Beta 12

[merijn_v1]

Towns are the best way to protect your roads from pillage...

I rather have my roads destroyed than my towns. You can rebuild your roads in a few turns. It takes much more time to let your village grow to a town.

 

[AbsintheRed]

BogorodiceDevo soundtrack is stunning. I never heard this version... Who found it, from where and who is singing? The lyrics are in Old Russian or Bulgarian, but the accent does not sound Russian at all. I just stopped what I was doing and played that soundtrack again and again. We need to come up with more original soundtracks like that!

3Miro added the soundtrack, I'm not sure where he found it
It's actually a Serbian Orthodox Chant
Agreed with you, absolutely fits the mod, it was a superb choice

 

[AbsintheRed]

Another note. I found it a bit curious that Education lets you build Inns. (Reminds me of the posters from the 30s that warn about choosing the way of education over the way of alcoholism).

We can move Inns to a nearby tech, I don't mind it
Any suggestions?

And another one: Is the province of Picardy necessary? It is very small and has only a few tiles available (when the other cities are built, like Paris) and it needs a city there for the English UHV (cf Aquitania which is pretty large). Though it's true that even a coastal city can be good, just it'll take long time to build anything

Picardy is there exactly because the English
You have to control the province. This means:
- you have a city there, and noone else has
- or your culture covers all tiles of the given province

Btw in my English game, Byzantine, Bulgaria and Hungary didn't collapse even in 1450s and Byz and Hun was actually leading and Austria vassalized. (As a side note, IRL Hungary didn't collapse even when most of the country was under Turkish occupation, and only a crescent shape part remained. In RFCE such a country would have large chance of collapsing.)

Hungary should decline only after the Ottomans crush the country, until that they should be superior to Austria

in my games recently Bulgaria looks like they could use a retuned ... they're to weak early on, hardly able to take more than a single city from Byzans ... but on the other hand they almost never collapse due to being to strong when they're up and running (with the narrow path to Kievan steppes Mongols aren't a problem, and after their initial bout they're to friendly with Byzans to war in that direction, and from what i see Hungary doesn't have any interest in fighting them

Bulgaria often gets too powerful, I agree
OTOH Hungarian-Bulgarian conflicts were not too serious
We should increase the chance of Bulgarian-Byzantine wars in the 12-13th century

Having said that, balancing feedback is a little off at the moment
There were some improvements in the AI behaviour, and the Ottomans will be a real threat to all these countries from the next version

 

[AbsintheRed]

@everyone else:
Towns are powerful enough
Giving them more production is not a good idea, we already have plenty of production
Having said that, I agree that they are too vulnerable against plagues
They should grow quicker, or plague should destroy them slower

 

[amrod]

Hungary should decline only after the Ottomans crush the country, until that they should be superior to Austria

Yes, I actually agree with that, just noted it for feedback results. Actually the historical fact that Habsburgs first became kings over Hungary not by conquest but politics and marriage means that it could have easily been the other way around (historians don't read this).

Though Byantines not collapsing was strange, in another game Turks destroyed them in a few turns. Maybe has to do something with that I once noted Byzantines storing all their offensive forces (a huge stack) in one city, I think it was actually Edirne, which probably resulted in those forces lost upon flip. And maybe they didn't do this the other time...

As of towns, they do grow slowly. For the production, we were only brainstorming.. I'd like also the idea of making them grow a bit faster.

 

[AbsintheRed]

Yes, I actually agree with that, just noted it for feedback results. Actually the historical fact that Habsburgs first became kings over Hungary not by conquest but politics and marriage means that it could have easily been the other way around (historians don't read this).

Not only it could have been the other way around... It should have been the other way around

 

[Sian]

I for one have no problem seeing Byzans often setting up shop as a diaspora covering greece and the southenmost balkan ... they've been doing that lately in my games

 

[AbsintheRed]

Changes on cottage upgrades:
Cottage -> Hamlet 10 turns
Hamlet -> Village 15 turns
Village -> Town 25 turns

Overally reduced Cottage -> Town from 70 turns to 50 turns
Any thoughts?

 

[rrosen]

I also liked Tigranes suggestion, to not have plague affect towns.

 

[AbsintheRed]

I also liked Tigranes suggestion, to not have plague affect towns.

IMO plague should affect them, maybe we can reduce it so doesn't completely ruins everything
"Pillage" back one tier every 3 turns?
In my experience most plagues affect your cities for 4-6 turns. So this way they will reduce your cottages 1 or max 2 tiers

 

[amrod]

IMO plague should affect them, maybe we can reduce it so doesn't completely ruins everything
"Pillage" back one tier every 3 turns?
In my experience most plagues affect your cities for 4-6 turns. So this way they will reduce your cottages 1 or max 2 tiers

I think let's try your suggestions and let us test it.

