Is RNW unpopular?

[Ketilsen]

I think RNW's feel smaller in part because you tend to get several disconnected continents; with the Americas everything is connected and you can really only access it from the east. The effect is that in RNW everything becomes accessible much faster, and is mostly coastline, without any deep interior; while the number of provinces might be the same, it will feel like it's smaller because it takes less time to cover up a colonial region. Another factor is that Colonial Nations more often get disconnected, i.e. each sits on its own little island subcontinent; this leads to fewer colonial wars and less action, again making it feel smaller and less interesting.

I tend to play RNW when playing as a colonizer (not always, but have done it the last few times) to shake things up. My latest game had a huge continent midway between Europe and Asia (so slightly west of where North America is), with all trade links going east for a change. This was a nice variation on the usual business, because suddenly the major New World landmass becomes much less valuable for European colonizers and everywhere else becomes more hotly contested. I was semi-hoping for some enterprising Asian AI going for colonies, but alas none of them did by the time I got around to colonizing there.

 

[solidprice]

More islands make it feel smaller even if its richer.

I do wish the powerhouses of east/southeast asia picked exploration in general rarely and much higher if the trade routes were bias to asia in RNW.

Think ming/japan and its daimyos,Korea, Vietnam, Thailand and spice islanders of Malaysia and Indonesia.

 

[Poh]

The RNW has a couple of "problems" compared to the standard New World.
1. as has been mentioned it appears smaller due to province sizes being smaller, but also because it uses the whole RNW area.
2. Tradenodes tend to be a little alternative
3. You might get into problems with the colonization ranges and this makes it way harder to plan for picking ideagroups etc.
4. And as has been said it does at times feel a little bland because of the lack of development. It needs provinces or areas which are more attractive etc.

Personally i would like to have the RNW concentrate tiles around the landmass of the standard New World to try and make up for 1 and 3. But with the possibility of deviation. That would as i see it make for better gameplay and a better feel most of the time.

Previously you also had the "problem" of most tiles being rather small in size. This has been somewhat mended as the tiles from the last DLC were on avg. twice as large in regards to tiles as the previous tiles. the RNW does however still suffer from lack of alternative full sized or near full size RNW tiles, which is somewhat related to how increased tile sizes make the time to make a tile explode.

Just assume the Blorg popped by and spent some time goofing around with terraforming.

Well something like that should be possible to find if playing with Fantasy tiles on, though it isnt very likely to appear.

 

[Voigt]

In my multiplayer games we regularly play with RNW, but we always need some non-colonizer to host the game, reroll like 10 times for a good rnw, then enable TI again, and invite people to the game.

It has to be atleast a bit balanced, and some Traderoutes flowing to North and South Europe. More often then not, not a single traderoute is flowing into the English Channel/North Sea. Only an African one. This just destroyes England, Netherlands and the like.

It would be so great, if we could reroll a rnw while beeing in the Lobby. So I doesn't take ages to find a good one to play in MP.
Or just have a List of like 20 good RNWs, which will be just chosen from randomly in MP.

 

[yerm]

I like RNW, but then I usually edit it to make my favorite landmasses way more common (3/4 of the biggest, all except that 3-continent screwy one) and I up the chance for each of the 4 giant empires considerably (which usually means getting them all).

You know what I would really love? If I could "RNW" the natives on the existing map of the Americas. I honestly do RNW for the nifty fantasy nations, but while some are really cool don't get me wrong... I don't actually care all that much about the world shape as much.

 

[Bouchart]

I haven't used RNW more than once, I think. It's weird seeing Europe/Asia/Africa look normal and the Americas looking all weird.

If I wanted a weird, random looking world I'd fire up Civilization.

 

[CassCD]

In my multiplayer games we regularly play with RNW, but we always need some non-colonizer to host the game, reroll like 10 times for a good rnw, then enable TI again, and invite people to the game.

It has to be atleast a bit balanced, and some Traderoutes flowing to North and South Europe. More often then not, not a single traderoute is flowing into the English Channel/North Sea. Only an African one. This just destroyes England, Netherlands and the like.

It would be so great, if we could reroll a rnw while beeing in the Lobby. So I doesn't take ages to find a good one to play in MP.
Or just have a List of like 20 good RNWs, which will be just chosen from randomly in MP.

It's funny you say that, because in my own anecdotal experience, I could swear that the English Channel gets a trade route from the New World 9/10 times. Whenever I play as Castile (and I do love to play as Castile relatively often), I've learned to simply re-roll for starts that go directly to Sevilla or Safi because waiting to uncover the Ivory Coast can be demoralizing if it doesn't pan out. I have a love for the colonization game, but that love doesn't extend to colonizing and not gaining anything from it.

That one failing aside, I love the RNW. I never play a game without it. Even though the tile system isn't truly random, I still gain some thrill from uncovering the unknown layout of that side of the map.

