I'm playing my first Castile/Spain campaign (only my second campaign ever), with only the Art of War DLC. Having fun. But I'm thinking when I finish that I may play Castile again with Common Sense, Conquest of Paradise, and maybe El Dorado or something else thrown in. The RNW option seems like it would make for a more fun and less predictable game for Castile and other heavy colonizers, yet I very rarely see it mentioned here. Are there any problems with it? Or do people just prefer playing a more predictable strategy? Or maybe everyone here has been playing so long that Spain is no longer interesting to them?
Is RNW unpopular?
- Thread starter tppytel
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RNW was (maybe still is, haven't checked) almost always significantly smaller than the standard New World. By smaller, I mean "size of a whole continent" smaller.
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I'd use it a lot more if I didn't keep forgetting to enable it >.>
But besides that, when people talk strategy they rarely talk about RNW since there's no real way to plan for it.
But besides that, when people talk strategy they rarely talk about RNW since there's no real way to plan for it.
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I tried it once last year I think, and I definitely felt like AI colonisation speed was drastically reduced (they wouldn't even send any colonists if I recall). Haven't touched it since then.
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If you play with RNW you can't load a save. Can be pretty inconvenient.
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You continue your save game with RNW world. You do something incredibly stupid and want to reload your last autosave. Have fun quitting the game and enjoy the additional loading screen.
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But it still lets you load eventually, right? It's just another loading screen?
I don't find myself reloading saves very often. Unless RNW completely prevents reloading, I don't think I'd have much of a problem.
you always have to reload teh game one most reloads, only thing missing would be seeds for teh map that are definable ingame.
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I use RNW pretty much every game. It does require compressing saves, and it takes longer to load or return to the menu if you use it.
The main problem you can run into right now is a really nasty bug that results in RNW-generated nations randomly getting cores on each other's provinces. Some of these are there at game start, and others just appear out of nowhere as the game progresses. This is awkward because the AI loves forcing defeated enemies to return cores, so AI nations will end up owning provinces that have no hope of ever being connected or that they can even reach to properly defend. It mucks with diplomacy and such, too. Paradox is aware of the issue but didn't fix it for 1.19 yet, so we're waiting for 1.20 at least for a fix.
All of that only really matters if you're playing in the RNW as a native, though. Colonizers won't really care much about all that mess.
There are some good mods if you're going for RNW. There are some fun tiles, including several by Elzephor, whose work made it into the official game as of last patch. There's a particularly silly one you can find in my signature as well. Elzephor also has the Random New World Improvements mod, which makes the RNW tend to be larger, more populated, and significantly more valuable. It's not yet compatible with 1.19 though, so you'd have to downgrade to use it or wait for an update. I have a smaller RNW mod of my own that I hope to release sometime this month that makes the experience better for fantasy native play, though there isn't much I can do about that confounding cores bug.
The main problem you can run into right now is a really nasty bug that results in RNW-generated nations randomly getting cores on each other's provinces. Some of these are there at game start, and others just appear out of nowhere as the game progresses. This is awkward because the AI loves forcing defeated enemies to return cores, so AI nations will end up owning provinces that have no hope of ever being connected or that they can even reach to properly defend. It mucks with diplomacy and such, too. Paradox is aware of the issue but didn't fix it for 1.19 yet, so we're waiting for 1.20 at least for a fix.
All of that only really matters if you're playing in the RNW as a native, though. Colonizers won't really care much about all that mess.
There are some good mods if you're going for RNW. There are some fun tiles, including several by Elzephor, whose work made it into the official game as of last patch. There's a particularly silly one you can find in my signature as well. Elzephor also has the Random New World Improvements mod, which makes the RNW tend to be larger, more populated, and significantly more valuable. It's not yet compatible with 1.19 though, so you'd have to downgrade to use it or wait for an update. I have a smaller RNW mod of my own that I hope to release sometime this month that makes the experience better for fantasy native play, though there isn't much I can do about that confounding cores bug.
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RNW would be great for multiplayer if it did not compress the save, making it difficult to make more complex edits.
It has a few problems that prevent seeing more use:
1. It disables some achievements.
2. You have to restart the game every time you want to roll a new one (huge detraction).
3. You get less territory in the new world, and it's often much lower quality than the default.
4. It's buggy and likes to put HRE core on nations in the new world, among other awkward interactions. I've seen Italian generated nations have 1444 cores in the mid-point between atlantic and pacific...which of course get returned in some lost war.
