Hey all,

I finally(!) got BTS and wanted to get back in the message board debugging fun (I saw that I had a credit in a readme, which was very exciting). Since I lost 6 months of my life to Rhye's random maps in Civ3, I thought I'd focus my energies on it for Civ4. I've played a few games today, and wanted to note my impressions:

First of all, the game seems slightly unbalanced, but I'm not sure if it's the mod, or me. My Rhye's and Fall strategies were almost always based on practice and repetition - my China was impervious to barbarians because I knew where to put axemen and spearmen. Here, that doesn't exist. This makes it feel like the older civilizations have a much harder time than they did in Earth Rhye's. I'll poke at it some more, but the best time I had was with Greece. Any advice?

Switching to new civilizations is a real roll of the dice. I got excited about Ethiopia finally being an official Firaxis civ, and switched. It was in a massive jungle/desert, right next to India. I declared war on India, hoping cities would flip...and they didn't. So I was stuck with a ghastly starting position and a war I didn't really want.

On the plus side - I love the idea, in the readme, of having the cities named according to where they're founded. This is something I was pressing for since Civ4 came out. I haven't seen a whole lot of this demonstrated as significantly different from the original city name list, but I haven't played a whole lot.

First of all, the game seems slightly unbalanced, but I'm not sure if it's the mod, or me. My Rhye's and Fall strategies were almost always based on practice and repetition - my China was impervious to barbarians because I knew where to put axemen and spearmen. Here, that doesn't exist. This makes it feel like the older civilizations have a much harder time than they did in Earth Rhye's. I'll poke at it some more, but the best time I had was with Greece. Any advice?That's the point of the mod. RFC gets old after you've repeated the same strategy 10 times per civ. Here, there's no repetition because every game is different.

However, I do agree that it's imbalanced, but I'd blame that on it being a fairly new mod. It's not as "mature" as RFC. Also, not as many people play it; most prefer normal RFC, so there's less opportunities for playtesting and feedback.

And, of course, welcome to RFC. :)

welcome back!
Raising to 2 the threshold of switching civs seems reasonable

Musicfreak - yeah, the imbalance is what I'm worried about. Fighting off the barbarians can get extremely difficult without that knowledge. Maybe it's supposed to act that way. But there also seems to be a much lower chance of having a civilization with significant terrain boundaries. For example, as the Romans in Rhye's Earth, the Mediterranean and the Alpes act as two significant borders that makes fighting off the barbarians much easier. Rome and Milan can churn out reinforcements, knowing that they're much less likely to face attacks than cities in Gaul or the Balkans. Likewise, China has huge mountains, jungles, and coastlines to prevent barbarians from going wild in their borders.

In RAND, the number of barbarians seems to be roughly the same, but the borders are so random it's difficult to deal with.

I just succeeded at surviving much longer in a RAND game. I started as Babylon, switched to Russia. Babylon proved to be quite strong, as it had several mountain ranges in which to nestle its cities. I was one of two civs to survive the ~500AD barbarian attack.

The map was interesting. I was playing a Standard map, that had a similar Eurasia continent pattern. Most of the civs were in the "middle east" or "east Asia." Japan had all of "Europe" to itself, and became a massive superpower. The other major power, Turkey, spawned in the center of the collapsed Egyptians, Arabians, and Babylonians, and flipped large numbers of cities.

Africa had no civs, and with a massive desert, nobody pushed to build cities there. A fairly large island east of "Asia" and west of "America" spawned both England and Spain. Each only had room for three fairly pathetic cities. I'm not sure how abnormal this is.

As Russia, I got to the Incas first, took Cuzco, and then sent over a settler. The city it founded wanted to immediately flip to Japan, which was strange - normal? Spain, Carthage, and Japan all founded cities in the new world.

Eventually, my lack of courthouses caught up to me, and Russia collapsed. But I had fun.

I like what I'm seeing in general for balancing the game, but there's a lot of randomness that seems a bit too important for the game, particularly in the map creation.

Distribution of resources seemed a little bit too balanced. I had virtually no resource trading with other civilizations. In some cases, it was because they didn't want to trade, but there also wasn't a whole to to trade. Not sure if this is intentional.

could you post a map of the world?

Unfortunately, I don't have a later save for the Babylon/Russia game. This one is fairly early, with me still playing as Babylon.

Russia will spawn just to the north of Babylon, with a north-south strip of land between it and what would become Japan, which has basically everything northwest of there.



The second save is from a game I played as Greece, which went much better. It felt like a historical map, with a Middle East/Mediterranean where most of the early action took place, and other civs spawning all over the Eurasia continent during the middle ages.


There was what appeared to be a slight bug. The Mongols spawned in the eastern, landlocked part of my Greek empire, and took several of my cities, including my Confucian religion. Later, I captured the Taoist holy city, and decided to convert to Taoism in order to get the holy city benefits.

Every turn, however, the Mongols kept demanding that I convert back to Confucianism. There were never any ill effects. The save is towards the end of the game, Kublai should be nagging every turn.

