Development thread for 1.5

[cmakk1012]

Is there any way to influence the success of a different Civ when playing as a certain one? In other words subtly buffing France when playing as Scotland? On the other hand that could lead to a TOO successful France, which also dooms the goal when you have no resources they want to trade with you anymore

 

[The Turk]

- Islands (tile feature) will only give +1 production for now - will see what to do with it after the map updates

Why +1 Production? What is the reasoning behind that?

Islands are important because they serve as way stations for trans Mediterranean/Baltic Sea trade. Instead of Production they should be given Commerce, since their real lucrativeness was in them being ports of access for trade.

 

[AbsintheRed]

It was +1 food and +1 production, it's nerfed with the update actually.
The reason for production is game balance. The goal was to be able to add some sea-based production where it is needed.

 

[The Turk]

It was +1 food and +1 production, it's nerfed with the update actually.
The reason for production is game balance. The goal was to be able to add some sea-based production where it is needed.

Mediterranean islands should be fought over, for their control of trade lanes. I think actually making them more important would best, give them more commerce would be ideal. But there is a reason why all these islands were constantly fought over from the Baleras to Cyprus.

 

[AbsintheRed]

I don't mind adding an extra commerce for them.
On the other hand, sea tiles already give plenty of commerce, just by themselves. Maybe too much.

 

[The Turk]

I don't mind adding an extra commerce for them.
On the other hand, sea tiles already give plenty of commerce, just by themselves. Maybe too much.

All I'm saying is that Mediterranean (and Baltic) islands should be highly sought after, to control trade. And hence should be unique. In an age where roads were effectively non-existant, seaborne transportation was critical to the movement of people and goods. And hence waystations (islands) were critical.

 

[gilgames]

As i told you before,. i had 3-4 attempt with them and I was always above 1000 points, but never close to 1500. I would change it to: "Be friendly with France over 200 turns (in a row)" or whatever number we decide.
Currently their 2nd UHV is even more painful as the Prussians 15 GP. You just mindlessly dow / trade all you have / give/trade techs. Regardless of common sense and your own interests.

 

[El Bogus]

Why do the Scots care about creating a "Celtic Union", that is some 19th century mumbo-jumbo. No Scot ever said: "We must unite the Celtic People"... history is not some sequel to Braveheart. Just make Scotland unplayable and let's move on. Its a waste of space IMO, and coming up with good UHVs for it is ridiculous, just like the current UHVs are ridiculous.
The Northern areas (Highlands) were all clans, independent from each other, and the lowlands were separated by squabbling Lords, who were later replaced by a Norman aristocracy. So even within tiny Scotland, very little land was actually controlled from Edinburgh.

Although I agree that playable Scotland is not the most logical decision I like that it is in the game now. (There was a huge discussion about it in the earlier stages of this mod.) It has at least the purpose of making the English gameplay more interesting.
Also, the purpose of this mod is not to strictly replay the European history. Its purpose is rather to let you immerse in this time period and to let you deal with a different environment each game.
Often the UHV goals consist of two historic goals and one ahistoric one. So, just because a goal isn't strictly historic doesn't mean it's void. Please keep that in mind.

Certainly not one of the most correctly portrayed civs, but Scotland stays. Period.
Why would I want to remove it? If someone doesn't like it, just think of it as a special minor civ, and never play with it.
We can improve the UHVs in quite a few ways, to be both more fun and closer to something historically plausible.
First of all, what would be desired goal for the Auld Alliance UHV? 1500? 2000?
PS: the DCN was updated a couple weeks ago

As i told you before,. i had 3-4 attempt with them and I was always above 1000 points, but never close to 1500. I would change it to: "Be friendly with France over 200 turns (in a row)" or whatever number we decide.
Currently their 2nd UHV is even more painful as the Prussians 15 GP. You just mindlessly dow / trade all you have / give/trade techs. Regardless of common sense and your own interests.

I remember some player using the Canary Islands to trade more ressources with France and doing more shenanigans like that. Maybe a more active approach could be added to the goal:
+ 50 Points for capturing a city of a civ you share a war against,
+ 100 Points for liberating a French city,
+ 50 Points for gifting a city that is in a historic/core area of France,
+ 10 Points for traded technologies,
+ 1 Point for every 20 gold you gift.
Of course, there had to be countermeasures that prevent exploiting these mechanisms. With these additions, 2500 Points should be doable.

 

[Swarbs]

Although I agree that playable Scotland is not the most logical decision I like that it is in the game now. (There was a huge discussion about it in the earlier stages of this mod.) It has at least the purpose of making the English gameplay more interesting.
Also, the purpose of this mod is not to strictly replay the European history. Its purpose is rather to let you immerse in this time period and to let you deal with a different environment each game.
Often the UHV goals consist of two historic goals and one ahistoric one. So, just because a goal isn't strictly historic doesn't mean it's void. Please keep that in mind.

Personally I see no point removing Scotland until we need the space for other civs. If we run out of slots then by all means remove them, but if not then just let them be for now.

