EDIT: Ok, I removed the call to choosePurgeCity() in AI_update() meaning that prosecutors now dont do anything, recompiled the dll, and now the game goes past the turn where it previously always crashed.

This is great news, thanks ecv. This is quite a plausible cause for everyone's late game crashes -- I'm not sure the AI normally builds many prosecutors at all. I don't have the ability to compile new versions of the dll (3Miro does), but for now, would you mind posting your recompiled dll here (or in the RFC Europe "files" thread) so that I can distribute it with the next test version and see if it fixes everyone's problems? If so, we'll fix the AI code for the prosecutors as soon as possible.

@jessiecat: My game as Kievan experiences problems. First of all, at first load, no interface had appeared (see screenshot). So I saved and reloaded. The interface appeared, but next turn...all civs contacted me (some of then had minus or zero score:crazyeye:-see screenshot) and I had to vote someone for UN!!!:eek:. After that, every reload crashes at 1248 AD. No matter, I will restart from scratch.

@ecv: That might be a cause to that, but AFAIK prosecutors were added much before Early Renaissance crashes begun.

@jessiecat: My game as Kievan experiences problems. First of all, at first load, no interface had appeared (see screenshot). So I saved and reloaded. The interface appeared, but next turn...all civs contacted me (some of then had minus or zero score:crazyeye:-see screenshot) and I had to vote someone for UN!!!:eek:. After that, every reload crashes at 1248 AD. No matter, I will restart from scratch.

That sounds like a corrupted save game file. This can happen sometimes and might be unrelated to our mod. If you have previous autosaves you could try playing on from one of them (but you might have overwritten them playing on from the bad load).

Hello,
Here's som feedback. In a game as the germans (with the dec. 21st version), it seemed to me that they are in a fairly weak position. In my game atleast, both Frankia and Burgundy had armies that the starting german would be unable to defend against. I think they need a few more defensive units from the start.

The swedish spawn map in the dec. 27th version should imo not include scania. I suggest removing the last 3 rows from it. The population in Scania were danish from before the year 800 till many years after the swedish conquest in 1658, and it was through a loong series of wars (11 I think), that the province became part of Sweden instead of Denmark. You can read more about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sk%C3%A5neland

Thanks, I did not know that (despite growing up in a region dominated by mock-serious feuding between Swedes and Norwegians). I can fix it as you suggest. I can also add that area to the Norse spawn area, which would have minimal direct implications.

When I played Frankia, Protestantism was founded in Bastia (Genoa, Corsica). The St. Peter's Basilica was placed in the Holy-City and not All Saints' Church.

Playing as Cordoba, I captured a Spanish city called Guadalajara and it got renamed as Burgos. That seemed a little odd.

Also, I built a city where I think Zaragoza should be, on the wheat tile on the lowland on the Ebro. Instead, it became the Arabic equivalent of Pamplona - seemed too far south for that.

Also in that Cordoba game, Arabia began as Orthodox...

Also in that Cordoba game, Arabia began as Orthodox...

Hi Arwon. Usually see you on OT. What you've found is largely because we've tended to tag more than 1 tile for the important cities, up to 4 in some cases. We could have included places like Logrono, Vitoria etc. between Zaragoza and Pamplona and made it 1 tile per city but most of the names would be unfamiliar to most players. That could be changed though.
I did the Spain and the Cordoba maps and possibility they don't coincide 100%. I'll take a look at that again. I need to make revisions on the Spain map anyway.
There's no way Arabia should be Orthodox as Islam is founded automatically when Damascus is built. (Or so so it should.) I'd like to see a saved game of that. Could you post one here?

Just posting, will not be able to work for another couple of weeks.

There seems to be some reports on religious related bugs. I have no way of testing/fixing anything right now, but it sounds like a consts.py problem. All changes to XML must be synchronized with consts.py (also some of the WB such as map size and independent cities and order of the players), otherwise prosecutors will act weird, wrong churches would be build and so on.

Also is anyone doing C++ editing or just python + XML + WB.

I read the files tread and I see that someone is doing C++. That is fine, however, we need to fix the prosecutor AI problem and not ignore it. I will need to look at exactly what the crash is.

- I will (when I get back) need the source code and/or exactly what changes have been made.
- If anyone knows exactly why the crash is happening, please share the technicality (will save me time).
- A savegame right before the crash would be useful.
- before anything, I guess make sure consts.py has properly set up the number of religions and the index of the prosecutor unit is set correctly (in RFCEBalance, there was a function in the "don't change this" part of the code that sets the prosecutor, number of religions and I don't remember the third one).

I've uploaded a save from 1000ish, it was Orthodox from when I started in 700 I think.

Also in that Cordoba game, Arabia began as Orthodox...

I've sometimes seen Arabia switch to Orthodoxy, probably because Arabia takes over a whole bunch of Orthodox cities early on, and so has roughly equal number of Orthodox/Islam cities. Still, having the holy city should normally tip the balance... This plus the wrong protestant shrine plus the array crash for the AI prosecutor code clearly speaks to a building index problem between XML and Python. I'll double-check everything again.

I've sometimes seen Arabia switch to Orthodoxy, probably because Arabia takes over a whole bunch of Orthodox cities early on, and so has roughly equal number of Orthodox/Islam cities. Still, having the holy city should normally tip the balance... This plus the wrong protestant shrine plus the array crash for the AI prosecutor code clearly speaks to a building index problem between XML and Python. I'll double-check everything again.

I agree. I've seen Arabia become a vassal and switch religion. I've looked at Arwon's game and it looks like Islam was founded in Dimashq normally but only spread to Syroz but no further. And any new city founded by the AI became Orthodox. Which means the automatic adoption of Islam with a pre-built mosque just didn't happen. Something wrong there. At least Al Quds should have become Muslim from the flip.

EDIT I've posted the revised Spain/Portugal CityName map to the files thread.

I've uploaded a save from 1000ish, it was Orthodox from when I started in 700 I think.

Thanks for that. I've had a look but I can't tell when it it switched.Though I can see why. I've also looked at your city which became the equivalent of Pamplona instead of Zaragoza. If it was founded on either tile south it would have been Zaragoza but Pamplona is marked on the 4 tile square so anything on those tiles would be Pamplona, for the reasons I described earlier. I'm revising the Spain map today to make it more compatible with Cordoba so Guadalajara won't become Burgos again. And I'll look at the Zaragoza area again too. Thanks for your observations. Hope to see more of you on this project. Your help would be greatly appreciated.

I agree. I've seen Arabia become a vassal and switch religion. I've looked at Arwon's game and it looks like Islam was founded in Dimashq normally but only spread to Syroz but no further. And any new city founded by the AI became Orthodox. Which means the automatic adoption of Islam with a pre-built mosque just didn't happen. Something wrong there. At least Al Quds should have become Muslim from the flip.

The UP of Arabia is: STATE Religion spreads to every city with a TEMPLE. If Arabia was Orthodox, than should spread Ortodoxy to all of his cities. And if that happened, there is nothing wrong I thingk. And there only comes a pre-built temple and no pre-built mosque in the cities. So I think that should be o.k. too.

A couple of notes on late spawns:

Started a game as Sweden, where the Norse had settled much of Sweden proper (including the area around Stockholm - I ended up being pushed off of the normal starting area).

I waited to found a capital, as I knew I'd flip Vasteras and another city, and moved workers, settlers, and units to future city sites through open borders. The flip came, and the Norse DOW'd. While all of the units in the two cities that flipped came with them, all of my units within Norse borders but not in cities disappeared. Checking the log, they weren't captured or killed, and they didn't get auto-moved into my new cities - they were simply wiped out. I thought this might be due to my lack of a pre-existing capital, but when I built a capital the turn before the flip, there was no DOW, so I couldn't really test it properly.

The second issue is minor, relating to mercenaries - in the second attempt, with the capital founded before the flip, I ended up with more units than I needed, and put some up as mercenaries. They immediately were taken off of my maintenance rolls, and were hired by Austria in the next turn. I received the cash hiring bonus, but no GPT for the units which had been hired. Having achieved that early success, I tried hiring out more units, but found the mercenary screen empty - I couldn't hire or hire out units. I'm not sure if this is done in standard RFC, but when my units were hired, they were renamed as barbarian units - Jutes and Angles, I think. Further attempts at interaction with the mercenary screen yielded the same result.

Just finished a great game as Genoa. Good news that I got to 1700 with only crashing once (reloaded autosave and carried on). Bad news is that its now stuck in 1700 with "waiting for other civs". Got all the UHV conditions too including 11 OBs. So I'm counting that as a UHV victory anyway. Couple of questions though.
1. Why is there only 60 turns to go in 1700? Does the mod end in 1760 instead of 1800?
2. Why do some obsolete units remain on the build list, like Macemen, Knights, Trebuchets and Catapults, when you can already build Line Infantry, Grenadiers, Hussars, Cuirassiers and Cannons?
3. A lot of the late techs have no function. I thought you could build hospitals once you researched Arabic Medicine and Medicine. Same thing with Combined Arms and Civil Engineering.
4. Can't the AI civs change civics? I'm sick of being asked to adopt Paganism, esp. when I'm running Merchant Republics, Common Law, etc.

EDIT 5. The human player can win a UHV victory easily as long as they get a lot of OBs fairly quickly esp. Byzantium. I could have had all the conditions by 1550 if I really tried and still had them by 1600. I'd suggest bumping everything back by 100 years you can win at 1600AD.

Anyway here's some screenshots and the saved game stuck at 1700AD.

When I played the Dutch, I saw that the spawn-date isn't correct. The civilclopedia says: 1580, but the actually spawn-date is 1540.

When I played the Dutch, I saw that the spawn-date isn't correct. The civilclopedia says: 1580, but the actually spawn-date is 1540.

There is probably a problem with the translation of the year to specific turns. I will look at it (eventually). It is probably related to the 1760 bug Jessicat reports. Everything is in a game speed XML file and the WB. The numbers from those files need to be in sync with the spawn dates from python.

I know it's a small thing, but the UP of the Venetians is: the power of tade. There must be an "r" between the "'t" and the "a".

Yay, my first RFCE game. First I want to congratulate anyone who has worked on the project, never expected it would make it to the bèta-stage.

So, I started my first game as Cordoba. Noticed some odd things:

- Germany was destroyed within 25 turns: their capitol was destroyed, the didn't have other cities and there isn't an enemy unit near:confused:
- My cottage has a very strange growing pattern: it actually became smaller. However, the next turn it grew to a hamlet.
- Crossbowman are more powerful than Maceman. Available earlier, cheaper to build, stronger because Crossbowman have a free strike, and last but not least, some units have a bonus against melee-units, while less units, if any, have a bonus against archery units. Probably this needs some balancing. I suggest to weaken the crossbowman to 7.
- Islam spreads very slowly. Arabia had only 2 cities with Islam, while I had to build missionaries to convert my own cities.
- The Viking AI is very weak. Cities of size 6 are unhealthy and unhappy. Result: less production, and no expansion.

EDIT: December 27 version

Oh, before I forget: Does anyone know how to make full-screen screenshots? Thanks in advance.

This modmod is fantastic, especially so considering how much hard work has gone into it. It's down right fun.

Anyways a bug:
I was playing as the French recently, and I captured Frankfurt. Problem is, upon capture, the city named changed to Mayence, the French name for Mainz. Looks like there might be a few problems between the French and German city maps.

It's creepy that you find this modmod fun already, they haven't released even a beta version of this, still too many bugs and crashes... :D

Well, okay, if I included the fact that this modmod crashed a lot, it wouldn't be nearly so fun. But I've gotten a lot of fun out of it otherwise, and since this will be getting much more stable, I ignore the instability (so long as this modmod doesn't descend into civil war...)

Playing as Venice on Monarch. It's a fun game, I like the use of mud to make Venice almost impregnable and I'm a big fan of the Venetians historically. I'm just wondering what sort of third objective you all are planning to make it less than a cakewalk.

I achieved my two objectives in a short amount of time, even after taking a detour to conquer Rome for the gold income. Tirana apparently counted as a city in mainland Greece and although I got war declared on me by Arabia and Cordoba upon founding Nicosia in Cyprus, it seemed like I didn't need to hold those Crete/Greece/Cyprus cities, merely have them and the Dalmatian coast all at once. If the Byzantines declared war I would have been slightly screwed, but they didn't.

Rhodes was protected only by two archers and I took it easily... should it be a tougher nut to crack?

Also, the Galleas is a replacement for the Cogge, but requires a later tech and does not seem to be clearly superior save for the bombard ability. Is this intended?

Also, a question about place names... are they in Venetian or Italian for Venice?

Also, a question about place names... are they in Venetian or Italian for Venice?

Is there much difference? Anyway, that's Onedreamer's baby. I'm sure he'll explain it.

As far as Venice goes. The first two UHV conditions are easy if you do it early. I'd favour tightening up the timeline of those as I suggested in the report on my Genoa game. The third will be related to luxury goods, colonies, wealth (or a combo of these). The addition of colonial projects and more wonders will make all the civs more interesting and hopefully, more of a challenge.:)

There's not a whole lot of difference, but I was curious.

Venetian is possibly the most distinct of the "dialects" of Italian, and is now officially recognised by the Veneto government. Italy's linguistic situation is similar to Spain's, except with more variety (the Islamic invasion and reconquista reduced the linguistic variety in the southern two thirds of Spain and Portugal) and far less political contentiousness.

Plus Venetian was the prestige language in the Republic, a lingua franca in the Mediterranean (Galileo wrote in it sometimes), but Tuscan sort of won as a literary language and became the basis for "standard" Italian. I think that was Dante's doing.

sez wiki:

"According to Ethnologue, Venetian and Italian belong to different sub-branches of the Italo-Western branch: Venetian is a member of the Gallo-Iberian group, which also includes Catalan, Spanish, Portuguese and French, among others; whereas Italian is a member of the Italo-Dalmatian group. More precisely, Venetian belongs to the Gallo-Romance sub-branch of Gallo-Iberian, which includes French but not Catalan and Spanish. In that classification, therefore, Venetian is more closely related to French, Catalan and Spanish than to Italian."

It has a /θ/ like Castillian, and they call streets "calle" rather than "via" which weirded me out when I was there.

I did some more investigation and no they aren't in Venetian. Venice is Venesia not Venezia. Oh well!

Playing as Venice on Monarch. It's a fun game, I like the use of mud to make Venice almost impregnable and I'm a big fan of the Venetians historically. I'm just wondering what sort of third objective you all are planning to make it less than a cakewalk.

I achieved my two objectives in a short amount of time, even after taking a detour to conquer Rome for the gold income. Tirana apparently counted as a city in mainland Greece and although I got war declared on me by Arabia and Cordoba upon founding Nicosia in Cyprus, it seemed like I didn't need to hold those Crete/Greece/Cyprus cities, merely have them and the Dalmatian coast all at once. If the Byzantines declared war I would have been slightly screwed, but they didn't.

Rhodes was protected only by two archers and I took it easily... should it be a tougher nut to crack?

Also, the Galleas is a replacement for the Cogge, but requires a later tech and does not seem to be clearly superior save for the bombard ability. Is this intended?

Thanks for the feedback. I'll look into the UHV territory condition to make sure it's as described.

As you note, the Galleas does currently come later than the Cogge, but is also much stronger. Cogge is move 5, strength 3. Galleas is move 4, strength 5. Although slower, this gives Venice a decisive edge in naval warfare for quite some time.

Thanks for the feedback. I'll look into the UHV territory condition to make sure it's as described.

As you note, the Galleas does currently come later than the Cogge, but is also much stronger. Cogge is move 5, strength 3. Galleas is move 4, strength 5. Although slower, this gives Venice a decisive edge in naval warfare for quite some time.

Arwon is correct. Once you've captured those territories and held them past the required date they become irrelevant. Exactly the same with the Norse UHV conditions and the Genoa ones too, as I described in my report. Have you seen my post (518) and the suggestions I've made?:)

EDIT
Just been playing as the Kievan Rus and two questions have arisen.

1. The first UHV condition requires you to control the Black Sea coast east of the Carpatian Mts., which I believe I do. (see screenshot) But in 1502 it says "not accomplished". Is it because I don't control all tiles east of the mts. and I have to capture Bolhorod as well? As there isn't a UHV map to check I can't be sure what's required.
2. When I captured the barb city of Astrakhan it changed to Tchernoyar but later I founded Astrakhan on the correct tile as per the CityName map. I think when st. lucifer put the bay and floodplain on the map, Astrakhan was moved too far north. Geographically, Astrakhan should lie about due east of the Sea of Azov, I believe.
I fooled around with WB just to show how I think it should look, with the mouth of the Volga moved further south.

I believe the Kiev's Carpatian problem is the exact definition of the geographical territory. I used a simple rectangle and since I had to take into the account for Crimea I also included some tiles where Bolhorod is. Some of the UHV regions are a bit ambiguous when it comes to defining exactly which tile is part of which region.

Arwon is correct. Once you've captured those territories and held them past the required date they become irrelevant. Exactly the same with the Norse UHV conditions and the Genoa ones too, as I described in my report. Have you seen my post (518) and the suggestions I've made?:)

EDIT
Just been playing as the Kievan Rus and two questions have arisen.

1. The first UHV condition requires you to control the Black Sea coast east of the Carpatian Mts., which I believe I do. (see screenshot) But in 1502 it says "not accomplished". Is it because I don't control all tiles east of the mts. and I have to capture Bolhorod as well? As there isn't a UHV map to check I can't be sure what's required.
2. When I captured the barb city of Astrakhan it changed to Tchernoyar but later I founded Astrakhan on the correct tile as per the CityName map. I think when st. lucifer put the bay and floodplain on the map, Astrakhan was moved too far north. Geographically, Astrakhan should lie about due east of the Sea of Azov, I believe.
I fooled around with WB just to show how I think it should look, with the mouth of the Volga moved further south.

Ok, I'll move the Volga delta and tip of the Caspian further south. Thanks for pointing it out.