Also, what caused my collapse in the last game, in addition to the ill-advised religion switch, was MASSIVE plague damage. I had two major cities, Corinth and Athens, which were 10+ population. Plague hit both of them and knocked them down to 1 population point, destroying all my military units. Then it happened again. Might be a little strong.

Every turn, however, the Mongols kept demanding that I convert back to Confucianism. There were never any ill effects. The save is towards the end of the game, Kublai should be nagging every turn.Yeah, that's a known (annoying) bug. Rhye hasn't found the cause of it yet.

Also, what caused my collapse in the last game, in addition to the ill-advised religion switch, was MASSIVE plague damage. I had two major cities, Corinth and Athens, which were 10+ population. Plague hit both of them and knocked them down to 1 population point, destroying all my military units. Then it happened again. Might be a little strong.Well, the plague is supposed to be strong, but even for me it wasn't that bad. Were those cities really unhealthy to begin with? I can't think of anything else...usually I lose 3, 4 population points max, and about 2 units per city.

Well, the plague is supposed to be strong, but even for me it wasn't that bad. Were those cities really unhealthy to begin with? I can't think of anything else...usually I lose 3, 4 population points max, and about 2 units per city.

Corinth didn't have an aqueduct yet, but I believe Athens did. Corinth was also hit extra hard because I realized that I hadn't switched off its specialist, so it was generating less food than it should have.

Both cities were built as moneymakers, with lots of coastal trade routes, if that makes a different.

Also, the Mongols had recently flipped most of the land mass and took a lot of my health resources, so I was lower than I had built with those.

thank for the reports, I'll see what I can do

Here's another couple of quirks/issues. I'm playing as China, and the Mongols just spawned on my border, flipping Luoyang. My city of Xian is the closest to Luoyang, and has a good amount of culture. The culture around each city is inverted - I have pink squares next to Luoyang, and the Mongols have brown squares next to Xian. Both are too far away to be of any use to either civ, and it kind of messes up the map.

Also, another thing I've noticed with RAND is at the southern part of my empire, where there's a square of iron that isn't near a city. A worker of mine on automated Build Trade Route put a fort on the iron, instead of a mine. I've noticed that this happens regularly with resources on hills that are outside of the normal city limits.

Here's another couple of quirks/issues. I'm playing as China, and the Mongols just spawned on my border, flipping Luoyang. My city of Xian is the closest to Luoyang, and has a good amount of culture. The culture around each city is inverted - I have pink squares next to Luoyang, and the Mongols have brown squares next to Xian. Both are too far away to be of any use to either civ, and it kind of messes up the map.I agree that too much culture is flipped. What happens internally is all your culture is converted to their culture, which I think is completely unfair. I think all your culture should simply be erased, and maybe give them like 100 culture or something to have a head start, but as it is now it takes a long time (too long) to get that culture back.

Also, another thing I've noticed with RAND is at the southern part of my empire, where there's a square of iron that isn't near a city. A worker of mine on automated Build Trade Route put a fort on the iron, instead of a mine. I've noticed that this happens regularly with resources on hills that are outside of the normal city limits.That always happens in Civ4. Forts add the resource to your trade network, so it doesn't really matter either way. I personally don't like it, as forts take twice as long (more?) to build than mines, but either way it's an issue with the Civ4 AI and not RFC.

I just don't really understand how it happens so that the culture by their new city is still mine, but the culture near mine is theirs. Like the game remembers the outward boundaries of the culture but not the inner parts?

I didn't know that about forts and the AI - it may be a BTS thing, I never noticed it before I got BTS.

I just don't really understand how it happens so that the culture by their new city is still mine, but the culture near mine is theirs. Like the game remembers the outward boundaries of the culture but not the inner parts?Yeah, the outer boundaries and very inner plots are processed differently. I personally think that whole system needs to be rewritten (or at least tweaked), because not only does it do weird things (like you mentioned) but it's also nearly impossibly to get your culture back. This is extremely annoying when the flip area includes tiles close to your capital.

Here's a problematic map I found - started as China, switched to Persia. It demonstrates two things:

1. Someone else mentioned that India usually had a weak starting position. This is a great demonstration of that.

2. Jungles and mountains have divided the continent in half. I know that, to some extent, this kind of thing is the goal in the RAND map generator. This is just a little bit excessive - the Persians are now totally cut off from anyone else.




By the way, I've switched over to large maps - not because the Standard maps were too small, but because they tended to have too few civs - my computer wasn't slow between turns at all! Large seems to feel better in terms of general civilization expansion. Standard maps seemed to have HUGE swaths of unused land, and too-distinct "continents" of civilizations formed.

Having played several more games, including one almost to completion, I'm getting more of a feel for the game and what makes me like a round and then dislike it. The key thing I've noticed causing me frustration is the feeling that I'm constantly reacting instead of acting. Much of the time I feel like I'm far behind - don't have enough troops to fight off the barbarians, don't have enough libraries or markets, can't ever build a wonder, don't have enough revenue to found a new city, and so on.

