French 1st UHV Condition

Does someone found out where are the locations for each Province that France must control (either found or conquer) in order to meet the 1st UHV Conditions ?

I tried every single bit of area in south of France, using the World editor to settle then raze the city, and checking for each of them if the Provence condition was met. None of them did...

Also I have no idea where to settle a city to meet some of the province locations conditions (like Swabe or something like this). Is there a map for each location available somewhere ? Could not find anything over the net. It should be more documented and a specific description of the conditions should be made. People will go mad otherwise, knowing that besides (and it does not make sense IMO), ONLY 1 square meets the condition. For example, you founded Dijon (capital city of Burgundy IRL), you do not meet the condition. You settle Macon 1 square southern and you're done !! It's absurd, the province condition should be extended to several squares a one province is not one square.

Press Ctrl and hover mouse over the map and the provinces will be displayed. To own the province you need at least one city in the province while no other civ/independent/barb has a city in it.

If you instead would like to see future spawn points of other civs press Shift instead and hover a spawn area.

Since the german and burgundian cities are gonna flip shortly after you completed UHV1 try to found the cities in the worst places possible just before deadline.

A big thank you Ezzlar !

Tip for the UHV:

Cities can be founded or conquered, so here goes the list I use:

Core France:
Ile-de-France founded
Orleans founded
Bordeaux (Aquitaine) conquered
Toulouse (Provence) conquered
Marseille (Provence) conquered
Lyon (Burgundy) conquered
Champaigne founded
Picardy founded (better then wait for the independent spawn with crossbowmen)

West Germany:
Lorraine founded (exactly one tile out of the German spawn area)
Augsburg (Swabia) conquered
Luebeck (Saxony) conquered

North Italy:
Milan (Lombardy) conquered
Florence (Tuscany) conquered

Northeastern Spain:
Barcelone (Catalonia) conquered

Have in mind these:
Barbarian cities should be your first to conquer, as you start with an advantage against barbs (Bordeaux and Toulouse can be easily managed with your first Axeman and 1-2 trained Skirmishers - or Mounted Sergeant if it takes a bit longer)

Be careful with barbarians razing the independents before you get to them. I've seen Milan respawning before UHV1 limit, but I'm not sure about the others. Having to use settlers for Lombardy and Swabia can destroy your game. And be careful too with the Norse and Luebeck (Saxony).

I recommend getting Catalonia as early as possible (after Bordeaux and Toulouse seemed nice to me). When Cordoba or Spain get big enough to want it, you're already the Western Europe Master. And Barcelona is a great city to have.

Not much barbs in your core area, but Italy and Germany will be filled with those. Barcelona on the other hand is almost free of them, and it gets better as Cordoba grows (a better friend then Spain I would say, as it's easier to conquer later)

And the most annoying problem you have to face: Vikings coming from the sea. I've seem they attacking Picardy, but not any other province (as was common on Aquitaine in earlier versions). So because of this (and of your already hard UHV) you MUSTN'T build any city on Normandy, Bretagne or any of your already owned provinces until after UHV1 (you won't have time to achieve UHV1 and make any other thing in the process).

I hope this is useful

Actually I'm really curious about this UHV
Do you guys think it's still too hard in RFCE 1.01?
There was some complaining a couple versions ago that it's really hard, so France got a little stronger starting units and other small benefits
Maybe it's too easy now?

Easy? It's still one of the hardest, just because of the few turns you have to accomplish it.

Actually the most problematic thing on this is the possibility of Augsburg and Milan to be destroyed by the barbs early. Surely you wont be able to produce Mounted Sergeants and settlers enough if in UHV1 mid game you discover the city you were planning to conquer was destroyed, and now you have to build it, or the city you were planning to build is now a spawned indy city (and most probably by crossbowmen, too hard for a limited mounted sergeants army to handle), and you have to conquer it.

The problem surely goes around those 3 cities: Augsburg, Milan and Lubeck

I've seen more then once Augsburg and Milan being destroyed in early game. Too many barbs even for the indys. Milan respawns but with crossbowmen, something that is quite hard to handle. You could always get them earlier, but to keep those cities you will need a good army there to stop the barbs, an army that you will need to get Marseille, Lyon and Barcelona. Lubeck on the other hand I've never seen being conquered by the barbs (but the Norse sometimes catch it, so it shouldn't be your last city to conquer).

To make it better, not exactly easier, but to be sure it's possible (and not a matter of luck), these barbs shouldn't be able to destroy those indy cities. Picardy will still be a matter of attention, but not as rough. If you start making settlers early, you will most probably build a city there. If you start making mounted sergeants early, you'll have enough to handle it's capture.