If we do move Astrakhan further south, does Kazan need to be moved also? Or do we need to have the Mongols appear in both places to prevent them from crushing Kiev and leaving Moscow basically untouched?


Also, I've noticed that the Mongol invasion pendulum has swung back from impossible to minor. :) Some sort of middle ground is probably in order.

Ok, I'll move the Volga delta and tip of the Caspian further south. Thanks for pointing it out.

If we do move Astrakhan further south, does Kazan need to be moved also? Or do we need to have the Mongols appear in both places to prevent them from crushing Kiev and leaving Moscow basically untouched?


Also, I've noticed that the Mongol invasion pendulum has swung back from impossible to minor. :) Some sort of middle ground is probably in order.

OK. Thanks. Actually I think leaving Kazan where it is and having the Mongols appear in both places is a much better idea. In that last game as Kiev I lost 3 of my ten cities and had to churn out pikemen for about 20 turns to survive as they all attacked me and left Moscow completely untouched.

Perhaps the only viable tactic vs Keshiks to get the Grain UHV (is debatable?) is Settler spam for 5 cities (+Kharkiv which renames unknown why to Kremenchursk when flipping) in the sites to get them till 1050-1100, then Walls+Castles and then Pikes and Crossbows, I will experiment on it and post results soon.

Oh, and Happy new Year to all!

Some responses to some comments.

1) We have Germany starting off too weak I think. The problem is that it can't turn into a superpower early on, but needs to remain viable for a long period of time.
2) Units definitely need some balancing. I actually have a grand master plan for this, so you can look forward to some improvements coming later.
3) I think all territory UHVs are currently "Do you control X in a particular year", which no allowance for reaching that point earlier and no caring if you lose that territory later. At least it's consistent this way -- though some of the descriptions may not be. It's also more efficient for the mod this way -- the code only has to run victory checks on one turn, instead of every turn.
4) I agree Mongols should threaten Moscow from a separate spawn point. They are most effective only in large stacks though, so this will raise the number again. Yay.
5) Venice, Genoa, Cordoba (from my experience) all seem to have pretty lax time-scales right now with plenty of time to accomplish goals. I guess it would be good to tighten these up, if that makes any sense historically. Ideally someone could update the wiki with suggested new dates (Add in new suggestions in bold for now, when we integrate into code we'll reset the text to normal).
6) Here are the rest of the territory-based UHVs. We'll release these with the next update, but I'm not sure when that will be.

Some responses to some comments.

1) We have Germany starting off too weak I think. The problem is that it can't turn into a superpower early on, but needs to remain viable for a long period of time.
2) Units definitely need some balancing. I actually have a grand master plan for this, so you can look forward to some improvements coming later.
3) I think all territory UHVs are currently "Do you control X in a particular year", which no allowance for reaching that point earlier and no caring if you lose that territory later. At least it's consistent this way -- though some of the descriptions may not be. It's also more efficient for the mod this way -- the code only has to run victory checks on one turn, instead of every turn.
4) I agree Mongols should threaten Moscow from a separate spawn point. They are most effective only in large stacks though, so this will raise the number again. Yay.
5) Venice, Genoa, Cordoba (from my experience) all seem to have pretty lax time-scales right now with plenty of time to accomplish goals. I guess it would be good to tighten these up, if that makes any sense historically. Ideally someone could update the wiki with suggested new dates (Add in new suggestions in bold for now, when we integrate into code we'll reset the text to normal).
6) Here are the rest of the territory-based UHVs. We'll release these with the next update, but I'm not sure when that will be.

Some suggestions re: your responses

1. In my experience Germany only needs about 3 more units to go with their settlers so they can defend their opening cities. +3 spearmen and +3 missionaries would be enough.
2. Heavy swordsmen and macemen should be 8. Crossbowmen should be 7. Heavy crossbowmen, 9.
3. Territory UHVs are OK but should be stricter (see 5.).
4. Agree. See previous post re. Kazan and Astrakhan.
5. Agree about timescales. I'll make the suggestions on the wiki.
EDIT Suggested revised timescales for most civs now added to the wiki.
6. Crashes not a problem since prosecutor function disabled. Maybe 3Miro will be able to pinpoint the cause now.
7. Can we please add a few more wonders and make the existing ones later, please. Maybe the 3rd. UHVs could be linked to wonders until we get colonies and projects sorted out?

Downloaded the mod and tried out Byzantium, it has progressed alot since I last looked at it. A few things I noticed:
I dont know if it is possible, but Byzantium should start with at least most of Europe known visible (I dont mean activley visible).

A few more independants in Illyria and Italy along with a decent Byzantine force in Italy to show Justinian reconquest. The ramifications were felt for a long time.

The units flipping is really annoying. I dont see why a unit built in COnstantinople would have any reason to side with the Arabs in the 'war of liberation'. Would it be possible to track where the unit was built through promotions and go off of that to see if it would flip? If the unit was built close to where the revolt is occuring, it would make sense for them to have a higher likelihood of flipping.

It might be nice for their to be a city in the space just south of Sinope. It is a large space and most of Anatolia was populated.

The Theodesian Walls should already be built in Constantnople. They were built by Theodosius (early 5th centry) and later reinforced by Anasasius (Late 4th century).

A way of simulating Persia would be nice. It seems a little bland not to be either fighting Persia or having any attacks coming from there. Later on, it might be nice to have some arab attacks coming from there. BEcause there were few border garrisons (Clesurae) near TRebizond and that area, later on Arabs and Seljuks attacked that area alot.

Lastly, Pikemen need to be rethought. They come way to early and are too powerful and are at the height of cavalry dominance.

All in all, good work so far.

Arwon is correct. Once you've captured those territories and held them past the required date they become irrelevant. Exactly the same with the Norse UHV conditions and the Genoa ones too, as I described in my report. Have you seen my post (518) and the suggestions I've made?:)

I didn't even need to hold them, the condition's achievement was triggered in like 1150 when I first built the city in Cyprus.

I didn't even need to hold them, the condition's achievement was triggered in like 1150 when I first built the city in Cyprus.

Ah, yes, I see. I spoke too soon about all UHVs being "in". New maps with the next update will correctly reflect the difference between "in" and "by". Are you objecting to the goal being formulated this way? Do you want this to be a "control in year X" goal?

Good to have you commenting, Ajidica. I've been following your "Armies of the Dark Ages" thread -- some nice looking units. We haven't had anyone really pay attention to the Byzantines for a while. I'll mull over your suggestions.

Nah, I'm not really objecting, just pointing out that it worked this way and not the other way. My thinking, though, is that having them in 1500 might be harder than in 1150? It depends on the Byzantines I suppose. I don't know, I haven't played that far.

A very strange bug: global warming strikes! No idea what that might have caused. December 27 version.

A very strange bug: global warming strikes! No idea what that might have caused. December 27 version.

That's a known bug. I've had it too. Something carried over from RFC I expect.
A couple of questions though.
1. If you're playing as Cordoba how can you be building a Great Bombard? Is Turkey your vassal and you've built the Topkapi Palace?
2. Why does your screenshot look so different? OK, you're showing all resources. I find that distracting. But why has your info bar on the top-right got the turn number and minutes played? Also the type-face is totally different. Check my screenshots (post 351). They don't have any of that.:confused:

That's a known bug. I've had it too. Something carried over from RFC I expect.
A couple of questions though.
1. If you're playing as Cordoba how can you be building a Great Bombard? Is Turkey your vassal and you've built the Topkapi Palace?
2. Why does your screenshot look so different? OK, you're showing all resources. I find that distracting. But why has your info bar on the top-right got the turn number and minutes played? Also the type-face is totally different. Check my screenshots (post 351). They don't have any of that.:confused:

1. True. In fact, I only noticed it after I took the screenshot, it's absolutely fenomenal. That wonder rocks!
2. I forgot to turn that off, sorry for that. Sometimes all that info is distracting, though it can be very useful, because it works as a guide for economic development. It even improved my understanding of stability. And undeveloped tiles are easier to find, as they produce far less than they should. The interface is different because I installed blue marble. That also affects my farms and desert. Time display can be turned on in the options menu -> other.

1. True. In fact, I only noticed it after I took the screenshot, it's absolutely fenomenal. That wonder rocks!
2. I forgot to turn that off, sorry for that. Sometimes all that info is distracting, though it can be very useful, because it works as a guide for economic development. It even improved my understanding of stability. And undeveloped tiles are easier to find, as they produce far less than they should. The interface is different because I installed blue marble. That also affects my farms and desert. Time display can be turned on in the options menu -> other.

Thanks for that. I've always left settings on default. Blue marble looks good. It's compatible
with our mod, I take it? No problems with our terrain etc.? Maybe we should use it.

Downloaded the mod and tried out Byzantium, it has progressed alot since I last looked at it. A few things I noticed:
I dont know if it is possible, but Byzantium should start with at least most of Europe known visible (I dont mean activley visible).

This seems like a reasonable suggestion, although I've never managed to figure out how to reveal only part of the map to one civ without adding/subtracting units through WB. That's conceivably an option, and there's probably a better way of doing it.

What would you suggest revealing? Certainly the Mediterranean; N. Africa, Gaul, and Britain?

A few more independants in Illyria and Italy along with a decent Byzantine force in Italy to show Justinian reconquest. The ramifications were felt for a long time.

We're trying to cut down on the independents, although I believe we still have to re-add Syracuse.

What do people think about the reconquest of Italy suggestion? Is there a way to increase the likelihood that those cities declare independence upon instability?

The units flipping is really annoying. I dont see why a unit built in COnstantinople would have any reason to side with the Arabs in the 'war of liberation'. Would it be possible to track where the unit was built through promotions and go off of that to see if it would flip? If the unit was built close to where the revolt is occuring, it would make sense for them to have a higher likelihood of flipping.

While this idea makes sense from a historical perspective, it doesn't work for gameplay. Most units will be built in a few core cities; if they're immune to flipping, that defeats the whole purpose. It's also an easy exploit for a human player.

It might be nice for their to be a city in the space just south of Sinope. It is a large space and most of Anatolia was populated.

The Theodesian Walls should already be built in Constantnople. They were built by Theodosius (early 5th centry) and later reinforced by Anasasius (Late 4th century).

A way of simulating Persia would be nice. It seems a little bland not to be either fighting Persia or having any attacks coming from there. Later on, it might be nice to have some arab attacks coming from there. BEcause there were few border garrisons (Clesurae) near TRebizond and that area, later on Arabs and Seljuks attacked that area alot.

We'd have no trouble filling the eastern side of the map with Byzantine cities, but chose to reduce the count to those we felt were most important. (We did leave out Trebizond, which belongs on the important list.) While the Byzantine empire should effectively be a superpower at the beginning of the game, it's difficult to reflect both the empire's power and its weaknesses. The more cities the Byzantines hold, the less likely the Bulgarians, Arabs, and Ottomans are to attack them, and the better prepared they become to ward off such attacks. When combined with their strong UP and relative tech advancement, it's difficult to justify strengthening the Byzantine position in any way. While your point about the Theodosian walls is certainly true, giving Byzantine cities that increased defense bonus from the beginning of the game onwards would make early conquest of Byzantine cities by other civs impossible.

The Persian idea is a good one, although the Arabs spawn rather quickly. It does make sense to have barbarian invasions periodically appear in that area.

Lastly, Pikemen need to be rethought. They come way to early and are too powerful and are at the height of cavalry dominance.

Agreed. We'll look at it.

Thanks for the suggestions.

This seems like a reasonable suggestion, although I've never managed to figure out how to reveal only part of the map to one civ without adding/subtracting units through WB. That's conceivably an option, and there's probably a better way of doing it.

What would you suggest revealing? Certainly the Mediterranean; N. Africa, Gaul, and Britain?



There is an option on the top right corner that reads something like: reveal map tiles. IMO a lot of civs should start with a lot of revealed territory, it would help the AI.

Thanks for the response. A way to show the reconquest would be just to give the Byzantines some of the cities and have a bunch of Goths/Lombards spawn. The reconquest of North Africa and parts of Spain isnt needed.

You might want to shift the places of knights and heavy cavalry. Currently they come way to close together (knights with next tech). It may just be me, but I view the classical 'knight' as comming around with the 3rd Crusade at earliest while the 'Heavy Cavalry' seems to represent the Carolingian and early normans.

I realize you dont want to make byzantium a superpower (technicly at this time they ruled all of the Balkans and most of Illyria), maybe some independant or 'native' slav cities could be place there. They would be at peace with the Bulgars.

Finaly, a problem that might be occuring is that since byzantium is relativly powerful, the Arabs dont attack as often (I realize the AI in RFC is more aggressive due to Warmaps) and if they are forced to attack, they might get slaughter due to the few number of cities they have. (I have not yet seen them attack egypt so they only have the levant and maybe an outlying city)Perhaps you could implement 2 features that are in Primordial Stews Rise and Fall of the ROman EMpire mod. The first are the 'homeland fortresses'. In RFRE they add some bonus's and make the city have an obsene defense bonus (around +700%). The defensive bonus should be removed but this way the small civs that in realitly had alot of land or are wanted to stay competative can have a chance. The other part is that 'relative war code' that he created. I dont remember the specifics (all of his stuff is done in python and I have only the barest understanding of python) but for a given civ it looks at a set area (of enemy territory) and determins the relative power in that area. If it is below a given percent IIRC, it removes a counter from a timer. The timer can be set to any number and if the timer hits zero, the nation declaers war. This may only work for RFRE because the only playable nation is the Romans who are on the reciving end of this code. Just and idea.

The files attached are all to the same Franks game between Turns 290 and 300. I can't tell you which because the computer crashed to desktop and when I went to reload it with any of these saves I found 2 problems:

1. They all crashed to desktop upon loading
2. The autosave for turn 300 happened prior to 6pm while the ones for 292 and 296 took place before 6pm on the same day (don't know if that's relevant at all...)

Just letting you guys know in the hopes you find something useful and if you can debug any of the saves, let me know. Thanks.

Some new observations:

- Road movement is 2 in the entire game. On a map like Europe, that's too low (as there's not much sea around), so I suggest increasing road movement to 3 with the discovery of Professional Army.
- Not that important, but on city conquest, the pop-up says: The Poland has conquered .....
- Venezia might be a bit overpowered. They are always tech leader, even having only one city. The Kievan Rus and Poland are also quite strong.
- Just a small question, but why is gold trading only enabled after Free Market? World map trading is nearly impossible, as getting truly fair tech trades. Banking, or possibly Guilds would be better IMO.
- Byzantium starts without an expansion civic.
- There are many crashes, but I doubt these are caused by programming failures. Especially moving to another side of the map by clicking on the minimap causes some crashes, but that might be related to lack of memory as well.
- The Turks can't expand. In both games they turtled having 3 cities, and any other city founded is razed by Mongols / barbarians. This makes the last Hungarian UHV too easy. Neither does Austria, although that might be because Hungary was controlled by me.
-The third might be too easy, the first could be too hard. In 1350 AD, Arabia, Poland, Kievan Rus and Moscow all have somewhere around 7 to 9 percent of the world map. That's as much as Austria, Hungary core (see attachment) and Greece. Don't know if I'm going to make it... because it requires lots of war. Those grassland plains really beg to be cottaged, and it really hurts to find out that I have to build farms (that give +1 production), to get enough production to build an army. Any help to win is appreciated of course.
- Please replace Cyrus by another leader, doesn't matter his name. Bulgaria is very likely to conquer any barbarian or independent city in Russia, leading to their collapse (overexpansion). I'd rather see Moscow having his attitudes, creating a truly strong Russia. (EDIT) Cyrus is also responsible for a Persian Seoul, to clear things up.

The files attached are all to the same Franks game between Turns 290 and 300. I can't tell you which because the computer crashed to desktop and when I went to reload it with any of these saves I found 2 problems:

1. They all crashed to desktop upon loading
2. The autosave for turn 300 happened prior to 6pm while the ones for 292 and 296 took place before 6pm on the same day (don't know if that's relevant at all...)

Just letting you guys know in the hopes you find something useful and if you can debug any of the saves, let me know. Thanks.

I tried the first save on the Jan 3 version and it did load just fine (took some time but loaded). Is it possible that your computer doesn't have enough resources to handle the game, after all RFCE is more demanding than any other mod (just because of the sheer size of it).

Some new observations:

- Road movement is 2 in the entire game. On a map like Europe, that's too low (as there's not much sea around), so I suggest increasing road movement to 3 with the discovery of Professional Army.
- Not that important, but on city conquest, the pop-up says: The Poland has conquered .....
- Venezia might be a bit overpowered. They are always tech leader, even having only one city. The Kievan Rus and Poland are also quite strong.
- Just a small question, but why is gold trading only enabled after Free Market? World map trading is nearly impossible, as getting truly fair tech trades. Banking, or possibly Guilds would be better IMO.
- Byzantium starts without an expansion civic.
- There are many crashes, but I doubt these are caused by programming failures. Especially moving to another side of the map by clicking on the minimap causes some crashes, but that might be related to lack of memory as well.
- The Turks can't expand. In both games they turtled having 3 cities, and any other city founded is razed by Mongols / barbarians. This makes the last Hungarian UHV too easy. Neither does Austria, although that might be because Hungary was controlled by me.
-The third might be too easy, the first could be too hard. In 1350 AD, Arabia, Poland, Kievan Rus and Moscow all have somewhere around 7 to 9 percent of the world map. That's as much as Austria, Hungary core (see attachment) and Greece. Don't know if I'm going to make it... because it requires lots of war. Those grassland plains really beg to be cottaged, and it really hurts to find out that I have to build farms (that give +1 production), to get enough production to build an army. Any help to win is appreciated of course.
- Please replace Cyrus by another leader, doesn't matter his name. Bulgaria is very likely to conquer any barbarian or independent city in Russia, leading to their collapse (overexpansion). I'd rather see Moscow having his attitudes, creating a truly strong Russia. (EDIT) Cyrus is also responsible for a Persian Seoul, to clear things up.