I've noticed that two civs - Greece and Rome - almost always allow me to feel like I'm more in control of what's going on. Almost too much control - in one game as Rome, I built every wonder of the world after Stonehenge and until the Hagia Sophia.

With any of the starting four civs, I feel like I'm really far behind in tech. As Japan I feel like I start a little bit too late (or could use another settler at the start? Not really certain). The modern European civs have a lot of luck involved with their spawning, but they can be good.

One solution I see recommended consistently is sacrificing population under slavery, which I've started doing much much more than before (this may help me with the starting civs, actually, especially Egypt. Hmm)

so, is it too hard compared to RFC classic?

I'm not sure that's the way I'd think about it. It's less that it's hard or easy, and more that the balance seems slightly out of whack. When I do well, I do REALLY well. I'm 300-400 points ahead of the nearest competitor, at least until I get greedy and inevitably collapse. When I do poorly, I get so far behind in the tech race and have so little money, it's more frustrating than fun.

I can see a couple of reasons for this. First of all, I'm playing on standard or large maps, so there are fewer civilizations. The civs seem to come in groups of two kinds - geographically and chronologically. I'm not entirely sure of how the geography works. It seems like there's Mediterranean, European, American, Middle Eastern, Asian, and isolated civs. Chronologically, there's Ancient, Classical, Medieval, and Modern civs. I've generally been playing Ancient or Classical civs.

The Classical civs benefit gameplay-wise from spawning at roughly the same time in roughly the same area. Greece, Rome, Carthage, and Persia (there's also Japan). In a normal game of RFC, they compete with each other. In a game of RAND, one or two of them may not spawn, and they may spawn in an area far, far away from each other. Persia, I've noticed, occasionally gets terrible 80% desert starting locations, and Carthage occasionally is far far away.

In RFC, Greece generally has to deal with a cramped starting position, Romans to the west, Persians/Babylonians to the east, and barbarians to the north. Having three really good cities is doing pretty well, but it's also difficult to do much worse.

In RAND, Rome may not spawn, and there may be two or three civilizations in range, but none trying to expand. Or there could be massive swaths of barbarians. Doing well could be quickly creating the largest empire in the world, and churning our wonders and great people. Or getting torn to shreds by barbarians.

So "harder" isn't necessarily how I'd put it. RAND, I think, makes it more likely that you'll either be frustrated or bored.

Maybe a slightly better way to put it would be that I feel like I'm playing a puzzle game. My cities are kinda like Tetris pieces, and sometimes I don't get the pieces that make the best combinations, and sometimes I get all of them

Here's another example of map frustrations. I played as China until Germany spawned. The Germans appeared next to Rome and Vikings. Somewhat cramped, but doable. I got involved in a bad war against the Romans, when all of the sudden, Russia appeared right on top of me. Suddenly my capital has 4 squares of culture around it. Totally crippled.

I think I agree with the recommendations that cities distance limits should be set back to 3 squares, instead of the 2 from RFC. Is that something that's easy to change in the Python or XML so I can test that?

I think I agree with the recommendations that cities distance limits should be set back to 3 squares, instead of the 2 from RFC. Is that something that's easy to change in the Python or XML so I can test that?DLL, actually. I don't know if I agree with that, but to be honest I wouldn't care either way. There's enough room for 3 squares in between, but on the other hand one of the things I've always liked about RFC was the fact that you have more options when it comes to placing cities. The problem is the AI... They seem to abuse it.

But I agree with the rest of your points.

Oh, and I also think every civ should spawn. That would eliminate some of the open space, and make it more like RFC.

I would tend to agree with that, except that my 1 gig of RAM says maybe not. There's a reason I'm playing RAND instead of RFC beyond simple randomness. :-)

In lieu of that, I would think that grouping civ spawns by era might be wise. If the player chooses a classic-era Civ, all five of those spawn. The only exception might be the medieval European civs - of Spain, Portugal, France, England, Vikings, Germany, Russia and Arabia I think maybe only 5 would be necessary.

As much as I like the Khmer and Ethiopians, I think on standard and large maps, they don't do a whole lot except slow the game down. Getting rid of them would also allow the maps to be made a little bit smaller, I think.


What's the easiest way to edit the DLL?

I would tend to agree with that, except that my 1 gig of RAM says maybe not. There's a reason I'm playing RAND instead of RFC beyond simple randomness. :-)True, very true. (Although RAM has little to do with it, I see your point. :)

As much as I like the Khmer and Ethiopians, I think on standard and large maps, they don't do a whole lot except slow the game down. Getting rid of them would also allow the maps to be made a little bit smaller, I think.Or maybe just make it so they collapse very quickly. I don't mind them being in the game, but after a while, you're right, they start to drag the game speed down.