However, it does have the upside of offering up some interesting scenarios and atypical trade flow so I've used it here and there as a changeup. Playing in the RNW as one of the non-fantasy nations can be especially unfun though, because you can spend a long time waiting for Europe to show up unless you happen to be able to reach a high-american.
1. It disables some achievements.
2. You have to restart the game every time you want to roll a new one (huge detraction).
3. You get less territory in the new world, and it's often much lower quality than the default.
4. It's buggy and likes to put HRE core on nations in the new world, among other awkward interactions. I've seen Italian generated nations have 1444 cores in the mid-point between atlantic and pacific...which of course get returned in some lost war.
However, it does have the upside of offering up some interesting scenarios and atypical trade flow so I've used it here and there as a changeup. Playing in the RNW as one of the non-fantasy nations can be especially unfun though, because you can spend a long time waiting for Europe to show up unless you happen to be able to reach a high-american.
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Less territory is not always as clear as it can seem. The RNW has province sizes that are more akin to the old world (ie around 900 pixels per province in the province source map if we want to get technical) which means it often uses as many if not more provinces than the non-random New World. We had to add a lot more provinces to make the RNW work than the 600 or so that the New World has in the historical setup (number is from memory so it's not exact but it should be around that ballpark).
That said number of provinces is not necessarily what someone would mean by a larger or smaller continent but it's something that can be useful to know I'd say
And by all means it _is_ quite possible to get a smaller new world as well.
That said number of provinces is not necessarily what someone would mean by a larger or smaller continent but it's something that can be useful to know I'd say
And by all means it _is_ quite possible to get a smaller new world as well.- 23
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I think my only real problem with the RNW is that often it doesn't feel like there's such a coherent narrative to it. I mean, with the "old new world", the various colonial regions have historical significance; Brazil is one of the first places Portugal can reach, and often gets colonised by them. Canada feeds directly to Bordeaux and the North Sea, making it attractive to France and Scotland. The Caribbean has a gloriously high-development, so you can get tariffs up the wazoo and it makes a great place to build manufactories. Mexico and Peru are filled with black gold gold. Eastern-America might seem comparatively less impressive, but it has some high development provinces and it's the only node besides the Caribbean to go directly to the English channel, for England and the Netherlands.
Whereas with the RNW, I usually see about one or two decent provinces per region, usually with a CoT or estuary, and that's about it. The different colonial regions feel a bit samey, and often fit the pattern of "generic northen blob and generic southern blob", as if someone took Brazil and Eastern America and blurred them out.
That, and for some reason all the RNW games I play seem cursed somehow. e.g. my portugal game where, during a crucial war with Morroco, my ally castille's indulgent ruler sent all his 30k troops to take attrition in the New World whilst Morocco and Tunis seiged down Iberia.
Whereas with the RNW, I usually see about one or two decent provinces per region, usually with a CoT or estuary, and that's about it. The different colonial regions feel a bit samey, and often fit the pattern of "generic northen blob and generic southern blob", as if someone took Brazil and Eastern America and blurred them out.
That, and for some reason all the RNW games I play seem cursed somehow. e.g. my portugal game where, during a crucial war with Morroco, my ally castille's indulgent ruler sent all his 30k troops to take attrition in the New World whilst Morocco and Tunis seiged down Iberia.
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I play it every now and then. Can make for an interesting game, but overall I usually prefer the real thing.
Regarding it having less territory, I think part of the reason for it feeling that way it is that the real NW has almost all of it's land is concentrated into one continent, whereas the RNW often spreads things out more. Even if we have a total land area comparable to the Americas, if it's in 3-4 landmasses scattered across the oceans, it seems smaller. The real one also has some pretty hefty wastelands too.
Regarding it having less territory, I think part of the reason for it feeling that way it is that the real NW has almost all of it's land is concentrated into one continent, whereas the RNW often spreads things out more. Even if we have a total land area comparable to the Americas, if it's in 3-4 landmasses scattered across the oceans, it seems smaller. The real one also has some pretty hefty wastelands too.
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I never play RNW because I can't stop thinking what the alternate history Pangaea must've been to produce such a bizarre landmass.
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Just assume the Blorg popped by and spent some time goofing around with terraforming.
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