- I agree with the road movement. 2 is not enough.
- Gold trade should be available earlier, probably even before Banking.
- Byzantium probably needs an Expansion civic to boost their stability in the beginning.
- Turkey should be more aggressive.
- Bulgaria should not go all the way to Moscow in clearing the Indies, but should be strong. Check the territory controlled by Simeon. Leader personalities are on the to-do list, they require a lot of XML coding, any volunteers. We have to work specifically on the "new" leaders making sure that "personalities" match the real leader's achievements.

- I agree with the road movement. 2 is not enough.
- Gold trade should be available earlier, probably even before Banking.
- Byzantium probably needs an Expansion civic to boost their stability in the beginning.
- Turkey should be more aggressive.
- Bulgaria should not go all the way to Moscow in clearing the Indies, but should be strong. Check the territory controlled by Simeon. Leader personalities are on the to-do list, they require a lot of XML coding, any volunteers. We have to work specifically on the "new" leaders making sure that "personalities" match the real leader's achievements.

We've got two techs that increase worker speed. We could easily repurpose one of those to road movement, which makes sense - and given the size of the map (and the fact that most of it's land), we might even consider going up to 4, as we don't have railroads or anything like them.

We might also consider a civ2-style bonus for river movement, although I imagine that would be complicated to implement.

Agreed on gold trade. Guilds?

Turkey will likely be more aggressive if we start them with a larger army. They're also more likely to be aggressive after we return stability to its previous level, which will result in the Byzantines and Arabs losing more cities to revolt, making them less intimidating to the AI.

- Bulgaria should not go all the way to Moscow in clearing the Indies, but should be strong. Check the territory controlled by Simeon. Leader personalities are on the to-do list, they require a lot of XML coding, any volunteers. We have to work specifically on the "new" leaders making sure that "personalities" match the real leader's achievements.

I agree that Bulgaria has to be strong. The save I provided has a weaker Bulgaria than I had in an older save; that Bulgaria controls the Balkans, all the way to the Adriatic coast, parts of a collapsed Kiev and some cities north of Russia. By far the highest AI score, until they collapsed.

Instead of increasing road movement to 4, why not having late units that have 2 movement, 3 for cavalry? As they don't have to carry have iron defense, they could move much faster than for example pikemen can. Also, defending cities with 4 road movement is quite easy, weakening the effect of AI wars, which were common in Europe.

Movement:Instead of road movement suddenly increasing it to 4, we could get it at 2 at start, and increase it according to techs till 5. If we are to implement river movement, a solution could be tripling the movement at BOTH left-right tiles adjacent to the river.
Two issues from French game:
1) (small fix) When it comes to researching Monasticism, it is shown as
Monasticsm in top of screen.
2) Most important than the first, regarding mercenaries. In my French game, when Burgundy collapsed (yes you have every right to mock me that I didn't wipe them out till 950 AD:mad:) I noticed that the mercenaries which the Burgundians had rented to deter themselves from joining my mighty empire:D remained at revolted-indy cities, and NOT as mercenaries, but as common soldiers!!! My suggestion: Remove all mercenaries when an empire falls in civil war.
Nevertheless, I am doing kinda well, all I want is a war against Genoans (Nizza), another against Spanish (in case they built Pamplona), and 2-3 wonders in Paris. Helpful too is that I have no state religion (trade with Cordoba-Arab).
Saved game attached.

This mod starts after the barbarian invasions in the Roman Empire, but the barbarians didn't razed all the cities. Wouldn't it be better to place a couple of Roman Cities on the map as Indipendents that would flip to upcoming nations similar to the French, German and Spain spawn in RFC. This way, new civs would start with a couple of cities and less underground code penalties could be given to old civs.

As for the Dutch. They were a nation that declared independence. They didn't found new cities. I think they should start with a city (or cities) that has been build by the Independents, Germans, Burgundians or Spain. Again, they don't have to start from scratch and need less new civ bonuses. I think the same should be done for Venezia and Genoa.

This could be the starting situation with all the civs that we don't have as independents. Maybe Londinium should be added.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b5/Eastrome480AD.JPG/800px-Eastrome480AD.JPG

where's the download for this ?

where's the download for this ?

The download for RFC Europe, you mean? Or this map? Where did you find that link?
If you mean the latest test version of this mod, see RFC Europe Files thread, post 2. for the Jan.3 download.:)

thanks i'll have a look

(EDIT) Cyrus is also responsible for a Persian Seoul, to clear things up.

That's got nothing to do with the leader. There is no "likely to conquer Barbarian cities" tag in the XML.

Managed a Dutch start! Seems the problem is solved. Got the first UHV, going for the second (Apprenticeship is the only choice) Some observations though:
1) Worldbuildering by spawn, there are two cities that could spawn to me: Charleroi and Munster, with the first one most obvious. Charleroi remained French, but Munster flips!!! (the opposite seems kinda more sensible)
2) The Dutch spawn date is said to be 1580, I spawned at 1540. What is right?
3) For a purely unknown reason, when barbarians capture the Kievan cities, the major part of the reconquista is taken over by...Bulgaria!!! Something must be done because Simeon seems to have fallen in love with that area (maybe reduce Bulgarian stability for keeping cities in that area, or, keeping it simple, make barbarians razing every city they capture)
4) Swedish had a very low score when I met them (150:eek:). Bug??? Mod-related or what? Or are they so uncivilized (no starting techs???).
5) Another bug, which is a strange screen occuring when opening the trade techs window in foreign advisor (see screenshot)

The screen looks like a python error (which might explain the Swedish lacking techs). Can you confirm that Sweden has no techs? Can you post the PythonErr file in My Games\Beyond the Sword\Logs?

There is a problem with Bulgaria going too much against Kiev and that area and not enough against the Byzantines. I will see what can be done about it.

1) Pythonerr file posted
2) Yup, Swedes start with no techs (see screenshot)

^

That Swedish city should be called Sundsvall instead of Sundisvall.

1) Pythonerr file posted
2) Yup, Swedes start with no techs (see screenshot)

If Sweden has no starting tech, then it is definitely a Python bug. The problem is that you probably played another game before posting the pythonErr file. It has to be posted right after a bug is observed, otherwise the new game that you played erased the file (it is currently showing no errors).

Without it it would be difficult to find the problem, I will try to initiate a late start myself to see if I can find the problem.

The problem always happens in my latest games.

Another pythonerr log.

3) For a purely unknown reason, when barbarians capture the Kievan cities, the major part of the reconquista is taken over by...Bulgaria!!! Something must be done because Simeon seems to have fallen in love with that area (maybe reduce Bulgarian stability for keeping cities in that area, or, keeping it simple, make barbarians razing every city they capture)

Noticed and reported this too, it's really annoying. Is it true that it really has nothing to do with Cyrus? Next game I'll try to replace him with someone else.

EDIT: haven't seen new page, so useless post.

Noticed and reported this too, it's really annoying. Is it true that it really has nothing to do with Cyrus? Next game I'll try to replace him with someone else.


Maybe I'm wrong but I don't think the leaderheads have any traits unlike CFC or Vanilla. Aren't they just placeholders? Simeon is not Cyrus or any other artwork you substitute it with. AFAIK.

I think the Genova civ should start one tile to the east, that way, not only does it free up the Iron resource for mining, it also encompasses the Honey and the Apple resources to the east instead of the mountains to the west.

I think the Genova civ should start one tile to the east, that way, not only does it free up the Iron resource for mining, it also encompasses the Honey and the Apple resources to the east instead of the mountains to the west.

I don't think so. Genova is on the right tile. But you're right on that free up that iron, but I think the iron must be placed one tile to the east instead of the city itself. And if you want your capital one tile east of the original spot, you can move your settler.

That would waste a turn tho :P. But if you move it east not only do you get more hammers from Iron, you also remove those mountains to the west and get 2 more resources to the east.

That would waste a turn tho :P. But if you move it east not only do you get more hammers from Iron, you also remove those mountains to the west and get 2 more resources to the east.

The iron is ahistorical, so I put it under the city to avoid giving them a massive, undeserved resource boost. The city is in its current location to allow space for Milan and Pisa. Food production isn't great, but a large part of that area should be unproductive mountainous terrain.

The iron is ahistorical, so I put it under the city to avoid giving them a massive, undeserved resource boost. The city is in its current location to allow space for Milan and Pisa. Food production isn't great, but a large part of that area should be unproductive mountainous terrain.

Searching in the web, found that southwest Sardinia contains a good amount of iron ore. Why don't we move it there? This way, we add geographical accuracy and we will force the AI to colonize while Genoa is still viable as a civ.

Just played (most of) a game as France and a game as Burgundy and then Austria. It didn't crash once and seemed to be going a lot faster. A few notes:

-Venice seems very overpowered at spawn.
-The "big civs" (France, Byzantium and Arabia principally) always tech lagged. Often significantly to the point of being a little ridiculous. The AI was also extremely reluctant to trade techs (at least with me). Most would sooner capitulate than give up a tech.
-I concur with earlier posters that there needs to be some sort of increase in road movement and unit speed, especially later on. While slowly moving armies is perhaps somewhat historically accurate, it kills the gameplay.
-I also had some trouble "pointing and going" with my stacks that included musketeers, I could either move the stack one tile at a time or split it out into their respective unit types and move them that way, which is usually fine, except artillery always seem to chose a different route.
-Both the musketeer and the tercio seem kinda lame for a UU, especially given there isn't something like the archery range to boost them up. Maybe start them both with pinch?
-I noticed a Swedish ship with a 25% bonus vs. mounted units.
-Remove or change the bonus against tanks to something else? Maybe lower the threshold for the [thing that lets spies use enemy roads].
-I've always hated the term "Swiss Pikeman", eg, a Frankish Swiss Pikeman. When they're a mercenary, a Frankish Celtic Swiss Pikeman, sounds too much. Would it be difficult to rename that unit as a Halbedier? (or something).
-Dunkirk should be on the French and Burgundian maps as Dunkerque (it was founded by Frankia as Dunkerke). Dubrovnik should be Ragusa when Austria has it. I know there was some discussion about a leaving out the distant cities when captured (eg no more Micklegards or Leghorns), but I think that Londres should be on the French map.
-The 1st French UHV should not include Nice, both for game play (much too close to Genoa), and historically Nice has gone back and forth, and during the period we're concerned with (1500 and before), it was mostly Italian.

-The "big civs" (France, Byzantium and Arabia principally) always tech lagged. Often significantly to the point of being a little ridiculous. The AI was also extremely reluctant to trade techs (at least with me). Most would sooner capitulate than give up a tech.


I'd go even further than that. Overexpansion shouldn't affect tech rates as much as in RFC. In RFC, 8 cities cover China, while in RFCE, 12 cities (something close to that) cover Spain. Controlling Iberia, or being Arabia or Turkey or Byzantium means inevitably a slower tech rate. So I suggest lowering the research penalty (to let's say 5% per city, it was 10% I believe), and increasing the amount of cities needed for a penalty. And please, tone down Venice, they enter the Renaissance (Astronomy, Printing Press) in the 12th century already.

Hello folks, been a long time since I posted (and dont think ever in this part of the RFC forums) but I got RFCE a few weeks back and have been playing it a fair bit.

I've never played a game to the final conclusion but as near as damnit (I was too eager to test all the civs)

Im patched to the current version now and have some observations based largely on what Civmademepoor posted.

Very few crashes and those I did experience weren't always Civ IV related (damn Vista's software updating exuberance), about as stable as standard RFC I would say.

I agree that the older factions have a nasty drop off in tech. I noticed it worst as The Arabs, The Byzants, The French and The Burgundian's. Similar to Civmademepoor above.

With large stacks I couldnt pre map out routes. it simply wouldn't let me que moves for further than 1 turn. I could if I moved the units individually. This wasnt always the case however and I noticed it more in larger stacks in the mid to later period of the game.

The Swedes currently spawn with no techs.

AI factions are more reluctant than ever to trade tachs and on the rare occasion they do they are wanting a lot in return. This includes voluntary vassel states that are friendly and have no negative modifiers.

Protestant religion sometimes spawns in far away lands (had it in Moscow once) and spreads oddly. Most occasions its fairly accurate I suppose so its not really a gripe or issue just an observation.

Now I suppose some unasked for comments about content.

Spain could have a 3rd UHV based on settlement/conquering parts of North Africa. Dutch could have a Protestant Religion based UHV.

Scotland...why is it not there? Ok Edinburgh is an independent city but your talking about the country who's King united England, Scotland and Wales and who's parliament created GB. Not to mention the input into the rise of the East India Corporation and various...I wont spell it out the UK only exists because of Scotland. So um add us instead of England. We are far more important. Poland got in ok?! What? ;)

yeah yeah im kidding

In every joke there is a base of truth.

@civmademepoor: Just fixed first two problems of city naming (Dunkerque and Ragusa), see last page of Files thread.

Some notes about the new independent states:

- Their colors are the same as the old independent states. Very confusing, because there are no visible borders between the states.
- These new independent states seem to be broken. Without any fight or going trough their lands, I'm already over 50 turns at war with one of the independent states. Not very sure about this though, it's only a small observation.

Back to my current game. It's now 1300 AD (I'm Bulgaria), and no less than 12countries are solid / very solid. Anyone else is at least shaky, except for Burgundy, which is always rather unstable in my games. Only Kiev and Byzantium (their cities were so tasty:p) have collapsed, due to barbarian pressure. Moscow is safe I hope, as they are my vassal.

Thanks for your feedback.

Independents:
RFC purposefully (I think) has independents all the same color so you think of them less as belonging to a coherent empire. I agree it's sort of a pain not to know which independents you are at war with though. We could easily give them distinct colors if people prefer it. We'll have to check the auto-peace function with indies and make sure it's working.

Stack movement:
I don't know what's going on here. Maybe one of our new units has some typo in their movement stats which is causing these problems. The musketeer looks okay though. Any other details on this problem would be appreciated.

Sweden techs: Being taken care of. Venice is more powerful now that the indies are weaker, we'll take them down a notch. Other tech rates: I agree that reducing the tech-penalty for empire size is not a bad idea.

Military unit tweaks: I've been working on a pretty major re-balance of the military, so I think I'm going to push through with that and that should address a lot of complaints -- except the movement issue.

-I've always hated the term "Swiss Pikeman", eg, a Frankish Swiss Pikeman. When they're a mercenary, a Frankish Celtic Swiss Pikeman, sounds too much. Would it be difficult to rename that unit as a Halbedier? (or something).


If y'all like this, the correct spelling is halberdier.

In my opinion, we have space for 3 pole-arm units in our mod. I agree that "Swiss Pike" is unwieldy, and somewhat breaks the Civ convention of calling early units by weapon.

1) Early/cheap spear. The spear was a common default weapon for medieval infantry because it was cheap, and required little iron. I'm going to change the default appearance of these guys to look less like Greek hoplites, drop the metal requirement altogether, and make them a weak/cheap unit. I think the best name for this unit is "Spear".

2) High-to-late-medieval spear/pike. Charlemange mod gives us a nice medieval model with a big kite shield and a spear or half-pike. I'm not sure what to call him. Currently I think he's in as "Pike", but he could be "Heavy Spear" (though the whole "heavy" designator is boring) or "Half-pike". Alternatively, I could easily reskin his weapon to make it a "Guisarme" or some other slightly exotic polearm.

3) Early renaissance pike. This is the pike of the "pike and shot" era, popularized by the Swiss. The unit art pictured here is carrying a pike, although they did often carry halberds in addition for close combat. The German unique unit, the landsknecht, is depicted with a halberd, so that weapon "slot" is sort of already full.

So here are a couple suggestions:

Spear -> Half-pike -> Pike (no-reskinning work)
Spear -> Guisarme -> Pike (1 reskin)
Spear -> Pike -> Halberd (1? reskin)
Pitchfork -> Spear -> Pike (this definitely makes the early spear into more of a peasant levy, but art is available for the pitchfork-warrior already).

The download for RFC Europe, you mean? Or this map? Where did you find that link?
If you mean the latest test version of this mod, see RFC Europe Files thread, post 2. for the Jan.3 download.:)

downloaded the jan 15th one and the colony files and overwrote them onto my RaFoC mod , went to upload it and all i get is a load of XML faults while it loads before it CTD :goodjob:

downloaded the jan 15th one and the colony files and overwrote them onto my RaFoC mod , went to upload it and all i get is a load of XML faults while it loads before it CTD :goodjob:

Yes, if you would read the posted information there you would see that the colony/wonder files I included are not finished work. If you just added in the colonies files with the wonders you'll get lots of XML errors. Generally people should only use complete test versions, or they will get errors.

Edit: Also, this really isn't a add-on mod to RFC. It is a stand-alone mod that borrows much of its framework from RFC. You should NOT attempt to install it by merging it into RFC.

yeah ,i've just throughly re read everything while i download the complete lot ,

then what ? do i put the colonies files into the europe files or the origional?

it's all a bit ambiguous to the average gamer

yeah ,i've just throughly re read everything while i download the complete lot ,

then what ? do i put the colonies files into the europe files or the origional?

it's all a bit ambiguous to the average gamer

I think sedna's advising you not to put them anywhere just yet because they are not finished. Right?

If you can wait for the next test version the new wonders and colonies will be included AFAIK.

First of all I am so pleased to see this project thriving. I've been part of the early discussions of an RFC for Europe and I appreciate the massive load of work you guys have accomplished as I have a good idea how difficult it is to get this job done.

I've downloaded the latest test version and started a game with the Franks. So far (around 1000AD), I've encountered no problems.

I haven't yet gone through the different threads so I am not sure if this was brought around before. For a third UHV for the franks I am thinking of initiating a Crusade to the holyland and capturing Jerusalem. I think the early crusaders were mainly franks. The player shouldn't continue controling the city but instead a Jerusalem Kingdom spawns.

Now I have a question regarding the UHV of controlling France's historic lands. Do lands controlled by vassals count toward this objective? If not do you think they should? I mean up to renaissance times kings of France held nominal sovereignty over most of what is now France through vassals including the king of England, and the Duke of Burgundy who were in many instances more powerful and owned larger areas of land.