What's the easiest way to edit the DLL?This thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=166933) should get you started. The source code for RAND is here (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=305987). If you've never programmed, I wouldn't bother, it's not as easy as simply editing an XML file, or even Python. If you have some experience, though, you can dig around in there. I don't know exactly what function in what file controls the distance between cities (my guess would be CvPlot.cpp), but it probably wouldn't be too hard to find.

the city distance is in the generic settings XML.

One more thing:
what's usually wrong with Indian and Persian starting locations?

Jungle and desert, respectively. Though in India's case I've seen both. I've almost never seen India survive into the Middle Ages. Not as sure about Persia.

I think in RFC the resources, barbarians, and neutral/flipping cities are carefully balanced, so that desert civs have stone and flood plains, and if any of those things are slightly off in RAND, the whole civ falls apart.

China and Japan survive pretty regularly. As do Greece and Rome.

This one, from GlobalDefines?

<Define>
<DefineName>MIN_CITY_RANGE</DefineName>
<!-- Rhye -->
<iDefineIntVal>1</iDefineIntVal>



I'm also curious about this one - is this what determines how far away a new civ spawns from another's capital?

<Define>
<DefineName>STARTING_DISTANCE_PERCENT</DefineName>
<iDefineIntVal>6</iDefineIntVal>
<!-- Rhye - RFCRAND (12) -->
</Define>

I've started a game with 2 squares between cities, and so far have noticed no huge differences in game history, with the possible exception that I'm well ahead of where I normally am in terms of tech.

I'm also going to try starting a few games and letting them run to the Turks on both 1 and 2 squares to see if that demonstrates anything notable.

Here's a game with two squares between cities that I'm enjoying a lot, except for the wait between turns. I started as Greece, then switched to France. I was pushing for the UHV, but only had 5.5 colonies in the new world. The Americans spawned on three of my colonies, so I gave them away.

Around that point, my stability was collapsing too quickly, so I had a revolution to Emancipation, Free Religion, and Commonwealth. Massive revolution around 1790 sounds vaguely familiar. I had a few cities go independent, but not quite civil war.

Then a world war started. Turkey, to my southeast, had split up the remnants of the Greek cities with me. I got Argos and Sparta, they got Athens and Corinth. Their sudden war blitzed into Sparta, which their cavalry took with ease.

Then a Congress came up, and my side of the war had much larger representation. A major city of theirs was taken my the Dutch, and I managed to swipe Athens. Which I held for a turn, before the Greeks, no doubt inspired by my revolution promising freedom for the masses, decided to reappear, creating a new powerful buffer state between me and Turkey.



So why is this good? Because it feels like the historical forces in RFC/RAND are pushing the game to behave in a generally historical fashion, but not so far that I don't feel like I have any choice in the matter.

Also, take a look at the map, which I'm a fan of. Notice how there's a massive old world island, in the "middle east." It seems to have made the game more interesting.

indeed a very nice outcome. In the medium likeliness it's more likely to happen.

so, is it too hard compared to RFC classic?

nope. Some UHVs are actually easier to achieve, some harder, and some impossible. Same with other victory conditions. The balance is ok now IMHO, I disagree with Arkaeyn. It was indeed whack when the spawning civs would flip pretty much everything around, now that that's been fixed I don't see any major balance problem except the placement of the initial 4 civs because that influences the placement of all others, if I understood well. Egypt and especially Carthage should start more west, toward the Atlantic, while the first normally starts in the middle east and the second rarely spawns near Egypt. India too many times starts in Africa. Also, I think that some more efforts should be put into creating a better (I mean more realistic) African continent, a Mediterranean sea, and the barbarian pressure in Africa should be lessened or (better) african civs (I mean Mali and Ethiopia) should be given better means to fight Camel Archers hordes.
Balance depends a lot on civ placement, because most of its aspects were thought for the fixed map, where civ placement is always the same.

so, is it too hard compared to RFC classic?

When trying to achieve the UHV for the early civs where there is hardly any margin for error, it's definitely harder. I have achieved UHV's for Babylon and Egypt now on Monarch level, but in comparison with classic RFC, I would estimate for these 2:

RFC UHV chance: 20%
RFC RAND UHV chance: 10%

The main reason for the harder difficulty is the starting position. I have played a lot of bad ones (bad due to too much floodplains and lack of food resources for growth and health) and trying different routes to the UHV.

I'm going to try China and India next, but I suspect India to be near impossible...

nope. Some UHVs are actually easier to achieve, some harder, and some impossible. Same with other victory conditions. The balance is ok now IMHO, I disagree with Arkaeyn. It was indeed whack when the spawning civs would flip pretty much everything around, now that that's been fixed I don't see any major balance problem except the placement of the initial 4 civs because that influences the placement of all others, if I understood well. Egypt and especially Carthage should start more west, toward the Atlantic, while the first normally starts in the middle east and the second rarely spawns near Egypt. India too many times starts in Africa. Also, I think that some more efforts should be put into creating a better (I mean more realistic) African continent, a Mediterranean sea, and the barbarian pressure in Africa should be lessened or (better) african civs (I mean Mali and Ethiopia) should be given better means to fight Camel Archers hordes.
Balance depends a lot on civ placement, because most of its aspects were thought for the fixed map, where civ placement is always the same.I disagree with this. RFC RAND is, at the moment, just RFC with a random map (and a few slight tweaks). I personally think things like expansion stability need to be calculated in a completely different way than in RFC, because RFC is completely based on a fixed map, which RAND does not have, and I just think it doesn't make any sense. The point of RAND, as I see it, is to play a relatively normal game of Civ4 with historically accurate elements, not to play a historically accurate game with a random map.

The balance is suffering in RAND simply because the game was created with a fixed map in mind, but the map is not fixed, so that's a problem (obviously). For example, a lot of the UHVs depend on each civ's starting location being similar to those in RFC, but this is very rarely the case, so those UHVs become extremely difficult, if not impossible. In the same way, it doesn't make sense to use the same stability system for expansion because no one knows exactly which spots hurt your stability, and which ones don't. You can't create a stability map for a random map.

It's obvious that stability isn't based on RFC fixed stability maps. It has its own system, which is indeed harder to finetune, but can be improved with your feedback.

Thank you onedreamer for the info, that's what I needed to know in order to improve the map generator.

Rhye, any chance you will change the water level? If I'm not mistaken currently it is fixed on a rather low level, which seems to influence the map generation on exactly those points onedreamer mentioned: big africa, small Mediterranean sea, etc. (using Huge/High Likeliness). Or does a higher water level make it harder to fit in all the spawns (not enough land)?

Just out of curiosity: did you consider other map scripts like Earth.py instead of Terra.py to base your map script on? In my experience Earth.py resembles the Earth map better.

If any, RAND will benefit the most from improving the map script I think. Personally I would prefer that over any other changes too get more balance.

I disagree with this. RFC RAND is, at the moment, just RFC with a random map (and a few slight tweaks). I personally think things like expansion stability need to be calculated in a completely different way than in RFC, because RFC is completely based on a fixed map, which RAND does not have, and I just think it doesn't make any sense. The point of RAND, as I see it, is to play a relatively normal game of Civ4 with historically accurate elements, not to play a historically accurate game with a random map.

The balance is suffering in RAND simply because the game was created with a fixed map in mind, but the map is not fixed, so that's a problem (obviously). For example, a lot of the UHVs depend on each civ's starting location being similar to those in RFC, but this is very rarely the case, so those UHVs become extremely difficult, if not impossible. In the same way, it doesn't make sense to use the same stability system for expansion because no one knows exactly which spots hurt your stability, and which ones don't. You can't create a stability map for a random map.


This leads to an interesting question, which I haven't seen an answer to directly - what makes for a "good" and "balanced" game of RAND? There are several potential answers or combinations of answers, such as:

1. All civs being able to win with UHVs
2. Relative historical accuracy
3. All civs having a chance to win via normal victory methods
4. Game being fun and challenging throughout
5. Being as close to RFC as possible
6. Speed of play

Now, I don't really like the UHVs, so I look at relative success for different civs as being #3. I'm also keen on making sure that 2 and 4 work. I'm entirely willing to sacrifice #5 for the reasons I quoted from AnotherPacifist. The last is also crucially important for me, because I'm not on a great computer here.

If we know what our goals are, we can work towards them more easily. #1 and #3 are perhaps the most problematic in conjunction, but they all interact in ways that may make things difficult.

5. Being as close to RFC as possibleBut isn't the point of RAND to offer something different than RFC?

Well, yes, but playing World of Warcraft offers something different. RAND offers something very very similar, but different enough to stay fresh.

Here's a slightly more coherent attempt at what I was trying to say:

Vanilla Civilization attempts to create a rough model of the progression of recorded human history in a fun, challenging fashion, notable for having a flavor (or style) based around different civilizations having different leaders/music/colors/cities/personalities.

RFC is based on Vanilla Civ with several important goals/assumptions/differences:

1. Very few major alterations to the basic structure of Civilization - no new civs/techs/units/graphics (except for RFC Warlords Babylonians)
2. Fast playing and loading times
3. Increased historical accuracy by:
a. Dynamic civ spawning
b. UHVs, and AI pushes towards those goals
c. A highly customized earth map and 1 square between cities
d. New civilization traits
e. Stability

So what is RAND? RAND initially appears as a progression of RFC with a random map. But RFC is so tweaked for its map, its AI spawning and behavior, and its stability - all in the name of historical accuracy - that at a certain point, it's losing one of the key aspects of Civilization: remaining fun and challenging.

One of the keys to having a game be fun and challenging is that the player should have the necessary information to do what they need to do. (I've actually written about this! http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_95/533-Mid-Level-Exceptions) Random stability maps, poor spawning locations, and chaotic flipping can get in the way of that.

