Anno 1404: Dawn of Discovery

[LK]

I still haven't totally grasped what at what level peasants give me citizenship. I know you fill their needs, which is easy, but I'd like to know the actual base number of peasants you need before they start to upgrade themselves.

90, IIRC. That's when the Church unlocks and you can upgrade to Citizens.

[bhodi]

When I get home, I'm going to start a endless game radicalthon so I can document some of the things I've learned and my city building and trading strategies. Plus, it's a much more pretty game than dwarf fortress was.

It's either this game or SotS, and I think this game is more visually appealing.

[LK]

I was planning that once I hit continuous but it's taking awhile because those scenarios take a looooooooong time. :) I'm finishing up Diplomat then it's on to Guild Master.

[Draegan]

I'm on the last level of the campaign (I think) where you have to build the Cathedral before the Cardinal.  It think I'm going to hit up continuous before the rest.

I also had an issue with the nomad chapter.  I had a full population block and couldn't get the last 150 nomads to upgrade to Envoys.  Nothing worked.  I stockpiled everything you could need.  Then I bulldozed a few nearby milk farms and they immediately started upgrading.

I thought that was strange. 

[Draegan]

Time to murder someone.

I just lost the last campaign because I was 1 milimeter away from completing the Cathedral.  Fuck this game.  That was 4 hours right there.  Mother fucker.  This map is terrible too.

[LK]

They give you *plenty* of time. Are you using the Advanced Carpenters each time? Did you notice if you get the last one, the timer resets back to an hour?

[Draegan]

I used all the special buffs,  the guy took back the special crafters and said I don't need them anymore.

I don't feel like playing that level again.  It took forever.

[LK]

There's three different quests at each stage that give you a unique Carpenter for each phase. That's three separate quests and three separate carpenters. If you just want to finish the map you should be able to. Doing so while completing all quests is a different story but it seems like you're not after that.

Note: After rescuing the Academy, he places the third item in the warehouse of the island, but only after you build a warehouse there. Also, I believe just having a road to the Academy and supplying Dates / Milk speeds up construction.

[Paelos]

Done with campaign easy mode. It's not that bad, but the citizens are a pain in the ass. Also hiding the only island that can produce indigo on the SW point of the map seems a bit cheap on the last mission. We shall see how I fare in the scenarios which are next. Good lord this game may encompass 100+ hours of my time given achievements, medals, campaigns, and freeplay.

[LK]

I'm trying to find out how to get Sultan / Emperor quests to happen. Diplomat and other scenarios require them, but from what I can tell it takes a loooooooong time to get them and I want to finish the scenario and move on to the next one.

[Ingmar]

Done with campaign easy mode. It's not that bad, but the citizens are a pain in the ass. Also hiding the only island that can produce indigo on the SW point of the map seems a bit cheap on the last mission. We shall see how I fare in the scenarios which are next. Good lord this game may encompass 100+ hours of my time given achievements, medals, campaigns, and freeplay.

I think its 500 hours for the last time medal. 

[vos]

According to my google search.

    * You can only trigger Emperor or Sultan quests if you have both a metropolis (3500 nobles in one city, or 5000 envoys in one city) and have built the monument for that culture.

I'm going for that right now in the Guild Master Scenario.

[LK]

I have gotten two quests, I just need to know the frequency. Having a huge time gap between Sultan Quests = OMG JUST END THE SCENARIO ALREADY.

[vos]

Finally finished Guild Master. The Emperor gave me a chain of 5 quests, one right after the other. It sounds like I could have been lucky, and that you ended up with single quests. I probably spent an extra hour waiting for the damn thing to start though. Seems flawed that you have to sit for a long time holding the + button to speed up the game. (and there's no damn toggle for it that I can find)

Edited because I got the name of the scenario wrong.

[LK]

Yeah one chained quest from the Sultan and I'm done with that scenario.

[LK]

Now waiting for Emperor quests in Guild Master. *sigh*...

One of the problems I'm seeing is excess Honor Points. When you've developed to the point that you're just running the clock, one activity is to cycle the loot options that Richard and the Grand Vizier have. But it's a pain in the ass to do. I'd rather they cycled their inventory or I could force them to do so instead of sitting there and buying / selling the items that I know have a chance (chance!) of cycling into a rare / epic item.

[Khaldun]

Just started. Decided to start continuous rather than campaign. Yes, I know.

But so far I'm only really stymied by one thing. The "Confused Ambassador" quest: I cannot figure out where the motherfucker actually is. Quest text seems to imply he's at my port, but I don't see him either in the warehouse screen or on the map.

