A different experience with AoD II - some trade considerations

[PrinceMyshkin]

Hi guys,

I am playing AoD II v1.06, as Jose on Western Hemisphere (AoD II) map, at patriot difficulty level and epic game speed.

At year is 1632, I have eradicated all Europeans, got all FFs, and have 15 prosperous colonies.

Pretty much everything in Europe worth 1 or 2 from overexports and since the tax rate is 90% and Indians have no money, I have almost no other means of income.

Education not only costs money, but it takes 50 turns to train a single colonist.

With no income, and education put down, I cannot expand any further. No other option now, but fight the King.

In my opinion…

- Rum, Cigars, Cloths and Coats should have a set minimum sell value of 4.

- Selling goods at your local market from warehouse expansion should not affect values of goods in Europe.

- For huge empires with 15+ colonies micro management is a real problem. Custom houses and larger warehouses could help.

- I suggest introducing custom houses, but with tax applied -so, balance will be maintained.

Custom houses should have:
i) The option to directly export goods in Europe, or not to export –if values in Europe are too low.
ii) The option to set the minimum tonnage, above which export will start. If goods exceed the colony capacity, goods should be sold off automatically.
iii) When exporting from custom houses are off, warehouse expansion should sell the products in the local market.

- Since the game I’ve mentioned over-matured too early (by 1632), I suggest additional factors to slow down progress:

a) In year 1500 cannon could be introduced.
b) In year 1550 printing press could be introduced.
c) In year 1600 lumber mill could be introduced.
d) In year 1650 Newspaper could be introduced.
e) In year 1650 ship of the line could be introduced.
f) In year 1700, factory, ironworks and arsenal could be introduced.
g) In year 1800 railroads could be introduced.

It would also worth additional missions, which could spice up single-player, and could be disabled in MP.

These events would be affected by historical changes over the world, e.g. kings enthroned, religion changes, and European wars.

These Missions tasks could be:
a) Produce a certain amount of crosses, hammers, bells in a period of years.
b) Dispatch a certain amount of military units by a certain year to Europe.
c) Dispatch a merchant fleet of defined tonnage to Europe.
d) Deliver a certain amount of goods to the King.

Failing or not, could result in gaining favour or not to the King.

- Buildings which could be fun to include would be:
a) Capitol (which is an idea coming from original colonization, but never got implemented), as an expansion to town hall (allowing three statesmen, instead of two for town hall).
b) Bank (introducing expert bankers), producing gold per turn.

- Founding fathers could also provide:
a) 25% bonus in lumber production
b) 25% bonus in ore production

- I think education costs are high, and also tuition time does not scale up properly.

I would like to see the old colonization system for education, instead of paying money; colonist should study for a certain period in schools depending on their degree.

Lower education: 50 turns
Medium education: 75 turns
Higher education: 100 turns

These would be scaled down, by rebel sentiment, college and university.

So for 100% rebel sentiment, university and all the FF bonuses, it could be.

Lower education: 5 turns
Medium education: 10 turns
Higher education: 15 turns

Thanks for reading all my stuff, and sorry for the mess with the posts!

Showing some major dumbness here... (>.<)

[Hermann the Lombard]

I never played the original Colonization so I really don't have comments on the major changes you suggest...except to assume they are MAJOR CHANGES that would be very, very hard to implement. Mind you, Dale has already done wonders, so who knows?

Micromanagement is indeed a problem (as it has been in Civs 2, 3, & 4 (I didn't play Civ1). The customs house idea sounds good to help this. Naturally better automation of trade would help, but again that involves tough AI coding. The idea of maximum import levels as well as minimum export levels would help too.

I'm not sure about price sensitivity in AoD II, but in vanilla you would be able to work your way out of the hole by buying large quantities of cheap goods in Europe (i.e silver), wait for the price to rise, and then sell it back. Consider it speculation in commodity markets (or an exploit, take your pick). My suspicion is that this *won't* work in AoD II.

I think there *are* minimum selling values, if not those would seem relatively easy to implement (easy for me to say since I'm not trying to code this). My thought would be to make that minimum variable between 2 and 4 or 5 so that not *all* finished goods would become nearly worthless, but some would. It might also be worthwhile to set a maximum tax rate...though didn't modern Sweden have some rates that approached--or exceeded!!--100%?

[Edit] Oh, and can't you get an Economic victory out of this, since that depends on volume--not value--of trade? (Well, unless Dale implemented that idea, in which case you may be SOL.)

[PrinceMyshkin]

Hermann for silver I am down to 1/2, rum cloth and cigars are down to 3/4, which is the same with sugar, cotton and tobacco.