I would argue that, instead of viewing RAND as a progression of RFC which was a progression of Civ4 and Rhye's of Civilization, RAND might be better viewed as a midpoint between vanilla Civ4 and RFC. I consider the two most interesting and beneficial aspects of RFC to Civ4 to be dynamic spawning and stability, and I consider speed to always be critically important.

So, in general, my vision of what would make a "good and balanced" game of RAND would be one which includes the best aspects of stability and dynamic spawns, and I'm willing to sacrifice other parts before then. It's better, in my mind, to have a China which may be a superpower in the endgame than to have a China which can achieve its (insane) UHV.

A different viewpoint, which sees RAND as an extension of RFC, might call for China's UHV to be rebalanced to the point where its stability collapse by 1700 isn't as important.

I dont think this possible but the best solution to create a buton/key combo that overlays the players stability map on the current map ?

If not surely it would be possible to create key combo that just gives a text message about the stability in the currently moused over square.

Would this be an unfair advantage how much does the AI know about the stability maps ?

I dont think this would make the game too much easier.

Perhaps something involving the settlers aiming for the blue circles that the AI thinks will be good cities? Red circles for bad expansion? Or a lack of blue circles?

The lack of blue circles might already exist, come to think of it.

Here's my first RAND victory! I won a cultural victory without directly trying (not pumping up culture in those particular cities until the last couple of turns.) But my Rome was a wonder machine, and, if you'll note the screenshot, had a HUGE advantage: a mountain range across an isthmus which divided me from everyone else. There were some barbarian rushes from the north that caused a few problems, but other than that, I never was particularly threatened.

Also, I had stone and marble right next to my first two cities, which turned them into Wonder machines. I had the Oracle within 20 turns, which I turned into Theocracy and Christianity. That kept my stability strong for pretty much the entire game, with the exception of 5 turns of depression or so.

While it was fun to win, I must say that the map basically handed it to me.


The game also had the bizarre occurrence of a Babylonian respawn where no Babylonian cities had actually survived. Hadn't seen that before.

So what is RAND? RAND initially appears as a progression of RFC with a random map. But RFC is so tweaked for its map, its AI spawning and behavior, and its stability - all in the name of historical accuracy - that at a certain point, it's losing one of the key aspects of Civilization: remaining fun and challenging.

One of the keys to having a game be fun and challenging is that the player should have the necessary information to do what they need to do. (I've actually written about this! http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_95/533-Mid-Level-Exceptions) Random stability maps, poor spawning locations, and chaotic flipping can get in the way of that.

I would argue that, instead of viewing RAND as a progression of RFC which was a progression of Civ4 and Rhye's of Civilization, RAND might be better viewed as a midpoint between vanilla Civ4 and RFC. I consider the two most interesting and beneficial aspects of RFC to Civ4 to be dynamic spawning and stability, and I consider speed to always be critically important.

So, in general, my vision of what would make a "good and balanced" game of RAND would be one which includes the best aspects of stability and dynamic spawns, and I'm willing to sacrifice other parts before then. It's better, in my mind, to have a China which may be a superpower in the endgame than to have a China which can achieve its (insane) UHV.

A different viewpoint, which sees RAND as an extension of RFC, might call for China's UHV to be rebalanced to the point where its stability collapse by 1700 isn't as important.Dude, you write for The Escapist? :eek:

Anyway, I completely agree with mostly everything you said. Actually, I'd take it a step further and say that UHVs should be removed from RAND because they are simply based too much on luck, but I'm sure I'd get a bad response from the rest of the RFC community.

I got one thing published for them. Got another idea I may try to get in, but it was purely freelance.

Rhye, any chance you will change the water level? If I'm not mistaken currently it is fixed on a rather low level, which seems to influence the map generation on exactly those points onedreamer mentioned: big africa, small Mediterranean sea, etc. (using Huge/High Likeliness). Or does a higher water level make it harder to fit in all the spawns (not enough land)?

Just out of curiosity: did you consider other map scripts like Earth.py instead of Terra.py to base your map script on? In my experience Earth.py resembles the Earth map better.

If any, RAND will benefit the most from improving the map script I think. Personally I would prefer that over any other changes too get more balance.


I agree that the high likeliness could be made even more likely.
I'm not touching the water level. It is low because it allows a high landmass ratio, thus a smaller map (faster loading times) compared to the same mass with a higher level.

So what is RAND? RAND initially appears as a progression of RFC with a random map. But RFC is so tweaked for its map, its AI spawning and behavior, and its stability - all in the name of historical accuracy - that at a certain point, it's losing one of the key aspects of Civilization: remaining fun and challenging.

One of the keys to having a game be fun and challenging is that the player should have the necessary information to do what they need to do. (I've actually written about this! http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_95/533-Mid-Level-Exceptions) Random stability maps, poor spawning locations, and chaotic flipping can get in the way of that.