 

[krieger11b]

What is RNW?

 

[Republic of Mercury]

What is RNW?

Random New World.

 

[net.split]

You know what I would really love? If I could "RNW" the natives on the existing map of the Americas. I honestly do RNW for the nifty fantasy nations, but while some are really cool don't get me wrong... I don't actually care all that much about the world shape as much.

You know what? This is actually doable. Copy the province, height, and river maps of the Americas from the default maps, make the .txt file defining the sea provinces / harbors / wastelands / etc, set the Weight super high, and maybe cut the weight on the other tiles. It's basically what I did for Nega-Europe tile, only a whole lot more work because of the number of provinces involved.

Trade nodes might not quite work out though. Even if you put a region center in something like Manhattan I'm not sure the generator would always send the trade over to the English node.

 

[CharlesII]

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?

My friend and I do it when we play multiplayer as non-colonizers, hoping to stagnant them and make us safer.

 

[SamuraiLordofWii]

I normaly play rnw but im kinda unlucky with it i often put the fantasy stuff up to find cool things and sometimes there are nativ great powers like the crimson empire which got even higher dev then ming but i often die early in games like that and never see them or how the clash between them and the colonizers would be :X which could be kinda amusing. Only got Asian trade republics there or a lot natives when i found it often it as many small island but the trade often flow to the north sea in one was even a big north pole continent allways can suprise you and thats why i like it.

 

[aragonFTW]

I like the RNW, and some of the combinations of tiles have created some really interesting games. It doesn't always work out that way and annoyingly I have to disable my favourite graphics mods to use it in multiplayer, so it stays off more than I'd like. Usually have it on in single player unless I'm playing in Americas.

 

[zukodark]

After the update, I don't think it looks ugly or that bad even. My main problem with it, however, is that the landmasses tend to be just too far away from Europe. Unless you disable lobby terra incognita (which sorts of defeats the purpose) there's a pretty high chance you won't have anywhere to colonize before a long time, so it's not really worth it go early colonizing. Then, there's no reason to use RNW if you aren't going to colonize much anyways.

I also feel like there's too many empty continents. I mean, there's almost always a sizeable or even massive continent without any natives on, which just feels boring and out of place. Lastly, the trade nodes are often weird.

How to improve RNW:

• Make it so water "tiles" cannot appear next to Europe (so there'd be islands at the very least, if not continents)
• Somehow ensure there always is a "scenario" on RNW continents.

 

[tppytel]

Thanks for all the input everyone! I think I may well give it a try and play Castile again when the current campaign wraps up. I'll just be prepared for some possible snags or disappointments. I don't mind the possibility of trade nodes or distances not working out "fairly". I'm more into EU for the alt-history sandbox aspect of it than I am for huge conquests and powergaming. Historically, colonization *was* a gamble and if the geography of the New World were different, it probably *would* have changed the course of European history. So if Spain gets relatively screwed by the RNW draw, that would be part of the fun for me.

 

[tppytel]

I just rolled up a few RNW's to check them out in the lobby. It would be nice if you could see trade routes in the lobby, but they all looked reasonable and interesting to me at first glance. I think Spain would have been able to get a colony out before Dip Tech 7 in all three RNW's I looked at. It would be a real question in some of them whether to develop that first colony further or to keep exploring from there, but that seems like fun uncertainty to me.

Thanks again for all the replies.

 

[TenshiN]

It will suddenly get more popular should our almighty Paradox gods fix the Fantasy scenario countries leader naming, so the rulers of my mighty Vinland will stop getting amerindian names :S
Seriously, this has been around for quite a while and doesn't seem too difficult to fix

 

[Mauer]

I've had a few massive RNWs that never got fully colonized in a complete game.

I always turn the option on when I plan on doing colonization or dealing with colonizers in some fashion, as I really like the unpredictable trade routes, however I've been playing ROTW nations recently and I don't activate it simply because it makes loading games take a few more seconds and I don't gain anything from it.

It would be great if we could have a Random Trade Route Generator as well, that completely changes trade routes all over the world to spice things up every game.

 

[tppytel]

It would be great if we could have a Random Trade Route Generator as well, that completely changes trade routes all over the world to spice things up every game.

That would be OK. But I would rather see a more dynamic trade route system that let the world's development influence the direction and connections of trade routes. As a poster in another thread noted, the game treats geography as destiny as far as trade routes are concerned. That doesn't seem realistic considering the possible divergences from historical development that the game allows. A trade route system that reacts to the world's events would be a *lot* more interesting, but I'm guessing the challenges in testing such a system and adapting the AI to it would be enormous.

 

[Philadelphus]

I just rolled up a few RNW's to check them out in the lobby. It would be nice if you could see trade routes in the lobby[…]

If you're unaware, you can see the six default primary map modes by clicking the buttons along the top of the screen in the lobby, but I don't know if it shows trade routes for the RNW. Apologies if you already knew this.