First of all I am so pleased to see this project thriving. I've been part of the early discussions of an RFC for Europe and I appreciate the massive load of work you guys have accomplished as I have a good idea how difficult it is to get this job done.

I've downloaded the latest test version and started a game with the Franks. So far (around 1000AD), I've encountered no problems.

I haven't yet gone through the different threads so I am not sure if this was brought around before. For a third UHV for the franks I am thinking of initiating a Crusade to the holyland and capturing Jerusalem. I think the early crusaders were mainly franks. The player shouldn't continue controling the city but instead a Jerusalem Kingdom spawns.

Now I have a question regarding the UHV of controlling France's historic lands. Do lands controlled by vassals count toward this objective? If not do you think they should? I mean up to renaissance times kings of France held nominal sovereignty over most of what is now France through vassals including the king of England, and the Duke of Burgundy who were in many instances more powerful and owned larger areas of land.

Good to have you back.

As far as the crusades idea goes - it would be good to have at least one civ have a crusading UHV, and France is as good as any.

As for the crusaders being Franks, that's sort of true and sort of confused. The Arabs referred to all of the crusaders as Franj, meaning Franks; while a majority of the crusaders (I assume we're talking about the first crusade) were Frankish, many of those would have come from modern-day Germany, and there were sizeable contingents from England and some of the stronger German states.

Still, this is a pretty good UHV suggestion, especially if we're trying to spread out the French UHVs.

On vassalage: while France controlled much of its modern territory through vassalage, there aren't really many competitors for it. If this were like EU3, that would be a necessary hedge, but the only civs likely to hold French territory are independents, Burgundy, and possibly Spain, none of which are likely to vassalize. I'd rather see France get there by conquest.

Pursuant to one of my more recent posts on the topic of control of the modern French territory, Genoa will almost certainly hold a slice of modern France (sans Corsica) in this mod, namely Nice.

@st.lucifer

In my game once I researched Vassalage Burgundy asked to become my vassal. I accepted the offer oblivious to the fact that I will need their cities for my UHV. Spain has go a city in the south but this is not really a problem as I can declare on them and take the city.

It may have something to do with playing on the lowest difficulty. I mean it is not quite likely to have Burgundy make such an offer unless their UHVs don't need waging war. I think if they accomplish their first UHV in the early expansion phase they would seek the protection of a powerful neighbor (also to keep him from attacking them himself).

Anyway, I agree with you that it is better be through conquest. It makes things more exciting.

I also got an offer from Burgundy to be my vassal playing as France, it happened pretty early too, as Vassalage was the first tech I researched (unless I'm forgetting some pre-req tech for it, maybe Manorism?). It happened due to barbarians being very close to their only city and it was guarded with only one archer, they did survive tho so I had to stop the game after I realized I need to conquer them later.

On the subject of Jerusalem, I think a Civ spawning after a Christian (or maybe only Catholic?) Civ captures Jerusalem is a good Idea, it could then be possible to code the new Civ as a Vassal for the civ that initally captured Jerusalem, and the master civ will also get some bonus (troops, gold, happiness, something to do with religion or pope). That civ should ofc get instant bonus relations to other Catholic civs, to show how many Catholic countries helped the crusades.

...there were lots of Scots Crusaders too! Plenty in the 5th Crusade for example (12somethingAD?)...not that im saying add Scotland or anything, nope not saying that, Alan fitz Walter High Stewart of Scotland being responsible for the Knights Templars in Scotland isnt all that important and neither is Scotland, no, honest...:D

Anyway that gives you a good option for the English UHV surely? To be part of a crusade say to capture at least Antioch or Acre or something by a certain date.

Two more cities for the French map:

Antwerp=Anvers
Coblenz=Coblence.

Two more cities for the French map:

Antwerp=Anvers
Coblenz=Coblence.

I will address it;)

I've just won my very first RFCEurope game.:D Some final observations:

- Rome should't become someone's vassal.
- Venice likes to give techs to their vassals (usually Genoa and Rome), who also become very advanced.
- Cordoba and Spain seem to be in balance. Neither of them rules Iberia, so they stay fairly small. The result is that Spain has a low tech rate (they are two levels* behind)
- Overall tech rates are too high. In 1500 AD, the advanced civs like Moscow, England, Poland, Germany can research techs like SM, Liberalism and Biology, if they haven't already. Frankia and Cordoba are a level behind.
- I think the problem of the all solid civs is the foreign stability. Even with more enemies than friends (east Europe is orthodox, west Europe is catholic), my stability rating was +40.
- Moscow is, defended by it's master, a powerhouse. 18 cities, 459000 square km land, a solid tech rate, huge cities (over 50 million population). Probably the AI is going to win it's designed UHV goals, as barbarians weren't a real threat, although I haven't given them a single unit.
- Portugal is also rather weak. 2 close cities in Portugal, 1 colony. Vassalized to Spain very early, destimulating it's own development.

That's it I think. Now, should I start playing a really weak civ like Austria, or Venice, to see it's potential?

I've just won my very first RFCEurope game.:D Some final observations:

- Rome should't become someone's vassal.
- Venice likes to give techs to their vassals (usually Genoa and Rome), who also become very advanced.
- Cordoba and Spain seem to be in balance. Neither of them rules Iberia, so they stay fairly small. The result is that Spain has a low tech rate (they are two levels* behind)
- Overall tech rates are too high. In 1500 AD, the advanced civs like Moscow, England, Poland, Germany can research techs like SM, Liberalism and Biology, if they haven't already. Frankia and Cordoba are a level behind.
- I think the problem of the all solid civs is the foreign stability. Even with more enemies than friends (east Europe is orthodox, west Europe is catholic), my stability rating was +40.
- Moscow is, defended by it's master, a powerhouse. 18 cities, 459000 square km land, a solid tech rate, huge cities (over 50 million population). Probably the AI is going to win it's designed UHV goals, as barbarians weren't a real threat, although I haven't given them a single unit.
- Portugal is also rather weak. 2 close cities in Portugal, 1 colony. Vassalized to Spain very early, destimulating it's own development.

That's it I think. Now, should I start playing a really weak civ like Austria, or Venice, to see it's potential?

I agree. Rome shouldn't be anyone's vassal or be conquered so easily. In my game as Venice it offered to be my vassal soon after I conquered Firenze. Later it was conquered by indys then again by me. In the meantime it somehow conquered Tunis??? That can't be right.
In my recent games the tech leaders and top of the scoreboard have been Poland or Moscow. Portugal is always too weak. Its spawn area should take in the whole west coast of Iberia as I suggested in the small fixes thread.

You think Venice is a weak civ.? Its always one of the tech leaders. In my present game as Venice I easily had the first two UHV conditions before 1400 and have been messing about for 200 years without a 3rd. UHV goal. As you can see I control Italy, the Dalmatian coast and part of Greece. I even gave away Athens, Rhodes and Cyprus to gain peace. And I've got 3 vassals too. Nothing to do but tech or try for a score win until 1800 but I'll probably just abandon this as boring.

You think Venice is a weak civ.? Its always one of the tech leaders. In my present game as Venice I easily had the first two UHV conditions before 1400 and have been messing about for 200 years without a 3rd. UHV goal. As you can see I control Italy, the Dalmatian coast and part of Greece. I even gave away Athens, Rhodes and Cyprus to gain peace. And I've got 3 vassals too. Nothing to do but tech or try for a score win until 1800 but I'll probably just abandon this as boring.

Sorry, I actually meant that Venice is the most powerful civ. Now I've seen them resisting the mighty Bulgarian force, I want to know their true power.

Don't know if this has been mentioned, but Byzantium is an absolute pushover. Playing Bulgaria I took Constantinople (defended by only one archer) and all three of their Greek cities with just my starting units. Thessalonica and Athens didn't have any garrison whatsoever.

Thats due most likely to them getting decimated by the plauge and not having enough units in constantinople. Constantinople should start with the Theodesian Walls, built around 365 and later expanded and resrengthened under Anastasius.

An idea to prevent stuff like this from occuring where the AI looses their capital easily, could they get a 'Palace Guard' type unit that is a relativly strong, immobile unit that guards whatever city is the capital?

Another proposal: Since the Bulgarians start their invasion with mounted UU (Konnik?), may we give in the most important Byzantine cities one or two spearmen?

The problem is them loosing Constantinople, not Thrace and Greece. Basicly the Slavs migrated in, refused to pay taxes, and Byzantium lost control over the area. Soon after the Bulgars subdued the Slavs. A failed Byzantine campaign lost almost all of their European holdings bar Italy.

IIRC the Byzantines start with Spearman in Constantinople but the AI would usually disband it since there is no eminent treat.

(the word subdue may not be the most accurate description of Slavic-Bulgar relations, but other than that you are right. Also, Byzantines had many failed campaigns against Bulgaria, not just one.)

There were actualy very few campaigns of note against Bulgaria, there was the one by Nikephoras I where he was ambushed in a pass and killed, the expedition by Irene against the slavs in greece, and the one by Basil II. There were very few MAJOR campaigns against Bulgaria. Most were just cross border raiding or the troops of a singe theme or two. The majority of the major campaigns were directed against the Muslims because the Muslims were a bigger threat, Bulgaria couldnt get past Constantinople. Bulgaria did make many attacks into Byzantium, such as the battle against Krum where Leo and half the army fled and Nikephoras and Bardas Phokas in response to Simeon.

Depends on what you call major campaign. Call it a campaign designed not to just raid the borders and particular towns and fortresses, but a campaign designed to destroy Bulgaria.

Constantine IV in 680 in the very beginning had a failed campaign and there was at least one other attempt in the period of political instability following Khan Tervel's death.Depending on how you count Simeon's campaigns you can get 5 - 6 major ones in a period of less than 350 years. Byzantines lost all of them (Basil won with treason and great diplomacy, not military). I am not sure that the Arabs were a bigger treat on the Byzantine empire.

I consider a major campaign one of the yearly campaigns sent our by the emperor and an expedition into enemy territory. The majority of Byzantine military actions against the bulgars were defensive actions. Basil did more with military strategy and the slow advance, not the lightning campaigns that other emperors had done, it left them too open to being ambushed.
The arabs were a bigger threat for 2 reasons, 1)they could raid anatolia the heartland of the empire and they very nearly took Constantinople once and 2) they had a navy while Bulgaria didnt. this meant that they had the capabilities to take Constantinople. Bulgaria had little siege technology and no navy. That meant they couldnt blockade Constantinople and to assault it they would have to attack the massive land walls that were only breached by the ottomans. (all other attacks that took the city were either by the sea walls or by subterfuge.)

I guess our definition of the hearth land of the Byzantines differs. Bulgaria was a treat to Greece and the Arabs to Anatolia. The only time the Arabs mounted a good siege on Constantinople they were stopped by no other than the Bulgars. The strongest of the Bulgarians, Tzar Simeon, could not capture Constantinople because the Arabs refused to help him with their navy (Khan Tervel could have captured it, he was satisfied with a political marriage that fell apart in later years and Khan Krum had the siege engines build, he died the winter before he could lead the army against Constantinople). History is so intermingled that I don't think we can definitely give an answer to who was the bigger treat (that is the biggest treat before the ottomans).

Hey guys - I just decided to check this out, after spending several days working with RAND. I played one game, as the Franks, to about 1200 CE.

My initial impression was that calling this an RFC variation is a little bit strong. The two main relations to RFC are the staggered civ starts and the UHVs (and I don't really like UHVs). I was able to expand to having a several-city empire quickly without crippling myself. It played more like a normal Civ4 BTS game. This isn't really a bad thing, and if it's what you're aiming for, then fantastic.

The independent cities didn't put up much of a fight. I noticed that they did a lot of worker improvements, but I managed to take Tours, Calais, and Bordeaux with just two city-attacking axemen. Toulouse was a bit tougher.

Since there was a new tech tree, I went with the path of least resistance - what techs looked useful that I could get right away? With that, I found myself with buildings that only let me get Great People as Merchants or Prophets. I had two huge cities, Paris and Calais, that each got two GP, all Merchants. This gave me lots and lots of revenue, which fueled more and more expansion. I never really felt threatened, where RFC or RAND generally have me feel like I'm on a tightrope the entire game.

But the map is huge. RFC and especially RAND are good for having large maps that are playable on older computers. My computer was not doing well even so early in the game.

A couple of quick notes. I played two quick games as France, England and Genoa. France seemed more balanced and Burgundy is holding its own. In the first game (France then England), Spain had taken most of the south of France, in the 2nd Cordoba pretty much dominated Iberia. On both games Germany seemed to be doing better as well. As England, conquering Britain and Ireland was too easy - a few barbs in Wales and a stronger Edinburgh & Dublin might help.

Venice was also tamer, and as the game progressed it started to slip except it was a cultural behemoth. Rome collapsed in my second game (not sure why). Next time I play as Genoa I'll probably be razing Florence, it's far too predisposed to Venice.

Two general things: 1) in the diplomacy screen (where you see everybody and their relationships with each other), the temporary flag colors aren't displaying (eg Germany and Austria are the same, as are Poland and Russia and Genoa and Venice). 2) As Genoa all my mercenaries were showing up in the least convenient city available. Initally this was Ajaccio on Corsica (not the end of the world), but later they went to Caffa in the Crimea (actually, that is the end of the world), and so my UP didn't help me much in my wars with Burgundy.

Just did the long, long wait for the Dutch. Some notes...

1. Sweden spawns with no technologies. Big problem.
2. Protestantism spreads now, but no one converts to it because of the diplomatic pressure of having many Catholic neighbors. Venice had the Holy City in Florence, and more Austrian cities were Protestant than Catholic, but neither had converted. (Protestantism also had some presence in Germany and Burgundy, and of course Sweden was Protestant because they spawn with a missionary, I assume.)
3. Venice and Poland were way, way ahead of everyone else technologically. The "Big Four" were Venice, England, Poland and Bulgaria, but England and Bulgaria had high scores mostly because they had large empires. (Bulgaria had conquered the Kievans.)
4. Portugal was vassalized to Spain and had only built Lisbon and a second city two tiles away. Lagos, south of Lisbon, was controlled by Spain and apparently hadn't flipped (or was founded after Portugal spawned; neither should happen).
5. The Netherlands did not spawn with a Protestant missionary. Although this may be intended, they certainly should spawn with one if we want to encourage anyone at all to convert to Protestantism.
6. The Norse controlled Goteborg, which had not flipped to the Swedes on spawn. This hemmed in Sweden to the point where they would clearly have a rough time of it even if they had started with technologies.
7. The AI must hate attacking independents. The Arabs never penetrated Tunis, nor did the English conquer Dubh Linn (or settle Ireland at all). Barcino (Barcelona) was still independent.

Playing as Venice, reached 1242, to be continued. Doing pretty well, having built Venezia, Parma, and Firenze in mainland Italy, Fiume, Spalato, Durazzo and Corfu in Adriatic Coast, and Bastia in Corsica about some years ago (Genoans hadn't settled there yet?). It was Monarch, believe me :).
Some observations:
1) Vassals: Currently having two of them, Genoa and the Papal States :eek: . Didn't know the Papal State could be a vassal....
2) Papal State, vol.2: When built Durazzo and Corfu, a message appeared, asking me to pass control to the Pope. Kinda strange... (it was like the ''x city wants to return to its rightfully owner''. Logical for most civs, but for pope...)
3) Tech rate (revamped): Yes there is a change, it slowed down as it needed.
4) Other states state: Franks are the only collapsed, after finding themselves losing a war vs a Burgundian-Spanish alliance. Cordobans are the first, followed by Arabs, Byzantines, me, and Kyiv (I will tell you when Keshiks come... :evil: ). Burgundian is unstable as well as Byzantines (btw first time I see Burgundians build Besancon).

The next test version will take care of the Papal Vassal issue. I am not sure about liberating cities, the Pope should not have any culture in any tiles beyond the 5x5 around Rome and no city should request to be liberated to the Pope. I will see what I can do about it (probably not this test version).

I am currently looking into the Swedish spawn problem, it is probably some bug in the Python. It is helpful if I can get the PythonErr file right after the autorun sequence. I am trying to get it myself, but it naturally takes time (couple of hours).

The AI used to attack the Indies all the time. I don't know what changed.

Some independent cities are very unlikely to be conquered. Barcino, north African cities, Naples, Dubh Linh, usually independent for centuries. Also, the mods loads very very slowly. Whereas 25 minutes to load Arabia usually means 10 minutes, in RFCE it means 30 minutes. I've never bothered to load further than Turkey, Sweden must be absolutely disastrous.:eek:

Some notes about the UHVs:
- Some of them aren't really challenging. Even with the RFC timescale in my mind, setlling the Norse UHV areas is a piece of cake. Especially when I once again find out that 1 turn means only 3 years in stead of 10. I've had exactly one tiny moment of tension, when I wanted to reveal all ocean tiles before 1200 AD, and thus had to declare war on Cordoba. I understand that the player should be free to find many ways to get his goal, but now some of them aren't very challenging, on Monarch at least.
- Will the research penalty be (partially) removed in the next version? This keeps me from expanding, despite being very solid. Not that much of an issue, but still.

This week I started the Germans. They must have more units. I started with 5 and a few turns later the Burundians attacked me. I didn't want to start over so I put the 4 Paladins to another place. About 5 turns later they collapsed.
And in almost all my other games the Germans were destroyed in just a few turns.

This week I started the Germans. They must have more units. I started with 5 and a few turns later the Burundians attacked me. I didn't want to start over so I put the 4 Paladins to another place. About 5 turns later they collapsed.
And in almost all my other games the Germans were destroyed in just a few turns.

The units part is undergoing a major update/change, so all starting units would probably change. If Germany starts next to a powerful Burgundy or Franks, then they need good defensive units.

It may be a good idea to make the starting units depending on the power of the immediate neighbors.

It may be a good idea to make the starting units depending on the power of the immediate neighbors.

Do you mean that the rise code would look at neighbor's strength and dynamically adjust according?