Or more mercs. That would actually make everything quite easier. They will leave you to make settlers, so even if the cities are destroyed or respawned you will have settlers and manpower to face anything. And as villages and other cottage improvements (or commerce improvements as well) are common throughout the land, it's not hard to get enough money to hire lots of them.

On both ways I'm sure it'll still be hard, but less dependent on luck, as it is now with those barb freaks.

My third game in a row that Milan is destroyed by early barbs. I'm guessing the same fate for Augsburg, will check later.

Checked and it was destroyed too. So both of these cities are now falling easily to the barbs. This makes the French game even more difficult.

I found the 1st English UHV (in the Beta versions - haven´t play them on 1.01 yet and if the French were still alive - they came with unitstacks of 20+ against me) or the Arab UHV of the vanillagame harder but it is still truly one of the hardest. I was able to accomplish it by almost only building units (incl. workers) several times. I conquered Bordeaux and Toulouse with the 2 starting axeman (promote to city attack, after the conquest of Toulouse both axeman can have level 3) then headed for Barcelona and sended 2-3 skirmishers I meanwhile build as assistance to weaken the defending archers there, then attacked Marseille with the same tactic. Left Lyon for the alone moment - it´s got a stronger defence - and marched into Northern Italy where I usually loose my first non-skirmisher units but substitution is allready produced by this time. In Lyon a French revolt is likely to occur after Marseille is taken and that is the perfect moment to attack so keep about 3 units near the city. In my last game Augsburg immediatly flipped to my side after I´ve conquered Milan - an unexpected but big help which made the UHV easy (this time!). Some of the workers I´ve been building before were used to complete/renovate the road Paris-Milan and started constructing one in direction Lübeck. Of course always guarded by two spearman and probaby axeman! This helped me saving a lot of time.

@ AbsintheRed: I´ve noticed no difference in the starting units of France. Still two archers and axeman like in the Beta versions in my game.

P.S.: allways check for mercenaries! I was once able to buy two extremely high promoted (city attack 3 + drill) swordsman which made it possible to encounter Lyon very early and easierd the rest a lot!
So make sure you allwayshave enough money. Don´t worry too much about science ´til the 1st UHV is finished. On Monarch I never had problems with the scientific catch up after 840.

The french got +1 axeman and +1 worker in Beta 14
Previously they had only 1 axeman on start

Oops, sorry! It´s been a long time!

Hi! I'm trying France in 1.0 on viceroy.
I've restarted for the third time now
At least I haven't seen barbs (outside their two cities) at all, only indies. The first two axemen managed to conquer the two barb cities - is there some additional bonus vs barbs there? (Even with the normal bonus the chance says 20%, and they did it almost unhurt). I've conquered Barcelona and the burgundian cities with swordsmen, then Milan, but didn't have enough left for the rest. Building settlers and military only I still had 4-5 territories left by 840. It does seem hard for me. (On the other hand, I just tried a Swedish game and it seemed too easy. But of course we need different difficulty scenarios, though it seems to me the star symbols at the civ selection might not exactly show this difficulty)

Fourth try, now made the 1st UHV by capturing Luebeck and Strasburg on the last turn (840).
One problem with earlier try was that I didn't notice I don't have to settle Normandy and Bretagne.

After that, it's much easier. Genovans easily killed (though managed to stay on the islands).
Germany attacked after a while, but captured Frankfurt and made peace, later they vassalized to me. Later I killed Burgundy. Spain declared war once but didn't want to fight.
As leading the scoreboard I was chosen for Crusade and captured Jerusalem on the first crusade. They always rebel though, I'll probably not be able to keep it till 1291. Game still going on...
update: made it. Though I'm not quite sure about this rebellion thing. I've got a dozen knights in a city or only one, and the chance given for rebelling is almost the same. In fact, it has happened a few times that when they rebelled ( and it seems the random seed is locked, so no reload works) I've reloaded and removed all but one units, lowering the chance and then the city was kept by me... Anyway, when I have an army that could capture a whole country, how can simple citizens capture that whole city with all the army in it? That seems a bit unrealistic. Maybe they could drive the army out, or have a prolonged unrest...