[PrinceMyshkin]

In Physics a universe is fated to a heat death in which all the energy ends up as a homogeneous distribution of thermal energy, so that no more work can be extracted from any source.

I've realised this could happen to colonization, when no more funds can be extracted from any source. When tax rate is 99% and indians have no more money to give, the game progress comes to a halt. The education system is doomed, by tuition time increases (100+ turns), together with overall funds unavailability.

I always thought, this could never happen, or if it could, it would be in much later stages of the game. I was wrong.

In this game "heat death" came much earlier, by year 1620.

Let me show you the pictures.

Game Settings, AoD II, v1.06.


Colony top down view by 1638.


First colony by year 1632. Note the huge float of goods 1000-2000. Ask why? Simply cannot make any profit anymore; let alone I discovered only few of them are sold every turn.


Forces comparisson. By 1610, colonial forces grow faster than REF.


Game Stats. This is why I said victory margins are way too low -consider we stopped our expansion here after 1592. So imagine how much above the victory goals, one could reach by 1792!


Last but not least a bug.

Achieving industrial win (which we did in 1592) disables delcaration of independence, either from King's screen, or REF. Having discuss this with Dale in the past, I assume it is a bug.


Thanks

PS Declaring independence should grant almost automatic industrial win, as most productions could be doubled (choosing carefully the constitution). This will make industrial win possible even earlier...

[Dale]

Those values for the victories look wrong for Epic. They both should be more than that.

[PrinceMyshkin]

Yayyyyyyyy! Thanks Dale!

Can we also fix the the declare independence bug please?

[Dale]

Dunno if that can be fixed though. By obtaining one victory condition, it disables every other victory condition.

[moriety]

Over-exports:

In the original I followed a standard pattern of 3 expert workers in a factory per commodity, no matter how big my colonial empire grew, with two ships to service this trade. The prices didn't fall as quickly as it does in this version, and silver is even more sensitive in this version I think.
(I'm only selling via a warehouse expansion, I've sold about 300-400 units through this system and already it's down to 14).

I'm unsure if it's Dales AoDII version or the vanilla version, but once you've traded over 300 units of a product, that product gets included in the trade calculations, so recently my ship-based sale of 456 Cloth took 2 gold away from the value of Silver, whilst horses rose by 1 gold (as I've purchased over 300 units and thus brought it into the calculations)

As the AI clearly picks up on Warehouse sales, holding off untill you have built your first expansion and then only selling though this isn't going to stop the downward spiral of prices for money you need to fund the Armed Forces to combat the King with. They seem to fall too quickly on the amounts that are commonly traded by players.

In my last game, and first AoDII one, I was shocked at how well Dale had changed the AI for the REF, had I not had a large navy (10 Man o' Wars and 6 others) I would have lost- yet all my trade money in the last 200 turns or so was devoted to expansion of the military, and it is this correlation between the size of the REF and trade income that needs to be looked at more closely I reckon!

BTW: Off topic- I noticed you said you were 15 when you played the original: I was about 32-ish, god I feel old! (Still, gaming was an interesting new experience for me in the early ninties- and it meant I could ignore my girlfriend whenever she got stroppy, by simply getting up from the sofa and putting on my shiny new 486 series, after I binned my Atari and Megadrive....)

[PrinceMyshkin]

Ridiculous to sell silver for 1/2, huh? :-)

[Sir Alkis]

I have no experience with AoD but since you mentioned the Custom house I have to say that I agree 100%.

The Custom house is the absolute solution to micromanagement. I am a busy person and I don't waste my time with a game unless I like it very much. That's why I stopped playing, but if someone makes a custom house mod I will probably start playing again. I can even try many cities like the old times.

[PrinceMyshkin]

Sir Alki,

If you haven't played AoD II, you are missing a lot.

The whole game has been improved to the point, you may not recognize the game. It is now far more enjoyable, and will be even more after AoD II v1.07, which is supposed to fix education.

Dale has done a superb job there.

Yes, it is hurts to say the 1994 game had much more depth in it...

What was wrong in the custom houses was the ability to bypass King's embargo. So one could avoid completely tax increases.

Custom houses should arive late in the game and be costly, I also believe custom houses should sell with a (%) reduction in the tax rate.

This is to counter the complete lack of potential income, when tax exceeds 90% in conjuction with the very low price of manufactured goods during the end game.

As a funny counter-result education system does not work. No money, no fees. The original 1994 colonization had no education fees - hey for a reason! Fees are fine, but an income should be guaranteed in all phases of the game.