BTW: I wanted to say thanks to everyone for the latest round of playtesting reports. Just because we haven't had a chance to respond/reply to each of you individually, don't think we aren't reading and considering your feedback very seriously. There's no way we have time to play enough games ourselves to develop this mod for fun and balance, so we're utterly reliant on you guys for help in this matter.

Do you mean that the rise code would look at neighbor's strength and dynamically adjust according?


Yes that is what I mean. Have a fixed set of units for the spawn and then check on the power of Burgundy and Franks. If they are too powerful, give extra units to Germany even without a war on spawn. Otherwise, it opens the game for Human exploits (like China destroying Mongolia two turns after they spawn).

I found another issue. The East India Company says you get 3 oil and 2 slave resources, but when I built it, I didn't get them.

Two issues (currently testing Bulgarians)
1) When will the respawn thing reincluded?
2) When I captured Odrin and Solun, there was no resistance. Is it a bug???
EDIT: Another issue: While the France UHV area has changed, that change hasn't been passed to the reference file.

I found another issue. The East India Company says you get 3 oil and 2 slave resources, but when I built it, I didn't get them.

This is a bug, you should get the resources. Do you have save game the turn right before you build the project.

Two issues (currently testing Bulgarians)
1) When will the respawn thing reincluded?
2) When I captured Odrin and Solun, there was no resistance. Is it a bug???
EDIT: Another issue: While the France UHV area has changed, that change hasn't been passed to the reference file.

I think respawn is included, just the ods for it are small.

For the no resistance: check the Bulgarian UP.

It's their UP. Also, I've tried to start a game, and since I had some time left (doing my homework, it took 100 minutes to load*), I started as the Swedish. The start was lucky, since some Norse genius found ALL optimal city spots in Sweden. (At least, that's my opinion, I've found them myself when I was playing the Norse). So, a pretty powerful start. No idea where to send my settlers though. The southern coast of Finland is already culturally occupied by Moscow, so probably I'm going to send them to the western coast. Some observations, the first few turns:

- Sweden has only 100 gold at start. Don't know about the other civs (didn't pay attention), but 100 is not enough. I think 800 or 1000 is better, since the first few turns are very expensive. The AI builds lots of units in Sweden, and combined with the war-declaration-army, I controlled an army of no less than 60 units, resulting in -80 gold per turn, -3 on 50%.
- Good job on the tech levels, Sweden is perfectly fine at start. Venice has collapsed, so I can't give any feedback on their tech level.
- The new unit system is okay so far, but Longbowmen seem to be a bit overpowered. Against my Knights, they have 33 strength. They receive 125% city defense (walls and castle) but still. Not that much of a problem, my unit upkeep is way to high:evil:
- Knights can fortify, is that on purpose?
- Flipping cities are quite large, and lack health and happiness (not enough rescourced yet). The Norse could provide them, but the new Swedish empire can't. Again, it's nothing to worry about, just a small observation.

* My PC isn't that excellent, ATI X1600 graphics card, 1 GB RAM, 3.x GHz. It certainly takes less time on a decent computer.

Playing USA on regular RFC takes about 50 minutes to load on my machine from the 600AD start. The Dutch take less than 2 hours on RFCE. It is a long time to wait, but then again the map is large and we do have many civs. Anything less would have made less of an interesting mod. You can make a save on the first turn after spawn, so you don't have to wait every time.

I think one of the Swedish UHVs is to found cities sway from the main spawn area. They need to expand into Denmark, Russia, Germany and Poland (use whatever means necessary).

Starting gold has not been decided for any civ. Any volunteers on checking what reasonable amounts would be?

A bit of info on load times. I tried a stopwatch test on the first 10 civs and these are the results.

Burgundy (est. 0) -under 20sec.
Byzantines (est. 0) -same
Franks (est.0) -same
Arabs (est.5mins) -30secs.
Bulgaria (est.5mins.) -60secs.
Cordoba (est.5mins.) -under 2 mins.
Spain (est.10mins) - about 2 mins.
Norse (est. 10mins.) - 2 mins. 30secs.
Venice (est. 10mins.) -about 7 mins.
Kiev (est. 15 mins.) -about 8mins.

I realize that the next civ. loading times get quite a bit slower but what I've seen in RFCE is very comparable to loading times in RFC. I don't know how much it depends on the machine people are using, Mine's pretty strong but not all that fantastic.
(AMD Athlon Dual Core 2x64bit, 5200 mhz., 3 gigs of RAM, Nvidia GeForce 7600LE graphics card).

Loading time would depend heavily on the CPU and very little on the graphics. My CPU is a bit slower then jesseicats and I can load and play all civs. More accurate loading times would be entered eventually.

BTW the model number of the CPU is 5200, the actual speed in that case is 2.6Ghz.

The load time on my most recent Dutch test was just shy of an hour, if that helps. That was before the Jan. 29 version, but not much seems to have changed.

Played a test game as England.

Iron is only available in Wales and Scotland, which makes it imperative to conquer one of these regions. I decided there should be a little more challenge in getting Wales and a lot more in Scotland, so some barb warriors now spawn in Wales and some barb ax/spear in Scotland.

France did not declare war on me at spawn time, but if they do, defense of Calais is near-impossible. England now gets heavy lancers if someone does declare war on them on spawn. It's still hard to get them across the channel in time to help, but c'est la vie.

I met a bunch of people, who were mostly friendly and willing to trade techs, so I quickly gained half-a-dozen new techs, putting me ahead of the "normal" pace of technological progress I thought should happen.

I had just conquered all of Britain when France declared war on me (~ 1150) and attacked Calais. It was a strong attack, and I had to scramble to meet it. For the next 50+ years we fought. France was more powerful (Burgundy collapsed shortly after the war began), but of course my home island was pretty safe from an AI invasion. Still, I was repulsed from an attack on Paris, and Armored Lancers were a continual threat to Calais, even with walls. There was plenty of good naval action too (both of us with Cogges). Eventually with an amphibious assault I gained a second French city in Caen. They still wouldn't make peace (unless I gave them a city), so I took a break to ponder.

Overall, the warfare was pretty good. Heavy Cavalry are very useful units, but it's worthwhile having a bunch of cheap infantry too. It takes an awful lot of trebuchets to get through a walls+castle city in any reasonable length of time. It's generally kind of hard to take cities, but not impossible since there isn't a super-strong defender. Warfare of course delayed our research, I was just reaching knights when I left.

I was wondering if we should turn off tech brokering. With tech trade enabled, people would be covering the tech tree very quickly no matter how slow we make the research. What do you think?

I would be all for turning off tech brokering. An additional benefit is that it keeps the game mechanics more similar to the latest version of RFC.

Instead of the current system of tech trading, I would propose a far more realistic way of representing tech exchanges. It could be something like ''tech diffusion'' (I think there is a such system in Rise of Mankind). If two civs a) have neighboring borders and b) have signed an Open Borders agreement, there should be a rate (eg 1% per turn) that the one civ can get any technologies that a neighbor has. For example: If the Franks and Burgundian borders reach at 650 AD, the two leaders have signed OB and the Burgundians have Bronze Casting, if the Franks make no attempt to get it by research, they should get it 100 turns after the Burgundians have researched it. If there are two neighbors with Open Borders with that civ, there will be a 2% research bonus for each tech, etc. It would be more realistic than eg Simeon meeting Justinian at the city of Plovdiv, telling him. ''Hey, I've got Chain Mail. Care for giving it to me for Religious Art?"

Any thoughts?

Well, any scenario involving a meeting between Justinian and Simeon is unhistoric since those lived 300 years apart.

There is already the mechanics of techs becoming cheaper as more and more rivals discover them. We could increase that and perhaps include an additional bonus for sharing borders (i.e. Bulgaria would get bigger discount for a tech known by the Byzantines than one known by the Franks, even if Bulgaria has contact and OB with both).

Full tech leaking, such as described by micbic would involve some serious coding.

For the brokering, then I guess whoever gets the next test version should include the line in the WB file (copy it from the latest version of RFC).

Venetia is still the techleader in my game. I saw their techrate is slowed down, but it's still too much.

Venetia is still the techleader in my game. I saw their techrate is slowed down, but it's still too much.

It is their UP. We meant to give them a financial edge, but I guess we gave them a more of a scientific one.

It is Ok for them to be the techleader as long as everyone else is not too far behind.

To all playtester, have you tested the colonies and if they provide resources like they are supposed to. To be honest, I am not sure if I coded it correctly, let me know if there are nay problems (preferably with a savegame couple of turns before building the projects).

It is their UP. We meant to give them a financial edge, but I guess we gave them a more of a scientific one.

It is Ok for them to be the techleader as long as everyone else is not too far behind.

It does make a couple of the UHVs nearly impossible though. In my games I've never seen Cordoba get Scientific Method, Hungary get Free Religion or England get Industrial Revolution first. The Venetian tech rate is still too fast IMO.

It does make a couple of the UHVs nearly impossible though. In my games I've never seen Cordoba get Scientific Method, Hungary get Free Religion or England get Industrial Revolution first. The Venetian tech rate is still too fast IMO.

If the AI cannot achieve an UHV, then I am OK with that. I don't think the AI can do the Roman or German control in RFC and definitely not the Mongolian for the short time given. India is also impossible for the AI.

We should make sure UHVs are possible for the Human player, however, Venetian UP may have to be reconsidered (or the effect of the Republic civic in general). Venetians should be more rich then scientifically advanced.

How about a power that keeps changing beakers into gold?

Another word about load times Tried the Dutch yesterday. Took 1 hr. 20 mins. to load. Not too bad. Sort of like America in RFC.

I played two (long) games, with england and genoa. here are some things I noticed that could be changed:

- genoa's starting possition on a Iron resource, better move the iron one to the right (east).
- Milan got razed by someone so I did not have a milan at start, missing milan (waiting for settler, building building, gaining pop) negetively influenced my ecconomy. also I could settle on corsica right away. I don't know whether it's possible to change this, but it would be better.

- englands starting possition, the ai settles london 1 tile above the thames, while in fact the thames runs trought London. the map is correct but the starting possition should be one down (south)
- I recieved Calais at spawn, but it's culture was no match to the cultur of Paris, maybe if u recieved a theather when it flips (or something like that)
it could have some kind of culture war.
- this was VERY strange, byzantium had 4 vassals:
>turkey, they didn't stand a chance vs bizantium
>burgundy, which was almost dead (by the franks)
>portugal, dunno why. (how far away can you be from byzatium???)
>Papal States :s, I know they are still working on them, but able to be a vassal is something that can't be removed fast enought. (I wich I know how)
also by being a vassal it was at war with almost every catholic nation, which isn't very historicly correct either.
- Dublin (independent) became orthodox, I can say that exept for Iseland u can be further away from constantinople than that. (it may have something to do with the Norse being orthodox). I really don't know whether this is resolvable or this is a flaw in Civ.

edit: forgotten something

printing press was first discovered by france (before 1400), it founded the protestant holy city, which was the only protestant city for the rest of my game. becouse it was founded before 1400 AD (very historecry inaccurate) the dutch didn't even spawn yet. while the dutch were a inportant nation becouse of their spreading of the protestant religion (with the printing press)

Just666, are you using the latest version of the game. The Pope should not be anyone's Vassal, it should have been fixed. Can you post a savegame.

Also, I moved London's capitol (i.e. starting spot) one square south in... probably the Jan 31st version, so I do think Just666 is probably using an old version. Still, a lot of the report is helpful, so thanks anyway.

In particular, I'm not concerned if Ireland becomes orthodox (we don't want perfectly deterministic religions). I am concerned that protestantism doesn't do nearly enough. I think we will probably implement something like "Protestantism in RFC" (link here) (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=6337823&postcount=1) in order to more accurately represent the disruptive impact this should have.

Also, I moved London's capitol (i.e. starting spot) one square south in... probably the Jan 31st version, so I do think Just666 is probably using an old version. Still, a lot of the report is helpful, so thanks anyway.

In particular, I'm not concerned if Ireland becomes orthodox (we don't want perfectly deterministic religions). I am concerned that protestantism doesn't do nearly enough. I think we will probably implement something like "Protestantism in RFC" (link here) (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=6337823&postcount=1) in order to more accurately represent the disruptive impact this should have.

One of the balancing knobs that I have not yet exposed to pythons is about the spread of religions. The probability that a religion is spreads in a city is modified by the type of religion and the city owner. Orthodoxy spreads fast in Bulgaria and the Russias, Islam in the Arabs and Turkey, Catholicism in Spain and so on. We could increase the Protestant spread rate (it is high for Sweden, Netherlands and England, but we could make it even higher). Also we could implement in python that as soon as Protestantism is founded, it spreads to many cities (as opposed to just the Holy City).

I tought I had the latest version becouse i downloaded it a week ago, but didn't know it updated so fast.

Unfortunatly i don't have a save-game becouse my research sucked and i couldn't get a city in france before 1500, so I didn't even bother to save...

I hope with the new modefication I can hold on to Calais next time :)

One of the balancing knobs that I have not yet exposed to pythons is about the spread of religions. The probability that a religion is spreads in a city is modified by the type of religion and the city owner. Orthodoxy spreads fast in Bulgaria and the Russias, Islam in the Arabs and Turkey, Catholicism in Spain and so on. We could increase the Protestant spread rate (it is high for Sweden, Netherlands and England, but we could make it even higher). Also we could implement in python that as soon as Protestantism is founded, it spreads to many cities (as opposed to just the Holy City).

Sounds like we'll need Protestantism sorted out as well as the Papal States before we can think about a beta version. And Judaism as well. Another big priority for that is completing the UHV conditions. I think we can fill the empty slots with "build 2 or 3 colonies" for now. Hopefully we can later fine-tune the UHVs once we've had more play-testing of the beta version. The only other major thing is adjusting the starting units and buildings for some civs, I think.

Yeah, sorry about the fast update pace. Well, no, not sorry exactly, it's good we're making progress, it's just that we have a lot of things to work on still.

Calais will be hard-pressed on culture in the current version too. The rational is this:
If France doesn't go to war when England then spawns the UHV goal of Britain+Ireland and 1 city in France in 1600 is pretty easy (for a human). Even if France goes to war later, it's just not that hard to defend a single city against the AI. It makes things more interesting to need to balance culture and defensive buildings. If you want Calais to be a good city (not starved by Paris) there is incentive for the human player to actually carry on a war with France to capture/sack Paris or try to collapse France. This war is highly desirable.

Once again: There are not only the get x colonial projects UHVs to get done, it's also the control x resources (Burgundy, Venice, Kiev). Or there is a plan to replace them? :confused:

I'll help with any aspects of Protestantism if necessary. How does it currently work, in terms of foundation? How does it spread across Europe in theory, and how does it spread in practice?

Once again: There are not only the get x colonial projects UHVs to get done, it's also the control x resources (Burgundy, Venice, Kiev). Or there is a plan to replace them? :confused:

I agree. As I've just posted. Finishing all the UHV conditions for every civ should be our No.1 priority now. Whatever we put in now can be refined in the beta stage but putting something in ASAP should be the next
task for our coding guys IMO.

One of the balancing knobs that I have not yet exposed to pythons is about the spread of religions. The probability that a religion is spreads in a city is modified by the type of religion and the city owner. Orthodoxy spreads fast in Bulgaria and the Russias, Islam in the Arabs and Turkey, Catholicism in Spain and so on. We could increase the Protestant spread rate (it is high for Sweden, Netherlands and England, but we could make it even higher). Also we could implement in python that as soon as Protestantism is founded, it spreads to many cities (as opposed to just the Holy City).

One possibility, too, would be to have Protestantism wipe Catholicism (and Orthodoxy?) out in all of the cities it spreads to at founding. This would make sense historically since Catholicism essentially disappeared in all of the German territories initially before being reintroduced by the sword in Austria, Bavaria, Bohemia, etc. It would also encourage civs, especially the founding civ, to adopt Protestantism. Right now, they might spread Protestantism to all of their cities, but they also have Catholicism in all of their cities and won't convert to Protestantism due to the diplomatic pressure of having many Catholic civs around.

I don't think there was ever a religious conflict between Protestants and Orthodoxes. Mainly because at the time when Protestantism spread, the only Orthodox nation left in Europe was Russia. Protestant - Orthodox relations are really hard to work out since they are too much into the "what if" universe.

Maybe Protestants did replace Catholics in Germany, but not in France. I can see the point of making Protestants replace Catholics, but I don't think it would work out in the game. What if entire Spanish cities convert to Protestantism? Too powerful!

Hey Panopticon, thanks for the offer of help. Your code for reformation is pretty easy to understand, so no questions yet.

It does seem that Protestantism has to replace Catholicism or at least be auto-spread in order to be a viable religion. It's not just Germany after all -- the Anglican church in England is "Protestant" for the purposes of this mod (i.e. not in union with the Pope), and that was another whole-sale conversion with seizure of all the Catholic monasteries etc.

If we taken Panopticon's mod as a model we can make each civ have a number representing its tendency (as an AI) to accept the reformation and switch from Catholicism to Protestantism with the appropriate building changes. Germany, Netherlands, Scandinavia and England would have high probability to accept the switch, Spain would have a small (but non-zero) chance. The human player would have a choice for which side to ally with.

Just finished a game as the Norse, UHV in 1326. Game speed was good, no civs where way up or down on techs, units seemed well balanced. Overall: GREAT! It was pretty easy, but we might want to leave a few easy ones out there. The 2nd UHV was the most difficult by far. England might be better off if Calais were slightly better defended, maybe with the new crossbowmen. I was able to take it with three beserkers in two turns.

A few notes:
1) Manchester turned into Shrewsbury when taken by the Norse.
2) Burgundy always DOW on Frankia shortly after the start of the game. This seems rather counterproductive to both civs, given the raging barbarians and indies in France.
3) The description of the Krak should read: free walls and castles in EVERY conquered city
4) Description of the Round Church should say brothers in the faith, not at faith. Also, I don't like the idea of it being the "Round Church of Preslav", given that it will most likely be in Cordoba or someplace. I know we have Versailles and a few others out there.
5) What's the story with the Netherlands Grenadiers? If kept, might Dutch Grenadiers make more sense for naming?