Well, trying again the French game in 1.1

A lot better then in 1.0. Now Augsburg and Milan are not wiped from the map. But what they lost in barb acitivities, we gained. Early Germanic barbs appear a lot more near your borders. At least the intensity of the longobards in Italy has decreased as well, so it's easier to occupy it. The vikings were reduced to a single spawn right outside Picardy (at least until UHV1, didn't play after it still, anyways I guess in 1.0 was already like that, but it seemed to me it was delayed some years from 1.0, great job!).

But 2 things kept me from accomplishing UHV1 in my 1st attempt:

Besides the early barb activity demanding some attention (totally manageable), I had the opportunity to hire a Single Merc: A Generic Swordsman with Str1, Drill1 and Vs. Hvy Inf. It had its uses against the Vikings and some barbs. IMO it was a really poor number of Mercs, if I had the opportunity to hire just another, an archer, spearman, axeman or swordsman I surely would have fulfilled UHV1. The annoying part of it was the message of available mercs popping for Catalonia just after I conquered it (and guess what: it had orthodoxy! So how could I get the merc before UHV1? Monastery + Missionary + 20 turns? And if after all of this the merc disappeared? Wouldn't that be awesome?). If that wasn't enough, just after I founded Metz (Lorraine) another message popped for... Lorraine! If I didn't leave Lorraine to be founded after Champaigne and Picardy I would sure fail to keep it or conquer the indy that spawns in Picardy (I believe it still spawns right?). So with an unreachable merc, and another that would surely be available only by the end of the IXth century (if it did wait for me), I had to use my MSs to control the barbs: A unit that has a high mobility, that's true, but doesn't receive def bonus (something awesome against the dumb marauding barbs) and is weak against the barb that appears the most: spearmen.

So I defended my self across rivers with MSs and lost some of them.

The second thing that really destroyed my strategy was a well-placed marvelous-built Walls in Augsburg. This made the city not fall nor lose units to any barbs, ammounting 3 Spearmen and 1 Archer. When I saw this I headed to Saxony first to see if the indy lost these units. When I came back it had 6 Spearmen, a Archer and a Skirmisher. So I lost.

I returned to the beggining of my last save (a lot earlier then the final date, just after I hired the merc and took Barcelona) and went right out for Augsburg to catch it while it still had a single archer and spearman. That done I got the UHV.

Mercs IMO should be dramatically increased, but I already mentioned that a lot and in a lot of topics, so I won't go further on this. But these walls are totally game breaking. French 1st UHV is one of the hardest UHVs of the game, because it has a tight strategy to be accomplished: without a structured empire and a variety of units, you must rely on conquest after conquest with MSs (the only good mover you have at this time, because Skirmishers are useless), workers gained, made and captured to make you survive the huge size you must achieve quickly and knowledge about exactly what may happen - the Germanic barbs near Paris, Longobards in Italy, Walled Augsbourg, Viking raid in Picardy, Viking-wanted Saxony, Venetian unit-stealing spawn, because if you don't make everything right you may even luckly accomplish UHV1, but you'll break just after it with Burgundy cutting you in mid, Germany stealing your german lands and the lack of units to properly defend yourself, with a stagnated badly connected empire.

I think that stopping the indys from making walls is a good solution (at least until french 1st UHV), but if we had more mercs this won't be necessary at all (what about a MS merc? I think I already hired one MS in a previous french game in a previous version, it would be really helpful to have it back).

amrod said:

Though I'm not quite sure about this rebellion thing. I've got a dozen knights in a city or only one, and the chance given for rebelling is almost the same. In fact, it has happened a few times that when they rebelled ( and it seems the random seed is locked, so no reload works) I've reloaded and removed all but one units, lowering the chance and then the city was kept by me... Anyway, when I have an army that could capture a whole country, how can simple citizens capture that whole city with all the army in it? That seems a bit unrealistic. Maybe they could drive the army out, or have a prolonged unrest...

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I made a thread about this - rebellions are one of the most annoying things in the game imo.

Spirictum said:

you must rely on conquest after conquest with MSs (the only good mover you have at this time, because Skirmishers are useless)

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I use Axemen as well - they can use the existing roads to move very quickly and are particularly useful in Italy. It's more important to build a big stack and go methodically through each area than to rush around as fast as you can imo.

Spirictum said:

you may even luckly accomplish UHV1, but you'll break just after it with Burgundy cutting you in mid, Germany stealing your german lands and the lack of units to properly defend yourself, with a stagnated badly connected empire.

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You can avoid the German stealing by settling the tiles right outside the German homeland. In my game I broke the Germans cos my lands were all right outside their spawn site, so they had no way to expand west and just stagnated with two or three cities.

