Dawn of Civilization - an RFC modmod by Leoreth

Status
Not open for further replies.
Gee, just read through this whole thing. I can't wait to download it, but I have to wait until I get to 1: a better internet (hotel internet sucks!), and 2: a desktop, because my laptop crashes loading youtube videos these days. Hardly have anything on it, too.

Anyways, I really like the ideas in this mod, especially playable Byzantium. It's been said before, but if you need help with that, you may want to call in some of the people who did Playable Byzantines 610 AD. I have a few suggestion on the Civ itself, stemming from my experience with that one and RCFE: You might want to expand the stability map a little more from the Greece one, as I had a hard time not collapsing. Not make it a very stable civ, just enough to have a chance to last, though. This leads into my next idea(s):

In Playable Byzantines, the UP was rather weak last I checked (which was like in March anyway). All their naval units got Drill 1 and the collateral damage 1 promotions before Renaissance, it didn't work well. Perhaps you could use the UP from RFCE, the one where core areas cannot collapse due to instability (mainly the cities around the Aegean). Or something along those lines, Byzantium did last a long while despite all the problems it faced.
 
Thanks for the reply. Yeah, I'm always afraid of changing civics due to anarchy/stability issues, especially since I don't really have a firm grasp of how it all works. I have only been playing rfc for about a month or so and I switched to this mod almost immediately. Also, this is the first time I have played a non classical/ancient civ in rfc, so the nuances of late game rfc are unknown to me. Since all the guides are for regular rfc its hard getting help. I tried to go back and play rfc to get the hang of the stability etc but once you play a few games with this mod its hard to go back.

Alright, welcome to the RFC forums then. :)

Ok, new question, where do i go to find out how to read this stuff?

Just like you would read a foreign language. Do you see any familiar civic names? Does it have a + or - sign nearby? Any tech or era names?
From there on, you just add the 1's and 2's together and figure what it means. It's not really that hard to look at the civic combinations and figure that Republic and Totalitarianism don't go well together.
 
Hey, I really like this modmod - especially that you can play on marathon speed, thats pure fun for civs like Rome, Arabia and Mongolia. (I had an epic Arabia game including the raze of Rome, Paris, Vienna and Moscow before 1000 AD ;))

There seems to be a bug however with the Chinese UHV. The Pagoda/Academy UHV did not get checked in my attached game, I built them in Beijing and Sanshan.
 
I couldn't wait to get home, so I downloaded this to my laptop (which runs Windows 7). However, upon attempting to start the game, it says elements are not compatible with certain visual aspects, and it changes to the basic theme. Well, this happens to my friends with Civ and Windows 7 too.

But then, it doesn't start. The disk drive will fire up like it's about to start, but then it will go quiet, and do nothing. I've been having this trouble with the latest patch of RFC too. In fact, everything but the official patches and what came with the game will not even load, but that's another story. Does anyone else have Windows 7 and encounter something like this?

Edit: Fixed it.
 
This is a very exciting mod, great job Leoreth and thanks for all of this hard work.

Since you seem genuinely interested in feedback on ways to further improve this mod and ideas that will increase its historical accuracy, I wanted to make sure that I shared two suggestions that were concerns of mine with Rhye's original mod.

1) American Spawn Area currently includes Detroit

Unfortunately, Rhye set the American spawn area to include Detroit, which was a former fort in New France. I will admit that I have not had a chance to look through all 19 pages of this thread or to play your mod myself yet to see if this was addressed (just downloaded it now). I feel this is important because this is one of the critical tiles that if simply removed from the American spawn, would allow a realistic New France that includes this city to exist along with a historical flip of the original Thirteen Colonies to the United States.

Of course, it's just a suggestion and I'm open to hearing arguments about what may be the downside of this change. It should still allow Washington, New York and other important American coastal cities to form but won't force the French to give up Detroit to the Americans if it is settled in its historical location.

Here's an image that includes important settlements in New France, including Detroit, which was well within the territories borders:



2) Spain Spawn Area currently includes Southern and Eastern Iberia

Another item that I hope could be changed is the size of the Spanish Spawn Area. Currently, all previous cities on the Iberian peninsula will be forced to flip to Spain and while I agree that it's important to give them a strong start, I would like to propose an alternative (this would apply only in the 3000 BC start).