Flipping is going to be improved.
Spawning locations too, if you provide necessary feedback (I had already improved them, I need to know what's still wrong)

Random stability maps....it's hard to tell. Having cheat code enabled, you can have some info on the overall AI found value. Maybe I could add a rate (good/fair/bad), specific for stability, that can be shown when passing the mouse over a plot, without the cheat code. That would work for classic RFC as well.
What do you think?

... Actually, I'd take it a step further and say that UHVs should be removed from RAND because they are simply based too much on luck, but I'm sure I'd get a bad response from the rest of the RFC community.

That sounds like RFC blasphemy!... I like it :)
I realized that I wanted RFC Rand to be like RFC without pre-map knowledge. It's time for me to look at RFC Rand without comparing it to classic RFC.


Random stability maps....it's hard to tell. Having cheat code enabled, you can have some info on the overall AI found value. Maybe I could add a rate (good/fair/bad), specific for stability, that can be shown when passing the mouse over a plot, without the cheat code. That would work for classic RFC as well.
What do you think?

I like the idea of this non-intrusive addition. I like it better than some sort of graphical overlay.

@Arkeayn:

For me, RFC has always been about achieving the UHV. I have generated a interesting map playing as India. I failed the UHV, but I'm going to play it again without trying to achieve the UHV. I realize I have been playing RFC very narrowly (UHV focused and mainly early civs) and not enough to make any comparison. I'll leave the discussion to the more experienced RFC players...

How about we leave the UHV as an option in custom game that can be turned off? I personally wouldn't play RFC Random without the UHVs.

Flipping is going to be improved.
Spawning locations too, if you provide necessary feedback (I had already improved them, I need to know what's still wrong)

The two major problems are cramped locations and poor locations. Cramped locations being between another civ and a hard place, poor locations being filled with jungle and desert. I'll see if I can take some screen shots.

Random stability maps....it's hard to tell. Having cheat code enabled, you can have some info on the overall AI found value. Maybe I could add a rate (good/fair/bad), specific for stability, that can be shown when passing the mouse over a plot, without the cheat code. That would work for classic RFC as well.
What do you think?

I think that seems like a good general idea, at least to test out. There may be some side effects in various players' hands, but I can't figure out what they might be without testing.

How about we leave the UHV as an option in custom game that can be turned off? I personally wouldn't play RFC Random without the UHVs.

I don't think they need to be taken out, though I wouldn't mind it. I'd just rather have the game balanced for endgame right now.

For example, if we're aiming for historical accuracy, China and Japan would be major powers in the real-world game of Civilization. In RAND right now, Japan pretty regularly manages to stick around as a major power (and I have no idea how!) where China, if it does survive, is rarely relevant. I'd rather see tweaks to the Chinese help them survive and thrive into modern times before helping them achieve their UHV.

Once that's achieved, I'm willing to worry about the UHVs. But that's me personally.

Random stability maps....it's hard to tell. Having cheat code enabled, you can have some info on the overall AI found value. Maybe I could add a rate (good/fair/bad), specific for stability, that can be shown when passing the mouse over a plot, without the cheat code. That would work for classic RFC as well.
What do you think?I think that would be fine for now. I still think the actual stability maps need tweaking, but it's hard to say anything else if I can't actually look at them.

Here's a cramped spawn.

Granted, here I'm suffering a bit from having two squares between cities. But the Vikings have me thoroughly hemmed in. Stockholm probably should have flipped, but then I'd have them pretty trapped.

Ok, I didn't think it was possible, but I got the UHV for India on Monarch/Huge/High. In my first try I only just lost the population condition in 1200 AD, but in the second it was easier.

http://i478.photobucket.com/albums/rr144/Fierabras/th_Civ4ScreenShot0051-3.jpg (http://s478.photobucket.com/albums/rr144/Fierabras/?action=view&current=Civ4ScreenShot0051-3.jpg)

I spawned in Indonesia. To the south is Australia. In the first session the Khmer spawned on my island in the south and flipped Chittagong. I did take back my city later and conquered the Khmer, but some of my other cities went independent. In the second session, the Khmer spawned in Asia to the north and I could build massive cities. Plague kicked in just before 1200 AD (about 3 turns before), but I was ahead enough to clinch it.

Early gold from my 2nd city and settling my 3th city on the marble to the north-east (all connected without roads) made it easy to get the 5 religions.

So, keep the UHV's in :)

Here's a fairly poor spawn for Portugal. I was playing as another civ and switched over, so Lisbon had already been founded.

Lots of desert and desert hills, and the wheat and cattle are within reach of Sevilla (which fortunately flipped).

This looks playable, as I can send my army after the barbarian city to the west and try to send my extra settler somewhere more interesting by sea.

when you can flip some cities, you can't say you have a crippled start

Like I said, that one was playable, but the capital city was in a pretty weak place.

Rhye, I think he was referring more to the actual start location (the squares around the capital) than its position relative to other civs.

I won my first UHV today. I played as Germany, and managed to flip three superb Roman cities at the start, including the holy city of Christianity, which allowed me to stay stable for almost the entire game. I've attached a screenshot of them.