Also, I'd like to reiterate something I posted a few months ago: Ragnar is a poor choice for a leader, as he likely didn't exist as anything more than a pirate. Canute, especially given our British-heavy UHV goals: I think would be better.

Good points about the Round Church.

For Ragnar, he is not the only poor choice for a leader. Peter I of Russia ruled at the end of our mod, Ivan III would have been a much better choice. The problems is that we don't have graphics for so many leaders and Ragnar and Peter were just there so I used them. We should think about eventually finding and incorporating more graphics and more accurate leaders in general.

I am getting a game crash after I end my turn.

Also, When I loaded the dutch start, all my units appeared on iceland. I used the world builder to move them back to the Dutch start location though.

Edit: Sorry, this was the Jan 31st version.

Good points about the Round Church.

For Ragnar, he is not the only poor choice for a leader. Peter I of Russia ruled at the end of our mod, Ivan III would have been a much better choice. The problems is that we don't have graphics for so many leaders and Ragnar and Peter were just there so I used them. We should think about eventually finding and incorporating more graphics and more accurate leaders in general.

Perhaps you mean Ivan IV (Grozniy or "The Terrible"). I downloaded this LH from the CFC database some time ago. sedna 17 has it in his files now.

Edit. He's also got this one for Harald Hardrada, which might be better than Ragnar.

Yep, wrong number.

1) Manchester turned into Shrewsbury when taken by the Norse.


I'll take care of it, as some other minor fixes

Just to report I'm getting a few crashes on the latest version playing as England and now as Arabia. The last one came up with a notice describing a runtime error. Unfortunately I couldn't get a screensave but this is the saved game. One odd thing I've noticed. The barb spawn in Anatolia has lasted for over 100 years (about 50 turns) in 1170. If this represents the Seljuk invasions which only lasted about 30 years (1040-1070) it is wrong. Even as a barbarian spawn it shouldn't last that long anyway, should it?

2) Burgundy always DOW on Frankia shortly after the start of the game. This seems rather counterproductive to both civs, given the raging barbarians and indies in France.
3) The description of the Krak should read: free walls and castles in EVERY conquered city
5) What's the story with the Netherlands Grenadiers? If kept, might Dutch Grenadiers make more sense for naming?

Glad you enjoyed your game. To respond briefly to your other points:
2) I know. This is a problem, but France and Burgundy basically have to be in conflict later on, it would just help them both a lot to postpone it. Moving Burgundy to a later (post-834) spawn remains a possibility.
3) Duly noted
5) We didn't have a great UU for the Netherlands I feel. The grenadiers come so late that they kind of suck as a UU. Suggestions for a better UU?

Just to report I'm getting a few crashes on the latest version playing as England and now as Arabia. The last one came up with a notice describing a runtime error. Unfortunately I couldn't get a screensave but this is the saved game. One odd thing I've noticed. The barb spawn in Anatolia has lasted for over 100 years (about 50 turns) in 1170. If this represents the Seljuk invasions which only lasted about 30 years (1040-1070) it is wrong. Even as a barbarian spawn it shouldn't last that long anyway, should it?

Okay, I can shorten up the Seljuk invasion. Any comments on if the overall strength seems about right (i.e should I put like the same number of barbs in a shorter time-span)? I seem to see a lot of razed cities in eastern Anatolia these days, maybe that hurts the Ottoman rise.

I noticed that the barb spawn in Scotland kept going on and on too until the area was civilized. Kinda liked that feature.

I think Harald Hardrada, Canute or Sweyn Forkbeard would all be great as the starting leader and the generic leaderheads would be fine. A later one might be Queen Margrethe, maybe based on Victoria, or Mao in drag, if we're doing the leader progression like in RFC.

For Moscow, Ivan III or IV would both be appropriate. Peter might be the last one.

I'm playing a game right now as Germany and I'm having a great time. One thing I noticed is lots of AI-AI wars, especially 2v2 and stuff like that, which is really cool. What I'd like to know tho is what does it mean east bank of the Rhine for the UHV? Does it mean I need to control the tiles of the river that splits Germany and France? Perhaps a UHV-map could be made for territorial UHVs, like the one we have for RFC.
Over-all tho the mod is great, I love the new buildings and units, altho if I'd have to choose one thing that's kinda annoying is that there's only 2 siege units until gunpowder. I mean, there's so many kinds of other units, why only 2 siege? A new siege units could be made, maybe one that's focused on city attacking and less on reducing cultural defense? (A ram of some sort maybe?)

@civmademepoor: I really want to give the Scottish barbarians kilts.

@BurnemDown:

I freely admit I didn't give the siege units as much thought. In particular, I made the catapult upgrade to the trebuchet -- dunno why really. A ram would be a fine addition for a little variety. I do strongly want to limit early siege weapons to only being useful in attacking cities. It's ridiculous to use catapults to attack medieval armies in the field -- never happened.

If you have a pretty recent version you should find a folder in the mod with UHV maps:

RFCEurope/Reference/*_UHV.png

Here's the Germany one.

I'm playing a game right now as Germany and I'm having a great time. One thing I noticed is lots of AI-AI wars, especially 2v2 and stuff like that, which is really cool. What I'd like to know tho is what does it mean east bank of the Rhine for the UHV? Does it mean I need to control the tiles of the river that splits Germany and France? Perhaps a UHV-map could be made for territorial UHVs, like the one we have for RFC.
Over-all tho the mod is great, I love the new buildings and units, altho if I'd have to choose one thing that's kinda annoying is that there's only 2 siege units until gunpowder. I mean, there's so many kinds of other units, why only 2 siege? A new siege units could be made, maybe one that's focused on city attacking and less on reducing cultural defense? (A ram of some sort maybe?)

Open up the Reference folder in RFC Europe and you'll see all the UHV maps as well as the spawn and war maps. For Germany you have to control the area east of the Rhine including where it turns west below Amsterdam. Just east of a line between there and Basle would be right. See snapshots.

Playtesting the English. Unified the British Isles at 1300 AD. Opening moves: Built London, Chester, Bristol and Plymouth, took by Spawn Evoracum and Calais. Scots issue: simply razed Edinburgh, gathered 5 Arbalests, put them in a well defended forest tile, and let the 20-unit axe-spear barb stack attack me. Imagine the result:lol: Irish issue: Underestimated them, they had a Spear-2 Archer defense. After a painful siege, Dubh-Linn fell at 1310 AD. Welsh issue: I used the Warriors to give Archers XP. Resettling: Aberdeen and Argyle in Scotland, Waterport and the city on that SW tile in Ireland. French: Keeping Calais. French are the national majority, so I plan a GA sent to Calais to generate a Great Work. Not afraid of them, as in a Defense Pact with the Spaniards. Ideas: Make some warriors spawn as Cornish (Plymouth area) and some Gallic Swordsmen in Ireland as Celts.

For England, what do y'all think of not having York flip on spawn? Can we choose whether or not it does based on level? E.g. if viceroy yes, if monarch yes if indie, no if Norse, if emperor never? Is that even possible? The model we have based on timespan is Norman conquest, and Durham and York gave (relatively) stiff resistance.

For England, what do y'all think of not having York flip on spawn? Can we choose whether or not it does based on level? E.g. if viceroy yes, if monarch yes if indie, no if Norse, if emperor never? Is that even possible? The model we have based on timespan is Norman conquest, and Durham and York gave (relatively) stiff resistance.

1) I agree that York shouldn't spawn, that would make quite a little more of a challenge the unification of the Isles.
2) Another idea. Put an indie Londinium (500 AD) which will flip as English capital, and have them start at Plymouth, where king Alfred launched his counterattack again the Norse from.

1) More barbs as suggested by micbic are certainly possible.
2) I think York should flip. First, the resistance there was put down in only a few years. Second, spawn zones are the same as resurrection zones, and I think we would want a re-rising England to at least get all of England.
3) It's not possible (without major new code and work) to have spawn areas be difficulty-dependent.
4) Part of the challenge (I think) of the Norse 1st UHV is that if you settle English cities they will flip to England on rise, hurting you. Alternatively you can occupy Scotish/Welsh/Irish cities and deal with barbarians ;). If we shrink the English spawn zone it makes an obvious (and thus boring) place for the Norse to always settle.
5) The idea of giving civs a pre-existing capitol which flips rather than a settler has been floated before. It is an idea with some merit, but some drawbacks. Drawbacks I see: reduces human choice (what if you want an alternate history with London not on the Thames?), the AI may react strangely to having multiple troops and no city for the first 1-2 turns (this is why workers spawn a few turns late BTW), the way we currently have it is the RFC model and any changes we introduce to the basic mechanics should be strongly justified.

We had the "building vs flip" capitols discussion for Damascus. The arguments for a pre-build Damascus were very strong, however, for the reasons described by sedna we left is as begin build on the Arabic first turn.

On the Dutch:

It seems that initially Amsterdam is really sometimes crammed in by Calais, Antwerp and Utrecht. In my last Dutch spawn, I had Utrecht only 2 squares east of my spawn point, as a massive size 23 city (inside the flip zone), with Antwerp 1 West and 2 south.

Maybe tweak the AI settler map to give Amsterdam a little bit more space when the dutch spawn? I really felt compelled to just let Utrecht flip and become my capitol on this one.


Also, the playstyle for the Dutch seems to require colonizing N. Africa and the islands in the Atlantic. While the dutch did do a lot of Colonization, I don't believe any of it was on the islands shown on the RFC Europe map. Maybe if no one else settled cities in the Netherlands and Belgium, I'd feel less compelled to expand in that way.

1) More barbs as suggested by micbic are certainly possible.
2) I think York should flip. First, the resistance there was put down in only a few years. Second, spawn zones are the same as resurrection zones, and I think we would want a re-rising England to at least get all of England.
3) It's not possible (without major new code and work) to have spawn areas be difficulty-dependent.
4) Part of the challenge (I think) of the Norse 1st UHV is that if you settle English cities they will flip to England on rise, hurting you. Alternatively you can occupy Scotish/Welsh/Irish cities and deal with barbarians ;). If we shrink the English spawn zone it makes an obvious (and thus boring) place for the Norse to always settle.
5) The idea of giving civs a pre-existing capitol which flips rather than a settler has been floated before. It is an idea with some merit, but some drawbacks. Drawbacks I see: reduces human choice (what if you want an alternate history with London not on the Thames?), the AI may react strangely to having multiple troops and no city for the first 1-2 turns (this is why workers spawn a few turns late BTW), the way we currently have it is the RFC model and any changes we introduce to the basic mechanics should be strongly justified.

1) Agree
2) Agree
3) Would be a very interesting RFC modcomp, however I think it's better not to include this (yet) in RFCE.
4) Currently it's not too hard, Scotland has 2 strong city spots and London can be the third. I'd rather see this goal become a bit harder, such as control England in 1000 AD (conquer York) or control (have more cities than England) England in 1300 AD. Edinburgh is quite easy to conquer because of the free wins against barbarians. Perhaps RFCE doesn't need this feature.
5) I agree totally.

A word about the Mapa Mundi for the start screen. Good choice though its a bit hard to see. Maybe if it was shifted left a bit to minimize the map border. Even better. Could the start box be near the bottom of the screen instead of the middle?

I'm actually not too happy with the image because it is impossible to read anything (well, I flipped the map so it was recognizable and thus the text is upside-down). If someone can find a better one... It has to be pretty large (1024x1024).

If we keep this one: 1) probably the progress box could be lowered 2) I was going to use some of the margin-space to write the name of the mod, but then I wasn't really sure what to put.

Rhye's and Fall: Europe
500 -1800 AD
?

I'm actually not too happy with the image because it is impossible to read anything (well, I flipped the map so it was recognizable and thus the text is upside-down). If someone can find a better one... It has to be pretty large (1024x1024).

If we keep this one: 1) probably the progress box could be lowered 2) I was going to use some of the margin-space to write the name of the mod, but then I wasn't really sure what to put.

Rhye's and Fall: Europe
500 -1800 AD
?

I like that map. If you could move the box that'd be good. And if you shifted the map left so Ireland was on the left edge and lowered it a bit you might have room for the name across the top. My choice would be:
Rhye's of Europe 500 - 1800AD ( It hasn't fallen yet.:lol:)

EDIT. I've just found another couple of maps that might be possible though the resolution on the first one probably isn't really high enough.

Is Prague supposed to be in Austria's flip zones? I remember it flipped to Austria when I played as Germany, but I just started a game as Austria and it never flipped. Unfortunately I don't have the save or a screen shot since I quit the game 5 turns after I realized it didn't flip.

Playtesting Burgundy, now roughly at 1000 AD.

- Venetia is indeed very advanced at spawn, they are at least 8 techs more advanced than me, and Frankia.
- Maintenance costs are pretty high. Controlling 6 cities, I must run 40% research to earn some cash per turn. Example: Toulouse costs me 4.01 gold per turn (2.02 city distance, a little too much), and 2.70 for number of cities. Of course I've built the -15% building.
- Stability is something to watch out for, I'm already at -13. Civics at -6, economy at -6, foreign at -14. I think that's Burgundy's weakness, as the other civs commonly have a +15 foreign rate. No idea what's causing it though.
- Barbarians have destroyed Kiev and Bulgaria very early, within 15 turns IIRC.
- I've never seen a civ map that beautiful. Southern France is almost as wonderful as in reality. Amazing!:)

I like that map. If you could move the box that'd be good. And if you shifted the map left so Ireland was on the left edge and lowered it a bit you might have room for the name across the top. My choice would be:
Rhye's of Europe 500 - 1800AD ( It hasn't fallen yet.:lol:)

EDIT. I've just found another map that might be possible though the resolution probably isn't really high enough.

Jessiecat the map is awesome. As for the name, I thought we had agreed on Rhye's and Fall of Civilizations: Europe (hence the name I have been using all over the place). It could be changed, if needed.

We could use a briefer version:
RFC Europe 500AD - 1800AD.

I'm currently playing a game as Corduba and I must say the UU is way too strong! 50% withdraw chance is just too much. I took over Spain in less than 5 turns after declaring war, same with Portugal (declared about 3 turns after they spawned). I'm about 1st in tech, except Venezia some times get a tech or two I don't have and I skip some techs I don't need while the catholic civs research them. Other than making sure I get SM which shouldn't be too hard This game is a real breeze. My thoughts: Decrease the withdrawal chances of Corduba's UU to 30-40%, any more and it's over-powered.

I think stability is too high. No one collapses unless I invade them, and everyone has 'U' for solid/very solid.

Jessiecat the map is awesome. As for the name, I thought we had agreed on Rhye's and Fall of Civilizations: Europe (hence the name I have been using all over the place). It could be changed, if needed.

We could use a briefer version:
RFC Europe 500AD - 1800AD.


I don't really disagree. I've always thought the other name is more accurate but the majority don't agree with me. But we're a democracy so RFC Europe it is. Glad you and sedna like the opening map though. You win some, you lose some. Right?:D

I think stability is too high. No one collapses unless I invade them, and everyone has 'U' for solid/very solid.

I can't agree that stability is too high on Monarch for the human player, esp. when you're playing as Burgundy. In my last game I never got better than shaky (-10) then I'm not the greatest civ player either.;)

Poor Foreign stability occurs when you are at war with most civs that you know. Try signing peace and OB.

Stability in general needs a lot of work.

Some comments on a recently loaded game as England:

1) Milan seems to always get razed in new versions. The barbarians invade Italy and destroy Milan. I've seen Genoa with Brescia, Novara and a few other cities, but Milan is never there. This is probably a consequence of so many barb cities, but for some reason no other independent city seems to get razed.

2) The Kievans were devastated by the barbarians in every game I loaded. Then again, maybe that's intended.

3) The Byzantines were busy reconquering the Near East, having captured Tyre and Damascus. Except Damascus got renamed to Palmyra; need to sync up the settler maps over there.

4) The Cordobans had actually settled North Africa! This made me happy to see.

5) Venice is now aggressive on land, and had conquered Belgrade. In the mean time, Hungary has settled Spalato. Methinks these should be reversed.

6) The Norse founded Amsterdam. It shouldn't be in the Norse AI's areas to settle, should it?

Just some notes.

Couple of people complained about crashes. I checked the Arabian savegame and for 3 turns it did not crash. I have not checked the Dutch one yet. The problem with random crashes is that they are very hard to catch. Unless I can find the exact moment of the crash (and hopefully the crash always happens at that moment), then there is little I can do. I will keep on trying and please keep on reporting.

In a related note, I am sure there are a few bugs left in Civilization itself. Games can also crash because of driver and generic windows issues. That just makes random crashes even harder to catch even if they are due some mistake of mine.

I have about 70% of the Crusades mechanics coded. I hope to get another test version out tomorrow.

Poor Foreign stability occurs when you are at war with most civs that you know. Try signing peace and OB.

Stability in general needs a lot of work.

That's weird, usually I try to get as many OB's as possible:confused:. I think I'll soon start another game, send some scouts to eastern Europe (currently I don't have that many contacts). Still, what I find confusing is that whatever civ I'm playing, foreign stability increases, without any action (signing OB's, DP's, contacting new civs), to around +25. It feels like free stability. However, the same thing applies for Burgundy, but it DECREASES to around -25.

On the crashes: most of them are in the late game, and moving quickly on the minimap almost guarantees a crash when approaching Russia. I'll try to set my graphics to low, to see if that makes any difference.

EDIT: Cottages can't grow anymore, whereas hamlets still can. I think I'm going to reinstall everything.

EDIT 2: Solved it, moved Colonial Trade back in the CIV4ImprovementInfos. Though it probably was something else, it works nevertheless.

3) The Byzantines were busy reconquering the Near East, having captured Tyre and Damascus. Except Damascus got renamed to Palmyra; need to sync up the settler maps over there.
Synchronizing these two maps is a challenge. I may post the-for-inclusion-to-the-next-version py. file tomorrow, as they may be in general disagreement in Middle East and Asia Minor area.