I only use the initial Axemen. Usually one dies at Toulouse (as it's likely that another barb spawned near your core, and that's the last free barb kill you have).

After that, having the option to make a 5 (equal to axeman) 3 (that's a huge advantage) and starting 40% withdraw chances (good to not lose lots of troops) you'll have an amazing unit that covers your whole empire in 3 turns max (ignoring far away lands like Saxony). It has the penalty of -25% vs cities, but the idea is to attack and retreat, so a 1.0 Archer won't be able to handle the next MS.

My mistake was to make a spearman to defend against barbs. I wasn't aware of the barbs being mostly Spearmen and Axemen (it was in the beggining of the game, it didn't have many barbs yet), so an Axeman or a Swordsman would have been a lot better, and could even be later used to get other cities. But the bulk of my army is the MS, as I may use the roads to go back and forth if barbs spawn near my core.

And about Germany, of course you should make the Lorraine city outside the German spawn area, and Luebeck is already outside it. But that's not true for Augsburg, and it'll flip. But the problem I was talking about is if you win UHV1 in the limit with few troops remaining. If this happens, Burgundy will cut your empire in the middle, and Saxony will most likely fall to germany, in the turn they think it's possible to capture it from you. If you can't recover fast enough, Lorraine goes too.

To be sure this is not going to happen, you must have some MS to get the burgundian capital ASAP. Refuse the flip, and put them right outside the spawn area just above Dijon. In the worst scenario, Burgundy will have 2 Axemen and 2 Crossbowmen in the city. If you catch it and remove all your units from the flip zone before passing the turn (by retreating or deleting the units that can't flee this turn) Burgundy is dead! Then you can start thinking on Germany.

Spirictum said:

I only use the initial Axemen. Usually one dies at Toulouse (as it's likely that another barb spawned near your core, and that's the last free barb kill you have).

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Ah, I always send the initial Axemen straight off to Bordeaux and Toulouse. Use the free victories to get city attack promotions and they are awesome in the future.

Spirictum said:

After that, having the option to make a 5:strengh: (equal to axeman) 3 (that's a huge advantage) and starting 40% withdraw chances (good to not lose lots of troops) you'll have an amazing unit that covers your whole empire in 3 turns max (ignoring far away lands like Saxony). It has the penalty of -25% vs cities, but the idea is to attack and retreat, so a 1.0:strengh: Archer won't be able to handle the next MS.

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I use MS to harrass and then axemen to take the cities. The MS are faster but the Axemen are 50% cheaper and 25% more effective against cities. And they get CA promotions which makes them extremely effective once they have won some victories and built up some momentum. My initial two Axemen got promoted to CA3, and after that I used them to take cities after MS and other units had weakened them. Made it very easy to conquer all territories, even Augsburg with walls. Also, Axemen who survive extreme odds battles can be given hill promotions and used to defend hill cities like Florence.

Spirictum said:

And about Germany, of course you should make the Lorraine city outside the German spawn area, and Luebeck is already outside it. But that's not true for Augsburg, and it'll flip. But the problem I was talking about is if you win UHV1 in the limit with few troops remaining. If this happens, Burgundy will cut your empire in the middle, and Saxony will most likely fall to germany, in the turn they think it's possible to capture it from you. If you can't recover fast enough, Lorraine goes too.

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I leave Augsburg empty as soon as I win the victory condition - that way all the barbs prioritise it and it usually falls to them before Germany spawns. Never had a problem with Germany DWing on spawn - I always make sure to leave most of my axemen near to the German border which discourages them from attacking.

Same for Burgundy - by the time they spawn I have secured the UHV and am rapidly improving land and building walls to get my economy up and cities safe. It's probably linked to how many axemen I build - they are cheaper than MS so I will always have more, and are stronger against cities so more likely to survive the rapid expansion.

Spirictum said:

To be sure this is not going to happen, you must have some MS to get the burgundian capital ASAP. Refuse the flip, and put them right outside the spawn area just above Dijon. In the worst scenario, Burgundy will have 2 Axemen and 2 Crossbowmen in the city. If you catch it and remove all your units from the flip zone before passing the turn (by retreating or deleting the units that can't flee this turn) Burgundy is dead! Then you can start thinking on Germany.

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I never do this - personally I think killing civs on spawn with spammy tactics then deleting all units in the flip zone is a very cheap strategy and just undermines the game. I will usually just ensure that Toulouse, Orleans and all cities surrounding Burgundy are well defended with walls wherever possible then build up an army and conquer them once the forced peace expires. Has never failed me yet!

