlements, especially North America
spawns units in a free plot in the second ring of a random target city in the area
(also used for units from warring city states in classical Mesoamerica)'''
plot = possibleTiles(tTL, tBR, bTerritory=True, bNearCity=True).random()

# never directly next to cities

# never on tiles with units

TBH this is the first time I've looked at the code but through experience alone I've developed techniques to mitigate if not eliminate the native threat:

• Deploy workers in groups of 6 (minimum required to build road in 1 turn on most base terrain types) with minimum 1 escort w/ at least Woodsman. Road network takes precedence over improvements/chops so workers are never more than 1-turn away nearest city.
• Additional defenders can either augment worker escorts or be deployed in various intervals to quickly reinforce or "zone out" sudden Mohawk spawns.
• The Mohawk "hot zone" will be the area in between multiple cities especially the "corridor" running NNE from the App. mountains to the Bay of Fundy (or St. John's) in which several 2nd Rings overlap. Safer areas lie on the opposite side of cities, for example N/NW of Montreal. West/Southwest of New Orleans/Mobile will almost exclusively get Dog Soldiers.
• Manually select Chop Down Forrest instead of desired Improvement icon. Build improvement after forest is cleared. I'd even recommend just mass chopping along road network to deprive Mohawks of woods and get a jump on defender production; you can then switch to improvement mode in between spawns. Pay attention to number of workers selected for a given task so all workers can finish and move on same turn without leaving stragglers or having to hold up entire group on one tile for an extra turn.
• I haven't firmly established a behavior pattern, but Mohawks seem to prefer avoiding combat in favor of undefended workers or improvements to pillage. Attacking cities seems to be the lowest priority.

I'll update this post as I think of more helpful stuff to share, but meanwhile please be welcome to engage, inquire, etc. I'd just summarize as respectfully as possible that this a classic but easily handled case of #GetGüd #SkillIssue and not a fundamental design problem. From only the screenshot you provided it's apparent that your overall Game would benefit from improvements across the board and I'm glad to help.

 

[SultanRedSnake]

It's been a long time since i played DoC but the last time I played, natives couldn't move on the turn they spawn.
(It did happen on RFC:Europe, and it was horrible)

I can at least say Natives *arent supposed* to move on same turn as of this Git Update.

 

[SultanRedSnake]

Can mohawks lose the double movement on forest? I hate babysiting workers in NA

CTRL + W, fam. Bye bye Mohawk.

 

[Dracosolon]

Reading this reminded me that there isn't a lot of detailed guides on how to handle the early game of the colonial civs. Which is a shame since they're pretty tricky - there's just so much to build!

 

[Logoncal]

Bro i have no fcking clue how to play as a colonizer, because either i die to natives or i ICS to debt.

 

[SultanRedSnake]

Bro i have no fcking clue how to play as a colonizer, because either i die to natives or i ICS to debt.

You adorable precious nübez inspired me to crank out this lil' ditty: Colonial Civ Quick Guide

 

[JHLee]

As a colonial civ you usually dont have the luxury to "properly" build them up, cause UHV conditions drives you pretty tight on hammers. Probably the only exception is France.
Portugal -> workers into plantation
Spain -> workers into gold/silver mines + military units
England -> Musk/Redcoats to conquer India (TC spawn is not enough IMO) & Frigates/MoW for UHV
Dutch -> I dont know how you can do their UHV tbh

 

[JHLee]

With respect I shall defend the current implementation for both balance and historical reasons. Balance-wise, I see it as a necessary limit to exploitation of NA by requiring player to invest in protection and think strategically about military/civilian deployment and infrastructure choices. Historically I view these supremely able units as the best possible way to represent the ever-looming threat of native resistance as an alternative to fully implented civs and to model the slow rate of colonial development. Otherwise, one might say NA would simply be unbalanced; too rich a prize for too little effort, and I'd even call it a chop-spam-snooze-fest.

I'm perfectly aware of the fact that I need units to guard my cities in NA and I'm fine with that.
I just don't want Mohawks (with Woodman II) to move on the turn they spawn because that quadraples the number of tiles I need to guard silmutaneously.

 

[Leoreth]

AI units moving on the turn they spawn is a bug and I will fix it in not too long.

 

[Matara]

AI units moving on the turn they spawn is a bug and I will fix it in not too long.

Is it a new bug? I have not update the version and I don't see barbs move first in my game.

 

[Leoreth]

I don't think it's new. I haven't looked into it yet, but if my assumption of what causing it is correct it only occurs if you switch to a different civilization during your game.

The reason is that if you start a new game you always have slot 0 and go first in the turn order. However if you switch to a different civilization that spawns during your game your slot will be whatever that civilization got assigned on spawn. The way the turn order works is that everyone with a lower slot gets to move before you. Normally that isn't a problem because everyone is doing their moves round robin style and nothing bad happens from it.

However the Natives exist from the start of the game and therefore have a very low slot number (I think it's 5) so they tend to move before most other players. This is a problem because natives receive unit spawns and unit spawns occur at the beginning of the overall turn, not their player turn. Conversely barbarians always have the very last slot and move after everyone else. So if a barbarian unit spawns at the beginning of a turn, you always get to move before it does. Meanwhile if a native unit spawns at the beginning of the turn it has a high likelihood to be able to move before you do unless you are using the originally assigned slot 0.

Again, I haven't confirmed that this is the reason but it's pretty likely. Technically it can happen with any spawn that occurs at turn start but the natives are the most common civ that receives scripted spawns and that everyone is at war with, so they're the likeliest source of this problem. I am not sure what the best solution for this problem is - maybe it is possible to give them the second to last slot instead, but I don't know if that has other negative side effects. I might need to rethink when exactly units get spawned.

 

[urbestfriend]

This might be an absolute stupid suggestion, I know nothing about civ coding so feel free to call me a buffoon - is it possible to make it so when the player switches civs, the new civ and the old swap slots so the player remains slot 0?

 

[Leoreth]

It's theoretically possible but it would really be putting the cart before the horse. The slot under player control changing is the common mechanism to do this (just like how hotseat works) - I just need to correctly deal with this side effect.

 

[Derdan]

Couldn't you just spawn them with 0 movement points?

 

[Leoreth]

No, because if they take their turn after the player then that would mean they miss a turn.

 

[DanLT3]

Advanced start is only enabled upon new spawn of civs.
But if you start with a civ which have a spawn date prior to the scenario start date you will not get advanced start.
For instance starting as The Vikings in the 600 AD scenario will not give you any advanced start.
Could this be changed so that all civs in the 600 AD and 1700 AD get advanced start even if their spawn date is prior?

 

[black213]

As an addendum to the above, the advanced start screen only being triggered after you've settled your first city would be neat. With some civs you'd rather settle somewhere else first

 

[Leoreth]

Yeah, I want to do that at some point. It's not a trivial change unfortunately, so it will have to wait a bit.

 

[caketastydelish]

We should change germanys uhv where they can vassalize some of the territory they are supposed to conquer instead of directly controlling it. Vichy France and Italy for example.