I can't agree that stability is too high on Monarch for the human player, esp. when you're playing as Burgundy. In my last game I never got better than shaky (-10) then I'm not the greatest civ player either.;)

I've not had very many problems staying solid or better when following 'historical' expansions. I have driven my stability to shaky with wars or other factors, but rarely if ever would I be unstable or lower for long.

But I wasn't concerned about my stability when I made that post. I was simple looking at the leaderboard on the bottom right and noticing except for the 2 civilizations I had invaded and collapsed, everyone was solid or better. Everyone.

I think stability has been trivialized, if not for the human player, then for the AI at least. Another possibility is that despite frequent AI wars, territory rarely seems to be ceased or ceded.

Just some notes.

Couple of people complained about crashes. I checked the Arabian savegame and for 3 turns it did not crash. I have not checked the Dutch one yet. The problem with random crashes is that they are very hard to catch. Unless I can find the exact moment of the crash (and hopefully the crash always happens at that moment), then there is little I can do. I will keep on trying and please keep on reporting.

Try mine. It might be something related to my software or hardware, but every time I clicked "end turn" after that save, I crashed. So it wasn't random.

One thing I forgot from the Corduba game, I noticed ALL units got the medic bonus, even ships, spies, missionaries, and even workers and settlers! I think this bonus should be given either only to military land units or only non-cavalry military land units.

Another thing: When playing as Bulgaria I get constantly attacked by barb horse archers. I had to restart twice since I lost my capital. Perhaps archers and other defensive units should get a bonus against city-attacking barbs?

And one last thing, I think this picture speaks for itself:

played a Venice game yesterday and noticed some things:

- Venice is way to advanced, that is partialy deu to their Unique Power which gives +25% on both research and wealth, this should change in just wealth or something. it was around 1200 that I could research Printing press which I didn't want to found, so I waited more that 100 years to research it (I allready stoped before that). still no one founded Protestism after 100 years in which I could.

- Venice it's two UVA's it has now are way to easy, just found 4 city's and capture one and ur done. they should have some kind of wealth UVA which is way harder to get. I had to 1500 for the first and 1650 for the second, I had the both of them at 1300, which was slow becouse I didn't rush. (I played on Monarch)

- Genoa and Austria are way to weak.
Austria had 2 city's next to eachother and offert to be a vassal 2 turns after spawn. Hungary cruched their axeman/spearman with knight, and if it weren't for my musketman, they didn't stand a chance.
Genoa fouded Genoa and waited way to long to take Milan (independent). after that they founded caggliari and had a game long war with Florance, their units didn't stand a chance.

- Genoa and Austria are way to weak.
Austria had 2 city's next to eachother and offert to be a vassal 2 turns after spawn. Hungary cruched their axeman/spearman with knight, and if it weren't for my musketman, they didn't stand a chance.
Genoa fouded Genoa and waited way to long to take Milan (independent). after that they founded caggliari and had a game long war with Florance, their units didn't stand a chance.

I've had no problem playing Genoa: in fact, I've found it a little on the easier side once you figure out how to get OB with Justinian, and I often see it hold its own when the AI controls it. If I were going to make a tweak, it would be to dial back Florence and ramp up Milan a tad: Milan isn't productive or big enough, IMHO, and Florence is powerhouse.

One thing I forgot from the Corduba game, I noticed ALL units got the medic bonus, even ships, spies, missionaries, and even workers and settlers! I think this bonus should be given either only to military land units or only non-cavalry military land units.

Another thing: When playing as Bulgaria I get constantly attacked by barb horse archers. I had to restart twice since I lost my capital. Perhaps archers and other defensive units should get a bonus against city-attacking barbs?

And one last thing, I think this picture speaks for itself:

Bulgaria is poorly defended against Horse Archers. Increase the power of Archers maybe, or give couple of free Spearman on start.

For the Papal thing, my assumption is that the Pope used Spies to spread some culture in Belgrade. I will stop the Pope from building spies, hopefully this will fix the problem.

I just noticed a major bug. Cottage upgrading is messed up. Cottages don't upgrade, Hamlets "upgrade" into Hamlets, Villages into Villages and Towns into Towns.

I just noticed a major bug. Cottage upgrading is messed up. Cottages don't upgrade, Hamlets "upgrade" into Hamlets, Villages into Villages and Towns into Towns.

Noticed it too, but it's easy to solve. See the second edit in my post (685). However, it may be destructive for Colonial trades.

couple of personal observations:

- the unit mechanics need balancing. The Horse Archers are overpowered. The two extra first strikes give them unfair advantage against any other early unit (incidentally, the Bulgarian Konnik does not receive first strikes). The spearman (that are supposed to counter Horse Archers) get only + 25%, which means that they get to 4 + 1 vs 6 on open ground, in other words the odds are for the Horse Archers. Which means that a player with spearman can only defend his own cities (barely) against a significant number of HA. A possible solution would be to increase the Spearman bonus.
- similar disbalance exists for the second level of pikes vs heavy horseman. The ratio is something like 6 + 3 vs 11.
- the only defense is to use heavy cavalry vs heavy cavalry, in which case the human is in a disadvantageous position since the AI pumps units much faster.
- the amount of HA and axeman that spawn very early next to Bulgaria is too much. Bulgaria is barely able to defend. Maybe with weaker barbs or stronger units (couple of good spearman)
- if the 50th turn Plague strikes Bulgaria defeat is almost inevitable (loss of city is). The Plague kills the Archers and some of the Konnik leaving no defenders available at all. If we keep the 50th turn plague, we should make only the older nations susceptible to it. Immunity in the current version only lasts for 20 turns after spawn, we may increase that.

A couple of points from my last game as Hungary. Got the first 2 UHV conditions but the 3rd. one seems broken. I hadn't lost any cities to barbarians or Ottomans but even many years after 1650AD it said "not yet" for that condition.
It keeps saying X city would like to join the Papal States. Is the Pope supposed to have a growing empire? When I did gift a couple of cities they never grew or had any improvements arround them. Other than making the Pope happy what use are these cities?

The Pope should work as an OCC, I have not figure out a way to do it however. The Pope should never control more than 1 city (that is Rome).

I will look into the Hungarian UHV.

Been playing around a bit, and builded a few colonial projects, but after a while they just simply dissapear, and I loos all the resources from them.

Couple of notes on Sweden:

1) The 1st UHV isn't kicking-in at 1656 (neither a yes you've done it or no you haven't)
2) I'm pretty sure Sweden is supposed to control three cities south or east of the Baltic, not south and east of the Balkans, which would be quite a feat indeed.
3) Viborg should be spelt with an "i" in Swedish, not a "y", and I wonder if it should be Kronstadt or St. Petersburg when controlled by Russia.
4) Should Norway and/or Denmark be on Sweden's [settler/war] map? That said, I'm not exactly sure what those do, but the AI should have some interest in controlling those areas.

General Notes:
1) The game gets WICKED slow around 1630 or so, and in my most recent game only three civs had collapsed/been wiped out (Byzantium, the Norse & Spain, the latter two by me). I wonder if a prolonged state of vassalage could/should lead to being incorporated into the master or to dissolution to neighboring states to hasten the speed of the game by eliminating players? I think there is some real precedent for this if we stretched our imagination a little and might in a roundabout way get to our earlier discussion surrounding marriage and inheriting fiefs.
2) Somebody please tell me a bit about the city of Eye (in Estonia/Russia, it's Narva when Sweden controls it). Just curious.

Oh, this was on the version prior to 3Miro's most recent crusade addition: Sedna's 2/2/09.

3) Viborg should be spelt with an "i" in Swedish, not a "y", and I wonder if it should be Kronstadt or St. Petersburg when controlled by Russia.


2) Somebody please tell me a bit about the city of Eye (in Estonia/Russia, it's Narva when Sweden controls it). Just curious.

3) Vyborg should be become Viborg in Swedish/Norse maps (on my TODO list). And no, I think that it should be kept Vyborg in Russiam/Kievan maps.

2) I found no city of name Eye at Wikipedia. The nearest name (both in terms of naming and location) is Yuryev (Russian name for Tartu). I don't know why it becomes Narva though. I will look it.

In other terms, I have synchronized the Arabian-Byzantine map in the Middle East-Euphrates valley area. (woo-hoo). After editing the far south, let's go to the far north...;)

Before I forget: Adrianoplois is spelled incorrectly, should be Adrianopolis. Also, Constantinople should be Constantinopolis, to be consistent.

On playtesting: I'm trying to win Hungary again. Things have become much easier now, because Kiev and Bulgaria collapse very soon. Other notes (Feb 2 version):
- Venice and Byzantium are usually very hostile against each other. Sometimes this leads to the collapse of Venice, e.g. when Byzantium captures a Venetian city outside Italy.
- Cordoba is very strong. Large and wealthy cities, lots of wonders. Probably this is because Iberia requires many farms, resulting in powerful 2 food 2 production 2 wealth plots.
- Barley might be overpowered. Currently it can provide 3 health and 1 happiness.
- If colonies are going to provide resources when they are in their final form, should it be possible for miners to discover these resources (gems)?
- I think these resources should provide quite a lot of money (possibly +10 instead of +1), and should be valued much higher by the AI, like Iron and Horses.

Bulgaria and Kiev should not collapse so early. Venice should not collapse from just loosing one city, maybe they are loosing too many naval battles and or suffer from naval blockades.

Spain should be made stronger to counter Cordoba more effectively. One addition to the Crusades would be the defensive Crusade, which would help Spain.

Is there a large Gem deposit in Europe, miners can discover only some resources, I have to check the XML to see which ones.

There's gem in finland.
Also same as Spain not conquering Cordoba the Turks in my experience never conquered Constantinople, which is much more historically inaccurate since they kept expanding much after the conquest of Constantinople, while Cordoba as I see it had much more chance of surviving than the Byzantine Empire.

EDIT: My mistake, nevermind. See second notion.
Second attachment is about Byzatium's tech trading. Not a bad deal nevertheless.

@Wessel: The map says: Hadrianopolis, Constantinople. That's how they should be in the RFCEmaps file for synchronisation.

oops wrong thread, look to RFCe Files ;)

EDIT: My mistake, nevermind. See second notion.
Second attachment is about Byzatium's tech trading. Not a bad deal nevertheless.

The AI puts huge cost on those early military techs, it is one of the many tings that we will have to tweak.

Usually not that much, I've found that Byzantium values their own techs even lower than Mali does. Of course the difference in the screenshot is even bigger because it's a military tech, but I could have used any tech with a (very) positive result.

I've faced the Mongols now, and they are a real threat, without being unstoppable. At first sight I thought I could easily stop them with some promoted Armored Lancers, but then they appeared right next to my capitol. Luckily I had some cash left to upgrade the Archer and the Warrior. Very exciting game.

Public works is a very powerful tech. Aqueducts, Night Watches are both powerful buildings that any average city should have. However, the Palacio de Pena (or it's bonus) comes too early IMO. In Vanilla BTS the Cristo Redentor comes in when all civic options are open. Also, most civics are designed to contain bonusses only, with the possible exception of Mercantilism and Environmentalism. In RFCE, neither of these things apply. Short on gold? Switch to Theocracy, Merchant Republic, etc. and receive almost 50% extra gold. Switch back next turn, and count your profit. Personally I like it's huge potential, though I think it comes too early.

Theocracy + Merch. Republic gives large stability penalty. I should not use those two in combination.

Stability, isn't a problem, especially not for one turn. If it really matters, I can switch back. Also, it was just an example, I'm sure there are better combinations.

I think switching civics in general causes instability, altho maybe it's anarchy and thus negated by PDP.

I just started playing as Bulgaria and took Constantinople on my second turn, as it had only an Archer guarding it. The Byz Empire collapsed on the next turn, and I started to take their cities.

Just for the record, no Byz cities changed their names to Bulgarian but the Greek ones, Thess (Solun), Rhodes (Rhodai) and Athens (Atina). So far it makes sense, since I've never heard of Bulgar incursions in Anatolia.

However, when I captured Iconium (maybe it's misspelt), its name became Antiochia! And the other Antioch(ia) is still there, some tiles away, and it's Independent (probably belonged to the Byz before). Please fix this :)

However, when I captured Iconium (maybe it's misspelt), its name became Antiochia! And the other Antioch(ia) is still there, some tiles away, and it's Independent (probably belonged to the Byz before). Please fix this :)

TODO in next version of the city-naming file. Thanks for pointing out:)

I don't know how much you care about city names, but I just built a city one tile south and two tiles west of Constantinople with Bulgaria and it's called Pathragada. :S I also built a city in the Adriatic called Drats... I've searched a little and didn't find any real city with that name.

@blitzit: 1) That's because the square has no city naming for Bulgaria, and because the base for the Bulgarian civ was the Persian. 2) Drats is a slavic variant for Dyrrachium

When I was making the Bulgarian city name map (8 months ago), I had a Byzantine map and I simply changed the Balkan names to appropriate Bulgarian names. I left the the Anatolian and North African part the same. If Bulgaria is to found a city in Africa, it would have a Greek name. It is not a big deal, but it is actually what breaks the Antioch thing. Micbi, you can just remove all the names of Bulgarian cities outside the Balkans (Anatolia, Middle East and Africa).

"Finished current game, no other challenge left. Almost completed the third UHV (missed the territory one), built some colonies.
I've attached a save where I've just built a colony. Resources are given correctly, and the slaves bonus works. However, within a few turns all colonial resources disappeared, and never came back.

It's the Februari 2 version. I'll upgrade it before I start another game.

Something came up and I may not be able to complete the next version today. I will also have to fix the colony problem, I don't know how much time that would take, Firaxis simply did not think about adding resources from Projects.

I started a game as Al-Andalus (Cordoba). I failed the first UHV but I might continue with the game anyway just for fun.

Remarks:

- Isbiliah or however it is spelled should be Ishbilliah. Same with Barsalona it should be Barshellona.

- Allsakandariah should be Al-Eskandariah or Al-Askandariah both are used in arabic but the first is better as it derives from Al-Eskandar = Alexander.

- Syroz (north of Jerusalem) is not a recognizable city name for me. If it is supposed to be Tyre then the Arabic name is Sour.

Haven't gone far with the game yet so I've got no real balance notes. In general West Europeans seem to do rather too bad. While Burgundy and Frankia didn't collapse they were quite weak provided that they had quite a lot of time to expand and build-up. Spain is weak as well and the only thing that keeps me from crushing it is that I am too squeezed money-wise so I am not able to build a large army. Almost since the beginning I am confined to research level of 20-40%. In fact I lost the first UHV because I built cottages around Qurtobah trying to get as much gold as I can. I reached 11 pop but with farms instead I would have gotten a larger pop.

I started a game as Al-Andalus (Cordoba). I failed the first UHV but I might continue with the game anyway just for fun.

Remarks:

- Isbiliah or however it is spelled should be Ishbilliah. Same with Barsalona it should be Barshellona.

- Allsakandariah should be Al-Eskandariah or Al-Askandariah both are used in arabic but the first is better as it derives from Al-Eskandar = Alexander.

- Syroz (north of Jerusalem) is not a recognizable city name for me. If it is supposed to be Tyre then the Arabic name is Sour.

Haven't gone far with the game yet so I've got no real balance notes. In general West Europeans seem to do rather too bad. While Burgundy and Frankia didn't collapse they were quite weak provided that they had quite a lot of time to expand and build-up. Spain is weak as well and the only thing that keeps me from crushing it is that I am too squeezed money-wise so I am not able to build a large army. Almost since the beginning I am confined to research level of 20-40%. In fact I lost the first UHV because I built cottages around Qurtobah trying to get as much gold as I can. I reached 11 pop but with farms instead I would have gotten a larger pop.

A couple of comments on your suggestions. I was the one who provided the Arabic names for cities in Spain, based mainly on a very good Wiki site which gives alternate names for cities in many languages. Maybe we are just using slightly different sources. According the source I've got;
Seville translates to "Isibiliyah" but if you prefer "Ishbilliah" that's fine with me.
Barcelona is called "Barsaluna". I've never seen "Barshellona". I agree with you on Syroz though. It should be Sour.
As far as the UHVs go, the first two are easy. If you build farms and attack Spain early, that is. I've only ever reached Scientific Method first once. With all your military efforts against Spain and Portugal you can never be the tech leader. Venice and England will always beat you to S.M. Anyway, in my present game I'm just empire-building and teching for a score though I'll have to invade France soon.

@jessiecat

I don't use a specific resource. I am Egyptian i.e. Arab so it is actually how I pronounce the names of these cities.

I agree that the first two UHVs are easy. I failed the first because I didn't pay attention and built cottages where I should have built farms. While I haven't tried it yet but I can see that the third UHV is almost impossible. You never have the chance to tech effectively enough. I am not sure what raises expenses that high from the very start. Even with Manor houses, Courthouses, Markets and so I still can't tech over 40% without losing money.

@jessiecat

I don't use a specific resource. I am Egyptian i.e. Arab so it is actually how I pronounce the names of these cities.

I agree that the first two UHVs are easy. I failed the first because I didn't pay attention and built cottages where I should have built farms. While I haven't tried it yet but I can see that the third UHV is almost impossible. You never have the chance to tech effectively enough. I am not sure what raises expenses that high from the very start. Even with Manor houses, Courthouses, Markets and so I still can't tech over 40% without losing money.

OK. Thanks for the explanation. Maybe Arabic has slight regional variations in spelling. Like English does in Britain and America for example. Though I defer to your experience of course.:)

Pronunciation vs Spelling vs Alphabet is a problem for all of the cities. Cities in Bulgaria have fixed spelling in Cyrillic and fixed pronunciation in Bulgarian. Then comes the translation of those in Latin (i.e. English) Alphabet. There are at least three schemes that one can follow and unfortunately those could result in different pronunciations in English.

Then come slight differences between different Slavic languages. No Russian would ever pronounce my last name correctly even if I spell it in Cyrillic. I believe Serbians spell their capital Beograde or Belgrade, and while Bulgarians pronaunce it and spell it identically in Cyrillic, in Bulgaria we would spell it Belgrad if we have to spell it in Latin.