 

[rrosen]

What is the primary reason to have them affected? Historicity, gameplay, or both?

What does a town represent anyway? The actual population living there, or in some more abstract way the economical infrastructure? For me, the black death has two aspects: First, the devastation and death, represented by decrease in population. Secondly, the relatively quick economic if not demographic recovery - a situation arose with severe competition for labour. Losing your towns decrease the amount of available really good tiles, thus reducing the competition for labour.

 

[ezzlar]

Changes on cottage upgrades:
Cottage -> Hamlet 10 turns
Hamlet -> Village 15 turns
Village -> Town 25 turns

Overally reduced Cottage -> Town from 70 turns to 50 turns
Any thoughts?

And with civic boost?

 

[Veshta]

Plagues make cottages and the associated civic pretty useless except in very rare and specific circumstances. One is almost always better off with tons of hammers from mills/shops .. the European heartland should be ideally suited to a massive cottage fest but they get reduces to huts every 80-90 turns when the next round of plague hits.

Much rather run the specialist/hammer heavy economy that lets me defend and expand at will than the rollercoaster economy that is plagued towns

 

[Tigranes]

The entire Civ4 idea of cottage/hamlet/village/town is very cool, very strategic and any new mechanics (i.e. Plague) should not make them useless. It makes also countryside look way better, especially with ethnically appropriate graphics, check Byzantine towns in SoI, for example. Why don't we introduce element of randomness? Every turn with plague the game randomly selects one plot from the fat cross -- if it is not a hamlet/village/town -- nothing happens. But overall it seems strange that Plague acts like a fire and destroys improvements. Population is being killed every turn and city's population represents countryside too.

 

[3Miro]

BogorodiceDevo soundtrack is stunning. I never heard this version... Who found it, from where and who is singing? The lyrics are in Old Russian or Bulgarian, but the accent does not sound Russian at all. I just stopped what I was doing and played that soundtrack again and again. We need to come up with more original soundtracks like that!

Neither Russian nor Bulgarian, this is Serbian. I fond it on YouTube and I had it bookmarked for some time waiting to add it to the mod. I was taking time to find some good music for Simeon before I add several tracks at one time.

 

[3Miro]

I have my connection at home fixed and the storm at my work has settled for now. I will have time to code again.

Currently most people are still playing and commenting on Beta 12, while the game in the sourceforge is very different. I think we should release Beta 13 by next weekend. AbsintheRed and merijn_v1, is this reasonable?

The big issue right now is the broken balance, I will try to fix as much of the balance as I can, but things will probably still be iffy. Lets make a list of the changes that need to be added.

- review Lithuania's UHV
- fix the Spanish UHV that requires fighting the Protestants way too late. Maybe I will make the Spanish colony UHV to be at the time of the current Protestant conquest UHV. Then we can add something else about the Protestants. How about: make sure that the Catholic players have more colonies (vs England), more gold (vs Dutch), more land and more population (vs France and Germany) then the Protestant players.

 

[merijn_v1]

I'm fine with it. I'm planning to add some more Conditional Mercs in the future. I'm busy the next 2 weeks, but after that, I have a whole week vacation.

 

[3Miro]

I'm fine with it. I'm planning to add some more Conditional Mercs in the future. I'm busy the next 2 weeks, but after that, I have a whole week vacation.

We should definitely add more mercs for the future, but we should be good for now with the generic ones.

 

[AbsintheRed]

I have my connection at home fixed and the storm at my work has settled for now. I will have time to code again.

Currently most people are still playing and commenting on Beta 12, while the game in the sourceforge is very different. I think we should release Beta 13 by next weekend. AbsintheRed and merijn_v1, is this reasonable?

Sounds great, and I absolutely agree. Releasing the new version is long due
I will upload all my pending, WIP changes until friday night.

The big issue right now is the broken balance, I will try to fix as much of the balance as I can, but things will probably still be iffy. Lets make a list of the changes that need to be added.

- review Lithuania's UHV
- fix the Spanish UHV that requires fighting the Protestants way too late. Maybe I will make the Spanish colony UHV to be at the time of the current Protestant conquest UHV. Then we can add something else about the Protestants. How about: make sure that the Catholic players have more colonies (vs England), more gold (vs Dutch), more land and more population (vs France and Germany) then the Protestant players.

Tweaks to the mercenary system. Posted about this on the other thread.