And by far making the game easier is to found the french capital at Dijon. Not only crippling the Burgundians but also giving you access to stone which is one of the best strategic resources.

Indeed, it seems a good strategy Swarbs, I'll try making more axemen on my next attempt.

About the lame strategy of conquering the capital in the first turn, I've convinced myself of this lameness with the lameness of the revolution system of RFC. I love RFC for its historical focus, but the revolution in it seems poorly designed (specially with the RevolutionDCM already out there).

Suddenly, a city you have asks to be part of a new nation. If you say yes, it's ok, if you say no, a war is triggered, then every turn you may lose one or more units you have in the flip zone to this new nation. These units just vanish from you and appear somewhere else (most of the times in a place it couldn't reach in one turn of movement). The number of turns this keeps happening is so big, that's virtually impossible to defend lands that want to flip: The more troops you gather, the more flip to the enemy. There is no flipping back (do they all want to be with the revolution always?).

If you had a Maceman with CAII it goes to your enemy as a Macemen without upgrades, in a place it couldn't reach in one turn ready to destroy you. The scenario when you have only an archer is extremely ridiculous: A single archer garrison with CGII flips to the enemy as you pass the turn, then it just leaves your city empty, is teleported to somewhere far away, it loses all the training it had to become a non-upgraded archer with the objective of taking your city. So why it left the city in the first place? Is it historical that rebels were teleported and brainwashed upon revolution? To make things fair for the one who held the city before revolution?

Revolution DCM makes it a lot more realistic: You don't lose your troops, cities actually rebel (turns of disorder, losing the bonus of defense) and new units spawn right outside the city. Both new troops spawned and the ones defending from revolution start hurt, depicting the battle inside the city and/or the defection of some of the garrison to the revolution. The revolution may get spies as well inside the city, ready to do a mission. The units that appear for the revolution are units that you had in the garrison, or that you could make in the city (Not 2 Lancers of Burgundy in an unsuspected grassland between Lyon and Orléans, that you couldn't make because you lacked the tech for it, or a horde of HAs that appear from nowhere in the desert to Arabia, a unit Byzantium can't make at all).

So I convinced myself that the lameness of revolution in RFC can be countered by another lameness: And if you are so powerful that you just take the capital of the revolution just after it starts? This way you discourages revolution. To make it better and not let the revolution go on after the destruction of the civ in the first turn, you remove the garrisons and any weapons on the provinces, so they can't rebel (LOL! It's as absurd as teleporting single archer garrisons and brainwashing them).

That's why I find this strategy not so lame as to avoid using it (not like loading in turns of flip or minor rebellions, something totally game breaking). Not that I want to change the way RFC works, but I find it a lot poorer then the Revolution DCM.

Spirictum said:

About the lame strategy of conquering the capital in the first turn, I've convinced myself of this lameness with the lameness of the revolution system of RFC. I love RFC for its historical focus, but the revolution in it seems poorly designed (specially with the RevolutionDCM already out there).

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I agree with everything you say there, which is why I almost always say yes to revolutions. It's a lame system because it is encouraging you to say yes and trying to force the civ to emerge rather than giving you the option to stop it.

On the one hand that is quite historic, as many civs couldn't stop these new civs from emerging or keep large enough garrisons to stop them. In fact, the main problem is the unit building system in Civ - in RL civilizations could never keep large armies in multiple cities due to problems such as cost and desertion, and generally had small garrisons to keep the peace with armies raised as necessary to respond to any invasions. So in RL there wasn't, for example, the option for the British to stop the American revolution by keeping a massive army in Jamestown, or for France to stop the emergence of Burgundy with armies. They just had to watch these events unfold, then mobilise their armies to try and control the aftermath. In that regard, the mechanism for Burgundy is quite historical, as it tries to minimise as much as possible the ahistorical standing armies that are a feature of all Civ games. The Revolution DCM would probably help address this, but you still get the problem of a forewarned human being able to move all their armies to the site of the revolution the turn before it happens, and thus outnumbering the revolting army and preventing the revolution.

On the other hand, the revolution system is very poor when it comes to emergences such as the Arabs and Ottomans. They didn't suddenly magically take control of large portions of territory through revolution, they conquered them by invading an existing nation through force of arms. So I find this quite annoying, as you are essentially limited by the game auto resolving historic battles such as as Yarmouk and Manzikert. This is something that would probably benefit from the Revolution DCM. Still, atm it adds to the challenge, so I will usually decide to allow the flip then wait ten turns and beat the living out of anyone who dares challenge me!