Please, Rhye - take them as a positive thing, even with the known bugs/glitches, there is NOBODY who didn't say they arent having a great time, you did NOT waste your time on this.

I wanted to take a second and make this thank you thread, so that we may show appreciation, in regards to our criticisms - so that you don't think you are some sid meier type who releases glitched products. My favorite thing, despite my chaotic experiences is never knowing what will happen next, and i really like the overhaul of the financial advisor. FINALLY, i can see points and compare change possibilities before i make them! I can see WHAT areas are lacking (*and by how much).

Thank you Rhye, for this awesome mod!

I posted something similar in another thread.

All I can say Rhye is BRAVO!

I also echo thadian's comment that we are only offering critical comments so as to make this endeavor the very best it can be. We understand that this version is still really a public beta, and that tweaks will be made where needed.

This was a very nice, thoughtful and appropriate idea Thadian.

And yes, Rhye deserves our thanks and praise in more ways than one. If not for this mod, I would not be playing Civ IV today. I consider this along with RAF to be the greatest modification to the Civ franchise ever, I never thought I'd say this about a user-created mod, but if Rhye asked us to pay a small amount for all this to compensate the endless hourse he must have spent, I would not hesitate to do so.

Possibly the greatest compliment I can give Rhye is that, believe it or not, I have yet to complete a vanilla BtS game...I've had this as my default game since day 1.

I agree fully. I've had a blast with this so far, and I can only imagine it getting better in the future. In fact, for a first release, it doesn't even really have that many problems.

Since I discovered RFC, I've only very rarely played vanilla. I expect to never play vanilla again now that RAND is out ;) In short, keep up the good work. RFC RAND is as awesome already, but I think everyone here just wants it to be as good as possible.

To quote wikipedia:

The critic is also considered to be the psychic inverse of genius.[3] This insight was formulated early by Lessing as "not every critic is a genius, but every genius is born a critic...genius has the proof of all rules within itself." Kant scholar Jane Kneller has read this to indicate that, as opposed to the externally oriented and culturally dependent critic, "genius demonstrates its autonomy not by ignoring all rules, but by deriving the rules from itself."

:worship::worship::worship::worship::worship:

:bowdown::bowdown::bowdown::bowdown::bowdown:

:clap::clap::clap::clap::clap:

:bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce::bounce:

:trophy::trophy::trophy::trophy::trophy:

Appreciation smilies!

Hail Rhye!

As all new mods it needs polishing, I think Rhye is perfectly aware of this. Of course, this doesn't mean we aren't enjoying. In fact, when people don't like something, they don't waste time posting for bug reports/suggestions in the forum. All this feedback can only mean that we love Rhye's work !

I'd also like to add my appreciation for Rhye's work! It's a great concept, it's almost perfect, but as with any product glitches are discovered when it goes public.

Of course it is awesome. I am ditching both normal BTS and my work in favour of RFC RAND.

RFC Research and Development is awesome d(^_^)b

I though that this mod wouldn't be as good as it is. So, like I already said in another thread:

Rhye, you're fcuking awesome.

Hear hear. Congrats Rhye!

Possibly the greatest compliment I can give Rhye is that, believe it or not, I have yet to complete a vanilla BtS game...I've had this as my default game since day 1.

I can top that: I haven't even completed a vanilla Civ IV game! Unless you count the Earth 1000 AD scenario which is apparently by Rhye anyway. Certainly this is the first time I've properly played a random map. It's been so good I haven't touched any musical instruments since Monday!

when i reinstalled Civ4 and BTS i went straight to multiplayer, got sick of "grunt rush" kid strategies - and decided only RFC was good enough. Since then i did download Wolfshanze mod but i have only played it once. (i liked it). But there is NOTHING that does it for me like RFC, and now that the financial advisor shows the exact points and not just arrows, i know HOW much to fix what, normal RFC feels naked. all we need now is an overlay that shows green +5 or red -5 (as example) on each tile for its stability factor.