The Dutch spawned next to me and my Neapolitan powerhouse, and I ended up founding a city on the other side of Amsterdam, which led to them 1) becoming my vassal and 2) being so surrounded by my culture that Amsterdam had no squares to itself.

The Romans collapsed around 1300, and I moved in on their cities (including Rome), slowly building up until about 1700, when I attacked the Vikings to the south. It was a slow war of all Riflemen until my production managed to win out and I seized Trondheim, giving me my three controlled European cities.

By this time, I was far and away ahead of everyone else in every category. The difficult part was trying to decide what sort of victory to aim for. I decided to go for a Domination victory, which coincided with the UHV. I nibbled at independent cities, including Niwt-Rst until around 1900, when I started half of a world war by attacking the Arabs (who had Babylon and Mecca), and the other half started a turn later when a Congress gave the Turks a city of mine I decided I'd rather keep.

I got Babylon quickly, and picked up both Mecca and Sogut in 1939-40. My Panzers kept rolling over the Turks and Spanish, and towards the Russians, which something kept telling me was a bad idea.

The odd thing was that the Dutch had claim to most of the Turkish cities I conquered, which was killing my Expansion rating. Around 1965, after Greek and Egyptian revolts, I had to decide whether to go for the Domination victory or pack it in and just focus on research. My -47 stability rating made the decision for me. I Liberated a few cities to the Dutch, and started voting against myself in Congresses to get rid of cities more easily. I won the race to the Internet, which allowed me to beat the Portuguese by two turns to the tech victory in 1995.

So what did I take away from this? Well, there was some frustration at the relative ease of my victory. I didn't feel like I had to make terribly hard choices at any point in the game, with the exception of my collapsing stability in the 1960's. Part of that was the flip of such excellent cities, including the holy city. Capua's Christianity gave me such a boost to stability and money that the usual RFC/RAND challenge of going up against your own stability was generally moot. So there was a feeling that I got really lucky at the start, and then mostly coasted.

Second, other than the Romans making a half-hearted attempt to get their cities back after I spawned, nobody declared war on me. By the time I wanted to take their cities, I could do so at my leisure, with time the only enemy, especially as Holland and America had my back as vassals for most of the game.

The game took place on a Large map, not Huge, so there were no French, Persians, Indians, Malinese or Maya. Having slightly fewer civs led to, in my estimate, weaker alliances. I got the English and Portuguese on my side with Defensive Pacts, so I was able to isolate the other powers pretty easily. Turkey should have been my main competitor, and if they had alliances with any of the other major powers, I might have had at least some trouble. Never happened.

I got more RAM in the mail today, though, so I'm going to start playing with more Huge maps.

The user really needs to be able to choose the total number of CIV in RAND.

Personally I think you could fit them all in on a standard map

Seconded!!

I agree. It would make the new world smaller, therefore we can expect to know where America will spawn. Plus more civs and smaller maps leads to a more exciting game imo.

I tried a game with all civs on a large map (probably should've tried standard but whatever) and it does significantly improve gameplay. The games are much more exciting IMO, and there aren't any of those huge spaces of unoccupied land.

Well. This is an awkward start to a new relationship.

To be fair, I did move my initial settler up two squares and over one. But still. 1 - if I had a horse archer in the area, it's game over for Mother Russia, and 2. the culture wars are gonna be a massive pain in this game.

How could one horse archer destroy Russia when they started with over a dozen units? Also, where did you get those workers? VD?

On the previous turn, they founded Moscow and all their units were outside of it. A horse archer could have taken the city.

Yeah, my workers came from VD. I call them cold sores.

On the previous turn, they founded Moscow and all their units were outside of it. A horse archer could have taken the city.

Yeah, my workers came from VD. I call them cold sores.

what is VD?

Varietas Delecat (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=279708)

The link points to the download and info on it.

BTW, you watch too much Jay and Silent Bob. Although... Dogma is an awesome movie.
"God made man in His image..." Wooo CCD !!!! :woohoo:

Varietas Delecat (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=279708)
The link points to the download and info on it.

Ah, OK. Did not know that it is feasable to merge both mods though. Is merging R&F RAND and BUG feasable also, I miss alll the additional and very helpful info you ahve with BUG.

BTW, you watch too much Jay and Silent Bob. Although... Dogma is an awesome movie.
"God made man in His image..." Wooo CCD !!!! :woohoo:

Is that directed to me?

No, I have people do that stuff for me. I can't help you with this one, sorry.

Yeh. In your siggy is said God is a girl, so I was joking. You ever watch any of the Jay and Silent Bob movies? Like Strike Back, Dogma, etc

Just started up a game as China, and found the best starting location I've seen in RAND.

Only the horses to the north were a key resource that was difficult to get.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about this location is that it's right next to the "Mediterranean" and "Europe" is due south. India is isolated to the north, and Japan is on a somewhat distant island. So my Chinese superpower is also right in the thick of things.