[Paelos]

Just do the damn campaign. It's not unfun for a long tutorial. You literally learn everything that might be remotely confusing in a continuous game. There are three things to check on if a quest isn't working:

1 - Check your warehouses for items you didn't know were there in the second item tab. ALL warehouses on all islands.
2 - Look to see if it's a finding a person quest. If it is, isolate the island the person is on and he will be outlined in blue wandering around. Make sure to look at all your housing areas on said island.
3 - Check buildings on your island that are run by NPCs. Sometimes you have to talk to an NPC to get them to send an item to your actual warehouse. Sometimes you have to do that twice. For example, if Brother Hilarious is going to give you a flag, you can't just go get the flag from your warehouse. You actually have to click on his house, talk to him, make him give you the flag, then loot the flag with your ship from your warehouse.

But again, you learn all that fun stuff from the campaign.

[bhodi]

When searching for people, mouse over the quest on the left bar - it highlights their exact place with a red circle. They are at the center of it. It makes it pretty easy to find people.

[vos]

One of the problems I'm seeing is excess Honor Points.

I've not ever had that problem. Are you buying your warships with Honor? Are you upgrading everything like speed on all ships and reduced envoys to citizens?

[bhodi]

I have never seen either of those...


how do you buy ships with honor?

[LK]

I suppose I could start buying ships with honor, but when I need the ships is typically when I don't have the honor. At end game where I'm drowning in honor (and my opponents are cowed and I don't need a large fleet), that's a different story.

[vos]

You buy the ships in the diplomacy window, just click on the independents, it costs 400 honor.
You can buy global upgrades to things like ship speed or the number of warships or noria size by clicking a button on the lower right in between shipping routes and the menu button.

[Draegan]

I don't think I ever opened that window.

Lulz and stuff.

[bhodi]

Me either. Diplomacy? What's that? Either your ships come by and buy my shit or you're shooting at me.

[LK]

You can turn honor into gold and vice versa through Northborogh and Al Jazier, and you can demand tributes from the NPCs that help supplement your economy. So, yes, Diplomacy has its advantages.

Also on big maps, if you are allied with NPCs, you uncover their map.

The game starts to fall apart when you start noticing the AI. It's fun when you're doing relaxing city building and generally being a punk, but the harder AI's are harder because they cheat like fucking crazy and game mechanics help support that behavior. For instance, a trade market that is being captured can be destroyed, thereby denying territory control to a capturing army.

[Hokers]

As a fan of previous games like this (Caesar and such) I am really enjoying this game.

Playing the Wii version.  The scenarios in the campaign seem a bit different than the descriptions from those playing the steam version.  I have not had to find individual people in a city to advance a quest.  Also have not had my cities decimated by an invading army.

There is combat in the Wii version though, the corsairs made a pathetic attempt at an invasion, and I have taken over 2 of their islands in a search for the missing sultan.

[LK]

Wii version and PC version are two completely different games.

[Teleku]

OK, I'm on tutorial mission 5.  The scholar guy is asking me to protect him with 3 warships.  I built 3 warships, move them down by him, but its not completing the quest.  WTF do I need to do?  He even begs me not to take them away when I move them out of range, but the whole tutorial has stopped advancing now, until I complete that quest..

[Paelos]

OK, I'm on tutorial mission 5.  The scholar guy is asking me to protect him with 3 warships.  I built 3 warships, move them down by him, but its not completing the quest.  WTF do I need to do?  He even begs me not to take them away when I move them out of range, but the whole tutorial has stopped advancing now, until I complete that quest..

Short answer, you wait until Marie finally attacks him. I think she does it 3 times and gives up.

[Paelos]

Also, fuck the scenarios are LOOOOOOOOOOOOONG. I actually hit the 6 hour "you should have taken a break by now" mark today.

[LK]

You can really lose yourself in this game. The only time I notice time is when autosave LCMs I. Every half hour. If there wasn't an unusually high risk of crashing, I would turn it off.

[Teleku]

Hmm, haven't had the game crash once so far.  I am using a pretty new computer, however, running Windows 7.

[Paelos]

I've crashed once during the campaign, but not since then. However, after 6 hours in a row my game was getting very very slow. I could tell I had to save and stop or the thing was headed into the bad place.

[LK]

There is something very fun about redesigning a resource allocation network in order to maximize population growth on a home island. I could use some more mother-fuckers to kill though.