The Carthaginians colonized Iberia before the Romans and had a significant presence particularly in the South and the East. I feel that slightly decreasing the spawn area to allow the Phoenicians/Carthage to keep at least one city on the Mediterranean coast, which is well inside their sphere of influence would be a real improvement. Therefore, when Spain spawns, it could expand throughout most of the Iberian peninsula without automatically flipping a small area in the South. Since the spawn area would include all but a few tiles, cities including Madrid would not be starved for resources by earlier settlements in the South. This is also favourable in the sense that modern Spain never started with full control of the peninsula, rather they had to conquer the South from the Arabs in a conflict that lasted up to 1492 AD.

As things currently stand, there is a strong disincentive for Phoenicia/Carthage to colonize and develop any of Iberia as it is likely to lose this in a culture flip or be forced into war with Spain (and in preparation for this, try to take over all of Iberia, wiping Spain out from the game completely right after it spawns).

Here is an image of the former Carthaginian Empire. The purple represents their earlier and "core" possessions.



I've also included a modified image from Rhye's Atlas. I've coloured the four plots that I think should be taken out of the Spanish Spawn Area for the Phoenicians/Carthage. One or two more in the East, especially one where the Greek colony of Saguntum was may also be a good idea as a way of encouraging Greek players to colonize historically (especially now that, as I read earlier, Sicily is no longer in the Roman spawn area). If there is some disagreement about my idea and others think this would take too much away from the 3000 BC version spawn of Spain, I think the two most important tiles to remove from the spawn area would be Gibraltar (the most Southern point in Iberia) and the location of the Carthaginian city of Malaca (which was an important ancient settlement).

Please let me know what you think of these ideas Leoreth, and everyone else as well!
 

Attachments

  • Spain Spawn.png
    Spain Spawn.png
    365.5 KB · Views: 248
The guy put the Khmer capital to Bangkok, I don't think he cares about Detroit being in a spawn zone or not, like he has said before, he is not interested in making a more "historical" game at all.
 
He's not interested in making the game more historical at the expense of gameplay. These sound like good suggestions, especially Detroit, but I think the Spain/Carthage one might be too damaging to the Spanish AI.
 
He's not interested in making the game more historical at the expense of gameplay. These sound like good suggestions, especially Detroit, but I think the Spain/Carthage one might be too damaging to the Spanish AI.

This was my understanding as well, as it seemed that a lot of the changes in this mod were meant to increase the level of historical accuracy. For example, removing Judaism and adding Protestantism/Zoroastrianism, limiting wonders by religion to prevent strange combinations and so on.

For the Detroit point, I think the change would be absolutely negligible to the United States, as I don't recall them founding a city there and at present, the French or anyone else could just found a city one tile away to avoid the flip but still have virtually the same impact on the Americans. The idea is to allow the French to settle an important city and not have it flip along with English coastal cities.

Regarding Spain, I suggested limiting the change to Gibraltar/Malaca if there was concern about its impact. This way, because the flip also converts foreign culture, Spain would basically have all of the same territory they do at the moment, with the exception of the very south of the Peninsula and could easily take it culturally or militarily if they were intent on doing so. As it stands, a player either has to accept losing all of their Iberian cities as Phoenicia or go to war with Spain immediately after spawn and taking the whole landmass (why limit themselves to a small part of the South if war is inevitable?) This ends up wiping Spain out which I think is a lot more disruptive!

Recall also that this would only apply in the 3000 BC start, as in 600 AD, Phoenicia/ Carthage is long gone.

In the end, these are both just suggestions. While I appreciate people's questions about whether or not the changes will be implemented, I'm more interested in learning whether you feel that the arguments I'm making are sound and seem like something that would improve the mod.

I'm glad this has stimulated some discussion already :goodjob:.
 
There was one other suggestion that came to my mind which I'd like everyone's feedback about.

I noticed that in subsequent versions of this mod, some UHVs and Unique Powers have been modified or replaced. Now that Carthage has been swapped for Phoenicia, I think we have a good opportunity to make a UP change here as well.

The current UP, the Power of Mercenaries gives Carthage halved mercenary hiring and maintenance costs. While I had mixed feelings about this for Carthage, I think we have a number of more appropriate options for Phoenicia that would improve gameplay and further reinforce their UHVs and play style.