I have yet to play non-RAND since it came out, and its gonna be a while before i do. When i do, it will likely be RFC.

I've played the other mods, never finished a game though, and even ones I was looking forward to playing like Gods of Old, never really did anything for me. For a huge history buff like me, it's hard going back to any non-RFC game now. I'm the kind of player that keeps on saying to himself..."But Berlin is not supposed to be on the coast! No no no, Japan should be building navies!" And so on. While I don't expect exact historical replicas, some general trends or tendencies are appreciated, and it seems that Rhye has brilliantly captured this in his mods.

@Phallus: Wow! I'm impressed! Did you get Civ IV right away when it came out?

I think so. I remember reading about it before it came about and thinking I should give Civ a try, but I immediately came here looking for a way to fix the years (medieval age always started in BC!) and then spent the rest of the time trying out mods. I tried Total Realism but my computer couldn't handle it, and then I found RFC. I didn't get Warlords until RFC was compatible and since then I haven't played anything else. :)

i played total realism until the coming of RFC and to be honest i liked the TR special unit promotions though the ninja unit was borked.

I also would play that again if it were BTS compatible, but with no other mod quite like this, i think RFC has my exclusivity - Wolfshanzes mod is wonderful, but even that feels a little vanilla when compared to the dynamics of RFC or the elements of TR. The only thing i hated about TR was there were soooo many UU's that i couldn't tell what i was fighting half of the time, one UU per era is enough for each civ.

To this day i have played about 20 games of BTS, and the latter 15 or so were played with Solvers patch - i love the dessert river/flood plains rule and now when i see a dessert river WITHOUT a flood plain, i feel jipped.

On a loading screen it said something about "This map was from Robinson's project" - he shoulda used solvers rofl!

RFC and RFC RAND are the funnest things i have ever played in Civ, and that counts Call to Power - which i stopped Civ4 to go back to for a few years.

Also, playing RFC taught me how to handle having a small empire in regular BTS - now when i play BTS - i feel like i have improved because i am not hindered only having 5 cities in the industrial age.

Possibly the greatest compliment I can give Rhye is that, believe it or not, I have yet to complete a vanilla BtS game...I've had this as my default game since day 1.

well, I do think that vanilla BtS is harder than RFC, and that might actually be a reason for not finishing BtS games ;)

well, I do think that vanilla BtS is harder than RFC, and that might actually be a reason for not finishing BtS games ;)

Really? Interesting I always thought the opposite: No Stability, no plagues, no spawning civs to worry about that take your land or automatically are more advanced than you, no penalties for land grabbing, can settle anywhere you want to, large empires are not penalized as much, can have Representation the whole game without an issue.

Knowing the map is obviously a major advantage but that's now offset by RAND.

heh, I wish it was as easy as you picture it... civs don't spawn subsequently but this also means that you cannot settle anywhere since "anywhere" is already settled ;)
BtS AI is not as "guided" as RFC, it does a good job in expanding, it has good (for an AI) diplomatic and espionage skills, and its military capabilities are very good, you will hardly see this potential in action in RFC for a number of reasons.

I see. So you seem more focused on fewer AI constraints while I was more focused on player constraints. I think that vanilla games are far more predictable in the sense that by 0AD it's pretty obvious who has a chance of winning the game. Often it's clear who exactly will win as there isn't a chance of a civ collapsing, a new civ spawning and there is very little keeping a civ who is already ahead in the game from maintaining if not expanding their lead.

Case in point my recent Carthage game: I had N Africa, Italy and Greece. Was ahead in techs, points and the most powerful civ. Had this game been in regular vanilla civ it would have been a pretty smooth road to the finish but with Rhye's stability I was on Unstable for most of the time, lost Rome because of it and when I had the conquistador event happen and took land in Central America (which would be a good thing in vanilla civ) it lowered my stability even more and I collapsed.

Had these events occur in vanilla civ I would have grown even more powerful but in Rhye's the bigger you are the harder it is to maintain stability whereas in vanilla the bigger you are the easier it gets.