I remember some player using the Canary Islands to trade more ressources with France and doing more shenanigans like that. Maybe a more active approach could be added to the goal:
+ 50 Points for capturing a city of a civ you share a war against,
+ 100 Points for liberating a French city,
+ 50 Points for gifting a city that is in a historic/core area of France,
+ 10 Points for traded technologies,
+ 1 Point for every 20 gold you gift.
Of course, there had to be countermeasures that prevent exploiting these mechanisms. With these additions, 2500 Points should be doable.

Problem with those ones is that it does rely on French cities being captured, and could also be exploited by deliberately capturing cities from France and gifting them. As an extreme, you could use spies to collapse France, capture half of the indie cities, wait for them to respawn and then get points from gifting.

I'd lean more towards giving more points for every unit you kill of a civ that is currently at war with France. That would better reflect the role of the alliance as having a joint military approach, and would encourage Scotland to harass and raid England as IRL, rather than just conquering it.

 

[El Bogus]

That's why I wrote there have to be countermeasures: - 500 Points for capturing a French city,
- 100 Points for spying against France,
- 200 Points for diplomatic actions against France (bribing wars etc.),
for example. They could even be hidden to punish the exploiting player even more. And with the spawn of Burgundy, Germany and England there should be enough opportunitites to help France out.

 

[TheMulattoMaker]

I agree that the Auld Alliance is one of the more unique UHVs. However, I have yet to play as Scotland, so I can't say what I think of it in terms of gameplay/fun. I also agree that there are a lot of Colony-related UHVs already, and with the exception of Vinland there's not much difference between them. Having said that, it might be justified in Scotland's case, because the complete failure of the Panama colony basically bankrupted Scotland, which led to the Acts of Union. (In historical-vs-gameplay terms, you could almost say that failing their UHV caused them to peacevassal to England, ending their game.)

I'm not sure how exactly to make this into a fun UHV that isn't a carbon copy of the half-dozen other Colony UHVs though. With other civs having "be the first" or "build x number" or "build the most"", a UHV of "Build one Colony without running out of money" doesn't really have a glorious ring to it.

 

[El Bogus]

I'm playing France atm and Germany didn't spawn. I moved all my troups out of the cities I was expecting to flip but they never did. I'm playing Svn 1259.

 

[El Bogus]

And when I reloaded the savegame above not even the Burgundian cities flipped. Burgundy had Lyon though.

 

[El Bogus]

Last turn, they respawned. I now have a bit german culture in some of my cities.

Spoiler :

 

[AbsintheRed]

I'm playing France atm and Germany didn't spawn. I moved all my troups out of the cities I was expecting to flip but they never did. I'm playing Svn 1259.

Thanks, fixed. Was a minor oversight in the recent python code reformatting.
Will be up tonight with my commit.

Last turn, they respawned. I now have a bit german culture in some of my cities.

Spoiler :

View attachment 470189

That's a side-effect of the half-spawn.

And when I reloaded the savegame above not even the Burgundian cities flipped. Burgundy had Lyon though.

Do you have a savegame before their spawn?
It might have been the same issue, but not totally sure.

 

[El Bogus]

Ah no, sorry. I didn't think about that. I can just say, that first, the flip worked. Then, I played until the supposed German spawn and a few more turns. After that, I loaded to turn 88 which should be the turn in which cities in the Burgundian flip zone should flip. But they didn't.

 

[AbsintheRed]

Yeah, loading autosaves might mess up preset events. Sometimes whole AI turns are skipped, at least there were such reports I read about for the vanilla game/some entirely unrelated mod.
So this is not an RFCE-specific issue. The issue is definitely with the turn order (when it appears), but I'm not sure if this is fixable actually.
Anyone has some more info about this?

Unrelated:
Didn't think about it before, but the separated AI and human stacks mean that if you decide to switch to another civ via the Rhye-event, you will get the bigger stack intended for the AI.
I always hated that option, it's only "useful" to deliberately mess up the soon-to-be-AI's territory you start with. Well, maybe it can be done to have an increased challenge when you play with your first civ optimally, but I mostly heard of the first version.
Anyway, I will happily remove it unless there is demand for it. But if it stays, the stack increase will stay too. I don't see any ways to check it for AI -> human switches.

 

[El Bogus]

Did I understand that correctly: you want to get rid of the ability to switch civilizations?
I'm not entirely against it but it's one of the integral mechanisms of the RFC-mods. I sometimes used it when I wanted to play the later civs, e.g. Sweden. Denmark often has a suboptimal city placement. When you're in control of this, everything gets easier for Sweden. Same works of course for comparable civs but not that many actually. This behaviour won't be necessary anymore when the 1200 AD map is updated.
Messing up another civ as you mentioned is not even necessary at monarch difficulty imo.
Hence, most of the time switching the civs is making the game easier for the human player.

 

[AbsintheRed]

Hence, most of the time switching the civs is making the game easier for the human player.

Yeah, that's my main issue with the base mechanics.
And now in RFCE we have the additional problem of extra units on the switch.

Then again, that's up to the human player I guess.
If he/she wants to have an easier game, then that's just an additional advantage.

 

[gilgames]

I almost never use this feature, but i am not against it. Specially until the AI city placement hasn't improved slightly. Recently smaller civs have a very similar pattern for settling cities. I mean they are basically determined by indy spawn. Like venice, genoa or aragon. But avarage sized civs have also very similar cities from game to game.