Having said that, I am not sure Isibiliyah and Ishbilliah can really have a "correct" and "incorrect" version. I think it is more important to keep consistency, that is for each language follow the same scheme for converting all city names into English.

Having said that, you guys figure it out, I don't speak Arabic.

First of all, we all know that this is a game meant for having fun. It is not meant to be educational. Any effort to reflect the accurate historical setting is however quite appreciable especially on the part of people with native languages and backgrounds different from English. It just feels nice to see the names of cities written on the map somewhat close to what we call them in our language.

While we do have a lot of accents for Arabic language used in about 22 different countries, we still have a standard Arabic language that is used in books, newspapers, official mails and even in Radio, and TV. So while I can find a great difficulty in following a conversation between two Algerians I will be able to fully understand a letter written by any of them. My previous name suggestions were based on how the mentioned city names are spelled in Arabic as in our history books. Adapting them to Latin alphabet is another story because Arabic is quite different from any language that uses Latin letters. To say the least we have many letters that don't exist in the Latin alphabet and some of them can never be represented by any combination of letters.

Once again it is a game and I am quite pleased with what you guys have done with this mod so far.

@jessiecat

Thanks for the advice. I started a new game with the Cordobbans (I installed the latest release so I had to do so anyway). This time I went to war early and eliminated Spain. When I finish my current game I plan to play the next as Spain to see if I can counter the advantages of Cordoba. I think however that the AI is doing badly in general based on the status of other civs compared to what would be the case if played by a human. When I played Frankia I eliminated Burgundy quite early and took every single city that indys and barbs had in France and northern Spain. The AI seems never able to come close to this. I think you may differ starting free units and even techs gifted to player on spawn based on whether it is human or an AI to give the AI some push.

To reach SM first, it's important to have no more than 10, maybe 12 cities. Any more cities greatly increases research costs. Personally I'd like this feature to be removed or weakened, as I've said before but I understand there are other priorities. Also, Iberia has so much production with Serfdom, that most cities can build all buildings available and then build wealth. This should keep research at 100%, I think.

I might have found what causes global warming: In the Globaldefines.xml there is a tag

<Define>
<DefineName>GLOBAL_WARMING_UNHEALTH_WEIGHT</DefineName>
<iDefineIntVal>20</iDefineIntVal>
</Define>

In RFCE there is a lot of unhealth (as it should be), so I guess that's it.
Also, cottages don't grow, fixed it.

It's going very well I see. We're almost there! Keep up the good work.:)

Double post

Sorry for not fixing the cottages, normally sedna17 deals with the XML and I was busy figuring the C++ doing the UHVs. If I am doing the next version, I will make sure to fix that.

Sorry for not fixing the cottages, normally sedna17 deals with the XML and I was busy figuring the C++ doing the UHVs. If I am doing the next version, I will make sure to fix that.

Just noticed a problem with the Moscow UHV. No. 1 is not losing a city to barbarians (Mongols) before 1400. I'm in 1450 and haven't lost a city to barbarians or anyone else but the first condition says "not yet".

Just noticed a problem with the Moscow UHV. No. 1 is not losing a city to barbarians (Mongols) before 1400. I'm in 1450 and haven't lost a city to barbarians or anyone else but the first condition says "not yet".

I think there is a problem with the Russian UHVs in general. I will look into it.

Thanks for fixing that. I replayed my game from before 1400 and got the first UHV condition. Now for the second one, having the most culture of any Slavic civ in 1600. I've got the 12 cities already so the 3rd. one's in the bag.
I figure I've got a chance as the Kievans and Bulgaria have been knocked out earlier. Just Poland to beat though they're getting pretty big and have blocked my push to the west. Still, if I consolidate and build lots of culture buildings I might do it. An unfortunate war with Hungary and a few pesky barbarians keep me busy but I'm doing OK. As 1600 approaches I realize I won't get all 3 conditions but I play on. Suddenly, in 1600;
POLAND WINS A HISTORICAL VICTORY!!!
I don't believe it. I've seen the AI do it in RFC a few times but never in this mod. It's a first for me.
How about anybody else? WTF!:lol:

The first UHV of the Franks doesn't work either. I'm 1504 AD and it says: "not yet". I was playing the feb 13 version so maybe its already fixed in the feb
14th version but I haven't looked at it.

I've gone with my Cordoba game till I was beaten to SM by Venice. While it was mentioned before that this UHV is quite difficult if not impossible I still can't understand why? I lost the race by some 16 turns. When Venetians started researching SM they needed 12 turns while I needed 28 turns. I was first in gold income and second in production. Most of my cities were building research so much of my production was going to research as well as all my gold (I set research to 100% regardless the money lost as I had enough in my treasury). Is there any hidden factor here. I know techs are a little more expensive if you are the first to research them but this works against both me and Venice. Also more (or prereq techs) makes a tech less expensive and as I was beelining to SM since long it was inevitable that I missed some of these however this shouldn't make such a great difference.

Anyway my next game with the latest release will be with Venice :)

I've gone with my Cordoba game till I was beaten to SM by Venice. While it was mentioned before that this UHV is quite difficult if not impossible I still can't understand why? I lost the race by some 16 turns. When Venetians started researching SM they needed 12 turns while I needed 28 turns. I was first in gold income and second in production. Most of my cities were building research so much of my production was going to research as well as all my gold (I set research to 100% regardless the money lost as I had enough in my treasury). Is there any hidden factor here. I know techs are a little more expensive if you are the first to research them but this works against both me and Venice. Also more (or prereq techs) makes a tech less expensive and as I was beelining to SM since long it was inevitable that I missed some of these however this shouldn't make such a great difference.

Anyway my next game with the latest release will be with Venice :)

In RFCE (and in RFC for that matter) there are coded research and construction rates. In RFCE, you can find them in RFCEBalance.py. For example, construction and research times are much higher for Byzantium, to simulate the fall of the Empire. It also says that Cordoba needs 255% the research points for a tech.

Could you please post a save game? I'm not such an experienced player like some of the main RFC players but I've played enough to understand what might be good and bad compared to vanilla Civ 4 games.:)

The first UHV of the Franks doesn't work either. I'm 1504 AD and it says: "not yet". I was playing the feb 13 version so maybe its already fixed in the feb
14th version but I haven't looked at it.

The Franks' UHV should be working, it is possible that the Kiev and Moscow bugs in Feb 13 interfere with the Franks, or maybe there is something wrong with Burgundy.

The Franks' UHV should be working, it is possible that the Kiev and Moscow bugs in Feb 13 interfere with the Franks, or maybe there is something wrong with Burgundy.

I can confirm that the first UHV for the Franks is not working. I played as far as 1520 and it still said "not yet".

@Wessel V1

Thanks for the explanation. It is what I meant by asking about a hidden factor. I haven't looked into python files. It has been a long time since I played RFC in general so I've forgotten a lot about its mechanics.

I would like however to know the rationale behind this large handicap for Cordoba? For the most part of the Middle Ages Arabs in general and those of Andalusia in particular were more advanced than most Europeans except maybe for Byzantines. This only started to change slowly with the dawn of Renaissance era. It however took a couple of centuries before Europeans gained a considerable tech lead around the beginnings of the 19th century evident in the comparative ease with which Napoleon was able to conquer Egypt.

I attached a save if you like to inspect my Cordoba game. It was played with the 6th Feb release however so I don't think it would work with the latest release. You will notice that I abandoned the game even before 1500 AD so I didn't wait to see if I accomplished the 2nd UHV though it seems to be OK. I have even managed to take 2 cities from Frankia because Lewis decided to dow me some turns ago. I will appreciate any insight into the good and bad about the game especially why my stability went down so much with the end of the game. It seems to be mostly my civic choices so I'd like to know what I did wrong there.

Victory with Cordoba is doable, just hard. You should give it another try, I for one have never managed a RFC UHV on the first try.

The key is to beeline to Scientific Method without any delays. Get some techs to allow better growth in the beginning and then go for SM. On the way, emphasize techs that would boost Science and Wealth (Education + Guilds), use the enormous production of Iberia to build Wealth and Research. Get some wonders, +2 beakers from Islamic buildings is good, the Leaning Tower of Cordoba is good for some extra Scientist and some light-bulbs. OB with as many nations as you can and build Castles, made early contact with Arabia (use a Berber Horseman and go over land in Africa), if Arabia is Islamic you will OB and get massive cash (in my game they were Orthodox). Then comes the Venetian problem, as soon as possible get a fleet of Pirates and blockade their cities. Get a lot of Pirates in a single stack (I did not did not do that, they were only single ships and were taken out one by one, but still managed to slow down Venice), use some Spies to destroy improvements and poison water (why not).

Other possibilities are a full blown war with Venice, but that is hardly justified the trouble.

Spain and Portugal are best handled with Armored Lancers early on.

Now comes the waiting for 1500AD to get the third UHV.

For the Frank's UHV problem, can anyone confirm it on the Feb 14 version of the game. Does anyone have a savegame right before the date of the UHV. If the condition does not register on the specified date, it will never register, I need a savegame right on the moment of the problem.

Thanks for the advice 3Miro. I almost did everything you mentioned except slowing Venice down. I was going to though Frankia declared on me and I had to deal with them so my privateers were sort of tide up. I light bulbed several techs. I also got some techs from Arabia (who was muslim and friendly), a couple from England as well though mainly out of path to SM. These techs helped me keep my army somewhat up to date otherwise Lewis would have crushed me with his knights.

BTW nice screen-shot. It is the first time I see a shot of civ running on Linux.

I have been running Civ under Linux fro several months now, the only problem I had was I still needed Windows to be able to compile the .dll file. I used to dual-boot, but now I am using Virtual Box so I can run Windows from within Linux.

In general the graphics of Civ under Linux (with wine) are a bit slower, but the time between turns is actually the same, so it makes no practical difference. I have completed RFC USA games under Linux, it is bearable enough.

For RFCE, we will have to change Venecia's UP, it gives them too much scientific advantage when it is supposed to give them a lot of cash. We may do it so that Venice starts with Merchant Republic and Electorate (as opposed to Republic), which will decrease the bonus, but we need to change the stability penalty that would come with it.

The Cordoba UHV was pretty easy for me. I used the UU to take out spain very early, and then just teched up peacfully (make sure you farm every empty tile near cordoba to reach the 1st UHV, and because farms are overbalanced) When Portugal spawned it didn't last 5 turns to my deadly cavalry, just make sure you don't declare too soon or you'll units will defect. After that I have french influence on the Pyrenes (the mountains between Iberia and France) So I built a huge army (their army was even bigger!!!) and took Marseille, Boredaux, and a city between them. If you decide to declare war on anyone other than Spain or Portugal then don't make my mistake and sign many DPs first!!! Especially with your future enemy's neighbors.
The race to SM was very easy, I managed to research it before anyone else had Arabic Knowlage, which reminds me of a small fix I'd wanted to report - Arabic Knowlage makes you go to the late middle ages right on the start.

I have been running Civ under Linux fro several months now, the only problem I had was I still needed Windows to be able to compile the .dll file. I used to dual-boot, but now I am using Virtual Box so I can run Windows from within Linux.

In general the graphics of Civ under Linux (with wine) are a bit slower, but the time between turns is actually the same, so it makes no practical difference. I have completed RFC USA games under Linux, it is bearable enough.

For RFCE, we will have to change Venecia's UP, it gives them too much scientific advantage when it is supposed to give them a lot of cash. We may do it so that Venice starts with Merchant Republic and Electorate (as opposed to Republic), which will decrease the bonus, but we need to change the stability penalty that would come with it.

Actually I'm playing as Venice at the moment and I agree its science can be pretty powerful. However I think we've got another broken UHV here. I'm supposed to control the Dalmatian coast and have a city in mainland Greece, Crete and Cyprus in 1500 (which I do. See screenshots) but in 1502 it says "not yet" then in 1504 it says "No". I've included saved games from 1500 and 1504 for you to look at.
BTW For the 3rd. UHV requirement I need 8 luxury resources. Which ones count as luxuries? There's nothing in the civilopedia on resources which says anything about that. Actually they are listed in the wiki but maybe they should be listed in the civilopedia for ingame reference.

Hi every1
I've played the Feb 13th version of your modmod as Spain and its great, the crusades worked really well, most of the crusade votes were between Spain and Bulgaria so I won them all :D. But when I captured the required city I didn't get a bonus, was I supposed 2? Arabia had just collapsed, would that stop it?

Spains last two UHVs arn't working, i dont know if they just havn't been implemented yet. The colonies on a whole seem to be working well, thx 2 Iberias amazing production ive snagged them all so far :). The assembly line building also seems to have problems, i've researched the tech but can't build it :confused:?
Hope some of this is useful.

Well, it's not really a handicap, most civs have a 255% penalty. There are some exceptions, like Genoa, because the AI usually builds no more than 3 or 4 cities, and has a slow research rate. What I've noticed is that Burgundy has some very heavy modifiers, what might explain why they are doing so badly.

About the savegame: it looks that you've beelined SM. Usually that's not bad, but I think you've skipped some important techs. Monument building is important because of the irrigation. Around 80% of Iberia is plains, and should have farms. Combined with Serfdom (Free Peasantry doesn't have much value IMO), they guarantee powerful cities. Merchant Republic is also something I would recommend. In my last game, playing Hungary, I tried to find the best civics combination for research. I had built the Palacio de Pena, so it wouldn't cost me any time to try it. Results were that Merchant Republic is far more powerful than Guilds. Manorialism is IMO so weak that it doesn't compensate the lost trade route.
Valencia could be improved a lot. It doesn't work all food tiles, which means that it could have grown much larger. I see that you've worked the production tiles before, but to compensate them, you have to build farms all around. Most city locations are chosen well, though Iruna is to small to be significant and Bambaluna would be better if it would be SE.
Some improvements don't remove forests. Windmills were better than mines, because they give food and money and production, and mines only give 2 production. However, windmills remove forests, mines don't. So I build mines only on forested tiles, and windmills only on tiles without trees. Same deal for watermills, a forested grassland rivertile should have a watermills (better than a lumber mill). That's my strategy though, it won't be the best. It might be useful to improve Toledo though, since it has no food to work the mines. Windmills are better in this situation.
Compared to RFC, the land-water ratio is very high, so workers are more important. It is very important to have some workers improving all tiles as much as possible. The starting workers really can't show the full potential.
Your city locations are OK, but you have too many. It would go too far to lure the barbarians to North Africa, but the city adds next to nothing. A city on the south coast near the resources would be better. I see that you have 16 cities, so building another one isn't a good idea. The research bar shows that SM costs more than 30,000 beakers. With 10 cities, it would have been much cheaper. The cities in France are big, but undeveloped, so they harm science rates.
The event log shows 6 anarchies. Every anarchie costs 3 points, so 6 anarchies costs an entire stability level. It seems that both anarchies in 1179 AD and in 1218 AD could have been combined. About your combinations, I'm not sure, 3Miro can probably explain this. Foreign relations are also low. Despite having another state religion, most civs aren't that upset when you meet them. I donate them 10 gold to get the +4, enough to make them Cautios or even (temporary) Pleased. They will sign Open Borders.
Another small trick is that some of the science producers could be transformed into wealth producers. I don't know why, but the science slider has more impact than the production science, so building wealth results in more research AND more money.
Arabia is willing to trade some techs. Tech trading is very important in the early game. Research cheap techs (3 turns to research), and sell them to rich civs, especially Frankia. Byzantium is also very happy to trade techs, so if possible, send out a scout and try to trade something. Trading resources may work too. Currently, you've 6 wine, and you only need one. The Vikings have 13 gold left, more than enough to buy something. The AI changes their gold/research rate very often, so while they sometimes have nothing to trade, the next turn they have lots of gold (Byzantium, Frankia). Trading maps is a good way to get new contacts, and some money.

I hope this helps. It's a quick observation, not a detailed strategy guide but it may work in general. I have to admit though that you just had some bad luck. Venice has more cities than they usually do, these cities in Russia seem to be very important. I've only seen Moscow collapsed once or twice, so it is certainly not common that Venice is that strong.

EDIT: Wasn't the mod supposed to end in 1800 AD? Nick's screenshot says that it ends in 1760 AD. That might explain why the Dutch start in 1540 AD, AFAIK they should start in 1580 AD. Possibly that's why the UHV's are messed up, the date is simply wrong.

For RFCE, we will have to change Venecia's UP, it gives them too much scientific advantage when it is supposed to give them a lot of cash. We may do it so that Venice starts with Merchant Republic and Electorate (as opposed to Republic), which will decrease the bonus, but we need to change the stability penalty that would come with it.

I fear that won't help much. Together with Merchant Republic and 80% science, Venice gets 25% x 80% = 20% more research. I personally find Electorate more powerful than Republic, because of the culture and the espionage. Maybe the 25% coins should be changed into 25% gold.

What also may help them is that Mud can't even be passed by units such as spies and merchants. That makes Venice (the city) almost immortal, since they are also very powerful on the seas. The whole Adriatic coast can be defended by one boat, since the pass is only one tile wide.

The Franks' UHV should be working, it is possible that the Kiev and Moscow bugs in Feb 13 interfere with the Franks, or maybe there is something wrong with Burgundy.

I don't think so. They were defeated because I captured all of their cities:cool:. I installed the feb 14th version and I could load the game again, but the UHV didn't work again.

I don't think so. They were defeated because I captured all of their cities:cool:. I installed the feb 14th version and I could load the game again, but the UHV didn't work again.

Do you have a save right before the Victory is supposed to register (one in the 1490's).

For the Venetian UHV, lux resources are those that generally give happiness: Furs, Wine, Tea, Coffee, Cotton, Spices. They are at the bottom of Victory.py (RFCEurope\Assets\Python). In general I think getting 8 such resources might be impossible for Venice, we might have to rethink this one.

No. I accidentally overwrited the saved game. I'm sorry, if I knew this earlier i would have done it.