One of the serious problems with the current UHV is the potential exploit. Players can presently "rent out" their own Phoenician/Carthaginian units for full price and maintenance and then hire foreign units for half the cost. This conceivably allows you to replace your own army with a larger army of mercenaries while earning a good amount of gold in the process.

Here are two suggestions, although I'm excited to hear about alternatives from other mod users as well:

1) The Power of Maritime Trade (a): Coastal Tiles earn +2 Gold

The Phoenicians are probably the best known ancient Mediterranean traders in the world. During the era of Carthage in particular, they had such overwhelming control over maritime trade that it earned them Roman scorn.

Giving Phoenicia +2 gold from coastal tiles would encourage them to build coastal cities and make use of the coastal plots. It can be differentiated from Mali's power in that it only applies to coastal tiles, not ocean tiles nor any land tiles that produce commerce. Moreover, it would make them extremely susceptible to naval blockades and encourage them to build up their naval power (as they were forced to do historically), to protect this sea commerce. It also strongly reinforces their UHV to build Mediterranean cities and discourages them from building cities inland, which would give them a unique playstyle. This creates incentives for them to colonize historical locations that they once controlled that are surrounded by water and have little productive land (such as the North Coast of Africa east and far west of Carthage, Sardinia, Sicily, etc.).

If you think +2 gold is too much, I think more or less the same power with +1 gold would still be a better alternative for Phoenicia than the current Mercenaries UP.

1) The Power of Maritime Trade (b): Coastal Cities have +2 Trade Routes

This power would be very similar to the effect that the Great Lighthouse traditionally provides. Again, the aim here is to encourage Phoenicia to build coastal cities and reflect their extremely prolific role in maritime trade. It has a lot of the same underlying logic as the power above but just strives to accomplish this in a different way.


My personal preference is some version of the first power. Currently there is no civilization that has a boost from coastal tiles and I think if any is appropriate, it is definitely Phoenicia.

The second power is nevertheless another good choice. I sincerely think that either one would be more appropriate and further improve gameplay over the current UP.

Which do the rest of you prefer? Do any of you feel that the current power should be kept instead? If so, why?
 
Couldn't AGREE MORE! This is very much needed, and I don't mind which one goes ahead, (perhaps the trade routes one though, but I'm fine either way). But that's an excellent suggestion!

And as for the Khmer having there capital as Bangkok right now, (which is in the wrong place anyway), although I would prefer it goes back to Angkor, why not rename the Khmer capital to Phnom Penh? Which is the current capital of Cambodia, that would be much better then Bangkok
 
And as for the Khmer having there capital as Bangkok right now, (which is in the wrong place anyway), although I would prefer it goes back to Angkor, why not rename the Khmer capital to Phnom Penh? Which is the current capital of Cambodia, that would be much better then Bangkok

I may be wrong here, but I recall reading that they creator wanted to make Khmer more of a conglomerate of the Southeast Asian nations, rather than just Khmer.
 
Then rename the civilization, but I also remember him saying, that if I could come up with a better name, he would change it, so there is my better name
 
How about replacing the Khmer with Siam/Thailand? It sounds like interesting UHV conditions could be made. No European colonies in south-east Asia in XXXX AD, Build X Buddhist Monasteries and/or Temples and/or Stupas by XXXX AD, I could think of more.
 
Okay, you stack 6 longbowmen in all your cities, expand naturally and build your cities' culture like you normally would. Once Europe's economy allows colonialism, your first UHV is practically achieved.
 
Just looked at the differences between the two mods. Actually, they have done similar things : Phoenicia instead of Carthage, map changes... But several things are impossible to merge, like the fact that corossol took away the mercenaries, the macemen and made axemen not accessible to major civs. On the other side I suppose other changes like the religion changes could be merged even if it means having 8 religions (Rise of Mankind has 11).
But would Leoreth and Corossol like to merge their mods ?
 
Why can't submods of RFC not have more than 7 religions? I mean Rise of Mankind has 11 like you said, so whats holding them back??
 
Has anyone else noticed Leoreth hasn't been on here in three weeks? He/she had posted nearly every other day before that. Should we be worried? Who will update this to the final RFC patch?
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom