Dawn of Civilization - an RFC modmod by Leoreth

[Gruekiller]

That doesn't sound like a bad idea, actually. There'd have to be a way to make sure that the Turks keep conquering and don't just hole up in one or two cities for the rest of the game, though.

 

[AOS9001]

Yeah, but wouldn't it look odd if they control only Tripolis but not Benghazi?

Well, if you have to remove a city, it'll have to be Benghazi. Tripolis is too important to get rid of.

lol it begins. Leoreth's work is never done.

Spawning the Turks east of Anatolia would make tons of historical sense, but would not be really possible in the game I don't think. i do think the Turk spawn should be changed however, but in a way that would ensure they have a high chance of controlling their historic core and not forming empires in Russia instead for example.

my suggestions:

Military spawn, no settlers. Now that you have implemented Byzantine as a civ, the Turks should have to conquer their empire, not be given it. The weakening of the empire to make way for the Turks can be handled in SoI fashion, i.e.barbs from the east to represent the initial Turkish incursions, causing destruction and stability hits. Then the ottomans spawn with cannons in central Anatolia.

A modder is never truly done. I think a series of barbarian waves would work fine to represent the Turks and destablize both Arabs and Byzantines to pave the way for the Ottoman conquest of everything in the middle east.

 

[Gatsby]

Spawning the Turks east of Anatolia would make tons of historical sense, but would not be really possible in the game I don't think. i do think the Turk spawn should be changed however, but in a way that would ensure they have a high chance of controlling their historic core and not forming empires in Russia instead for example.

Why wouldn't it be possible? There's tons of empty space in central Asia at the moment, whereas the middle-east is crammed with starting locations for civs. Like I said just add a couple of food resources in Central Asia and put part of Turkey's "core area" in Anatolia. A UHV condition which involves controlling Anatolia by a certain date could also help encourage Turkish expansion there. Another way to ensure they don't found empires in Russia is to make all tiles north of their central Asian spawn area (including Siberia) into "foreign area" for Turkey, as well as having barbarian horse archers spawn frequently in southern Siberia between about 1000-1400AD. Perhaps the Turks could spawn with military units near the southern part of the Caucasus mountains. Softening up the middle-east with pre-Turkish waves of barbarian units from central Asia would also help. If the Phonecians can still be made to found cities in north Africa such as Carthage, then surely it is possible to make central-Asian Turks found/conquer cities in Anatolia.

 

[Sikandar]

If you wanted to spice things up you could replace the Ottoman Turks with the Seljuq Turks and have them spawn in northeastern Persia around 1040 AD. Or have both.

 

[Gatsby]

If you wanted to spice things up you could replace the Ottoman Turks with the Seljuq Turks and have them spawn in northeastern Persia around 1040 AD. Or have both.

Such a spawn date and location would be suitable imo. The Seljuk Turks were the direct historical predecessors of the Ottoman Turks, however in this mod they aren't "Ottomans" they are just "Turks", so you presumably wouldn't have to rename them or have both as separate civs.

 

[Visard]

I also like the idea of moving Turks spawn date and location.

Arab UHV suggestion: Have library in all cities and three universities by 1200.
Or maybe just x universities.

And about the floodplains. Would it be that bad if the floodplains remained under a city? It only gives one food on cost of 0.4 unhealthiness. If you play Egypt the best starting cities aren't on floodplains anyway. And it would help Egypt AI. And if you think it helps Babylon too much, you could always remove the floodplains under Babylons starting location and replace it with normal desert or plains.

 

[Opera]

I think I gamed the Ottomans (don't forget that the Ottomans are only a part of the Turks, hence why they spawn in Anatolia); they spawned without a settler; I refused the flip of Trebizond and Antioch, thus war. They never moved away from their plot. Eventually I signed peace and they got pushed beyond the Black Sea, in Russian territory. For the kicks, I made them DOW on Russia (using WB); they conquered a city but got killed afterwards.

1) No settler; weird.
2) Never moved during war!
3) Never died while they had no city!

So currently I'm struggling in stability, not sure why. My exansion is down in my socks (-40). Granted I just captured Cuzco but it was low even before that. I only settled in historical areas like southern India. I do have a big, big empire (29 cities) but my stability seemed okay before it jumped down to -35. Now I'm in a long GA (~16 turns: great people induced + triumphal arch: 41% of the world is muslim ).

What can lower the expansion rating exactly?

As a side note, I like what they did in RFCE, making stability way less of a blackbox.

 

[dcode147]

Moving the Turks spawn date and location will make it much harder for an AI-controlled Turkish civ to replicate the extent of the Ottoman empire. No other spawn system will give the Turks as much of an advantage against the Byzantines.

Moving the Turkish spawn location east and spawn date earlier will present the AI similar challenges to moving the French and Spanish spawn dates earlier and north of the Rhine river for instance.

 

[Leoreth]

What about 'be the first in score and have 500+ culture in every city in 1300' instead of the shrine uhv?

Not sure what could replace the spread uhv.

Yeah, that's possible as well, I'll have to wrap my mind around it. For now I'll only adapt the conquest goal into something more challenging.

Playing v1.7 I have managed to get the gold in time on both the 3000BC and 600AD starts on Monarch level at epic speed. Basically I did the same thing as Leoreth did: set the research slider to zero (or 10% at most), and run as many merchants as you can in Byzantium. You may also need to trade some techs for cash and have some of your more productive cities producing wealth from about 850AD onwards, and it's a good idea to keep anarchy to a bare minimum before 1000AD (i.e. only make a civic or religion switch if it's urgently necessary). If you prioritise getting the 5000 gold above everything else you should be able to do it. I find it easier to get the 5000 gold in time in the 600AD start.

Yeah, I found the gold goal even quite easy in 1.7, but they have been nerfed severely in 1.71: more upkeep, less gpp etc.

Bug note: The third goal of the Byzantine UHV does not appear to be working. I have managed to fulfill the "3 cities in the balkans, north africa, and the near east in 1450AD" goal in three epic-speed games now, but the victory screen keeps saying that I have not achieved it. Has this issue been addressed in 1.71?

Depends on which cities you controlled. The regions have been quite oddly defined in 1.7, even I failed the 3rd goal in my first attempt although I thought I wouldn't 1.72 will fix that by expanding their boundaries to be more logical.

I suggested this before; the only solution i see to this problem is to spawn Camel Archers and Longowmen in Persia and Libya and Central Asia. Arab units spawning in these territories will should make sure that the Arabs conquer the above regions. It might be too deterministic but so are European (most of the time) units spawning in the New World. And really the Arabs don't get too much of an advantage; all your doing is moving their units to a new location and in the same turns that the human would. All in all it just makes sure that the Arabs behave like a human player in the first couple of turns.

On another note, perhaps not giving the spearmen an advantage over the camel archer might also help (or maybe even the other way around; giving camel archer an advantage over spearmen). It will help Arabs conquer North Africa.

Neither is really the problem. 1.72 Arabia spawns with 5 camel archers in Cairo 50% of the time and still they don't go there. And it isn't the defense either - the AI is actually to smart to care for these semi-useful cities when there's Anatolia to conquer.

Arab ideas: discover medicine by x. maybe add some more techs in there. the idea is have them research deep into the tech tree on non-military branches.

generate at least one great scholar, merchant and saint by x

build x universities, temples and monasteries

Generate x amount of culture from wonders

Have at least x number of priest and scientist specialists in your empire

spreading goals are extremely un-fun, even without the borders. spending hours doing nothing but building missionaries........ even in SOI with the Sufi's I have never been able to force myself to complete one of those goals.

Here's a crazy idea: conquest victory as the third UHV condition, which will in essence because of the new UP, create a unified Islamic world. The UHV condition could be "Kill all the infidels!"

Some great ideas there. For the third, maybe something less radical: make sure there are X cities in the world with only Islam in Y. So you can do this without having to compete with Europe's annoyingly fast growing population.

Are the following bugs gonna be fixed?

Some great persons get renamed to single-letter names
Diplomacy screen doesn't allow gold trading after the Italy switch
Oil industry produces oil
Transition to Democracy instability lasts forever

1. Yeah, I'll change the whole rename system in the long run.
2. This is a really odd one, no idea if I'm able to find out what's causing this.
3. This should be fixed already.
4. It's difficult to test so I'm currently procrastinating doing something about it, but I guess I should finally start, shouldn't I?

I agree, the way the Turks arise in this game is a pain in the butt. They make an already-overcrowded part of the map even more overcrowded, especially with their assimilation UP. Having a heap of Turkish units appear out of nowhere on the Anatolian peninsula in 1280AD and flip a huge surrounding area (including cities on the black sea) is historically unrealistic; it is also incredibly annoying if you are playing as the Romans, Byzantines, Greeks, Arabs, Persians, Phonecians, Russians, or Babylonians. The Turks came from a region of central asia near the Aral Sea, and they had already established a large empire in western Asia (including parts of modern day Turkey itself) well before 1280AD. For more info on the pre-Ottoman history of the Turks, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turks and http://www.allempires.com/article/index.php?q=Seljuk_empire.

I think it would be better for gameplay and realism if Turkey's spawn date was moved back to around 1000-1050AD, and their spawn area was changed to central Asia near Afrosiab (give that area a few more food resources if necessary). Their UHV objectives should be expanded to include controlling the Anatolian peninsula by a certain date.

Most of the problems with this were already mentioned:

1. They're meant to be a challenge to all these civs, especially the Byzantine 3rd goal hinges on them to be at least a little challenging.
2. Making Anatolia an UHV goal doesn't change the fact that it'll be difficult to get the AI to go there, much less conquer the other historical parts of the Ottoman Empire. And when going for a Turkish civ, I'd rather see the OE represented properly than the Seljuqs.
3. Even if we could make that happen, they would remain in control of their original cities in Persia which the real Turks lost quite quickly. In fact I'm trying more to reduce the Turkish presence in this region rather than increase it.

Military spawn, no settlers. Now that you have implemented Byzantine as a civ, the Turks should have to conquer their empire, not be given it. The weakening of the empire to make way for the Turks can be handled in SoI fashion, i.e.barbs from the east to represent the initial Turkish incursions, causing destruction and stability hits. Then the ottomans spawn with cannons in central Anatolia.

The Ottomans already spawn with no settlers. But some additional Seljuq barbarians are not a bad idea.

I think I gamed the Ottomans (don't forget that the Ottomans are only a part of the Turks, hence why they spawn in Anatolia); they spawned without a settler; I refused the flip of Trebizond and Antioch, thus war. They never moved away from their plot. Eventually I signed peace and they got pushed beyond the Black Sea, in Russian territory. For the kicks, I made them DOW on Russia (using WB); they conquered a city but got killed afterwards.

1) No settler; weird.
2) Never moved during war!
3) Never died while they had no city!

That's bad, never thought about the player's possibility to refuse a flip. Have to think of something to avoid their destruction in this case, I guess.

 

[Opera]

I never thought about the possibility of agreeing to the flip

Is it out of the question to bring back the "no anarchy during GAs" from BTS? It's handy when you have quite a few civics to change and GAs are rare enough to not be gamed. In effect I nearly never change my civics but at the beginning because the prospect of losing stability is more frightening than what I could gain from the switch.

(In this particular case I guess it would bring me on the brink of collapse.)

 

[Leoreth]

I see no reason in refusing it when you can steamroll your enemy 10 turns later without annoying unit betrayals

For no anarchy during GAs I'd first have to find out where Rhye turned that feature off ...

 

[J. pride]

Neither is really the problem. 1.72 Arabia spawns with 5 camel archers in Cairo 50% of the time and still they don't go there. And it isn't the defense either - the AI is actually to smart to care for these semi-useful cities when there's Anatolia to conquer.

Perhaps the Ai is smart, but do u plan on keeping it this way?? Or are there any alternatives so that Arabs settle North Africa

 

[Leoreth]

What I said before: giving Hesperides/Tripolis to the independents. They seemed to have no problems attacking them as long as the minor civ mechanisms are working.

 

[J. pride]

Oh i seemed to have missed that part. Anyways do u plan on spawning those cities as indie or are they somehow going to separate from the Byzies in a few turn??

In both cases this allows u to create Naples and while u are focusing on North Africa is there a way to have an independent Tunis as well?? (since u dont see minor civs in the possible future)

 

[Leoreth]

Well, forcing them to declare independence doesn't change much, so they'll be placed as independent. And yes that means Neapolis instead Tunis comes with the Moor/Berber civ then.

 

[KMRblue1027]

For no anarchy during GAs I'd first have to find out where Rhye turned that feature off ...

I'm almost positive it was done to not make a huge difference between BTS and Warlords/Vanilla. That's why there's anarchy in Golden ages and 2 GP required to start them.

 

[Gatsby]

Most of the problems with this were already mentioned:

1. They're meant to be a challenge to all these civs, especially the Byzantine 3rd goal hinges on them to be at least a little challenging.
2. Making Anatolia an UHV goal doesn't change the fact that it'll be difficult to get the AI to go there, much less conquer the other historical parts of the Ottoman Empire. And when going for a Turkish civ, I'd rather see the OE represented properly than the Seljuqs.
3. Even if we could make that happen, they would remain in control of their original cities in Persia which the real Turks lost quite quickly. In fact I'm trying more to reduce the Turkish presence in this region rather than increase it.


The Ottomans already spawn with no settlers. But some additional Seljuq barbarians are not a bad idea.

1. Having waves of barbarian units spawn in northern Persia/ the southern Caucasus from about 1000AD onwards which attack targets in Anatolia and the Levant could help make it more challenging for the Byzantines to hold onto enough cities in the Mid-East to fulfill their 3rd UHV goal.
2. Such being the case, the Ottomans should be a conditional spawn like Italy e.g. they only spawn if there is at least one city in Anatolia which is controlled by Barbarians or Independents in 1280AD. This is still historically accurate - the Ottoman Empire started out as one of a number of emirates in Anatolia which formed after the collapse of the Seljuk Sultunate of Rum. However the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum only came into being because the Byzantines lost control of Anatolia to Seljuk Turk invaders in the 1060's -1070's AD. These Seljuk invaders could be represented be the aformentioned barbarian spawns in the southern Caucasus and northern Persia.
3. I can see how this might be problematic. Like I said before you could just have waves of barbarians occur in the Khazakstan area after the Turks spawn, so they eventually lose their cities in central Asia. But the conditional spawn in Anatolia would probably make more sense, especially if the Turkish spawn area was simply reduced to Anatolia proper and north-western Persia.

 

[J. pride]

Can we not make Turks into a conditional spawn. Arent the invaders good enough?

 

[Gatsby]

So currently I'm struggling in stability, not sure why. My exansion is down in my socks (-40). Granted I just captured Cuzco but it was low even before that. I only settled in historical areas like southern India. I do have a big, big empire (29 cities) but my stability seemed okay before it jumped down to -35. Now I'm in a long GA (~16 turns: great people induced + triumphal arch: 41% of the world is muslim ).

What can lower the expansion rating exactly?

As a side note, I like what they did in RFCE, making stability way less of a blackbox.

Yeah, I find that when I play as the Byzantines I struggle much more with stability after the Turks spawn, even when I do agree to the flip. In particular, my expansion stability plummets around the 1400-1600's AD, even though I control all of Byzantines core areas, no cities in foreign core areas, and only one city (Tripolis) in foreign area.

I agree that stability is too much of a black box at the moment, and would also like to know what affects the expansion rating in this case (could it even be a bug?). The RFCE system sounds like it would be very useful.

 

[Gatsby]

Arent the invaders good enough?

If the Turks were a military-only spawn preceded by wave of Seljuk barbarians invading Anatolia, and if they didn't instantly flip all those cities in the Levant and on the Black Sea (rather unhistorical and incredibly annoying imo), then perhaps you wouldn't necessarily need to make their spawn conditional. I think it would help though if the Turk's spawn area was reduced while their number of military units at spawn was increased.