I finished my first game, and before I get into details and suggestions I just want to say how happy I am that this mod exists and thank you to Rhye! I played France v90 from spawn until about 2032 (so what would have ended the game from my understanding, but no end screen was presented). Here's how my game went, and some suggestions/feedback.
- I planted probably too many cities early on (Paris, Brest, Bordeaux, Geneve) and had about 6 cities in Europe (including Rome, Barcelone) before I could really get to colonizing anywhere. The 16% technology increase is punishing in this mod, and didn't feel great for someone who was RPing as a OTL colonial power. I still had a lot of fun, but it was impossible to finish the tech tree, and I had already forgotten how to play Civ V since I hadn't touched it in years and re-antiquating myself with the systems took some time. I hope that there's either a decrease in this percentage, or a way for historically colonial powers to somehow modify that, maybe a special "colony" status like puppet cities where it doesn't increase your tech, but maybe the city is more costly some other way. This tech penalty was so rough that the newer spawning civs managed to blaze ahead with few cities (like the US especially), while I remained ahead of the smaller powers simply because they were constantly fighting and killing each other.
-All AI Empires rarely had more than 4 cities. The exception to this rule ended up being Brazil, Russia, and China, each with about 6 at the most. Brazil largely did historically with their territory expansion, but forewent the Amazon for Buenos Aires. China was roughly the same, but also had a surprise North American colony in California which eventually became a terrorist state. Russia managed to make it halfway across Siberia before settling for fighting over the Baltic and claiming Georgia.
-Portugal and Netherlands are two unenviable positions that really don't feel like they stand a chance for the AI player. Portugal respawned about four times, the first three being reconquered the turn they spawned by Spain which is...just not great. Spain kept their units in their territory and just instantly destroyed them. I'm not sure Portugal got much of anything to even stand a chance. Netherlands starts in such a cramped area that they only survived being invaded by Spain by my repeated gifting of excess units, and later Austria-Hungary invaded them. I wasn't going to fight AH as they were my friend, and I had other things to deal with at the time.
-I reached my first colony in North America around early 1600s which isn't too bad. I say this though with the caveat that colonies in the New World were horribly sparse. I revived England at one point because I was tired of Vikingland (and didn't need the excessive penalty so gave them their cities back) and they proceeded to do nothing until they decided invading a reborn Germany for Rostock and Berlin would be a better use of their time. They lost the latter to AH. Not one attempt at a colony from them, presumably because they had a difficult time catching up after the respawn. There probably needs to be something to help with this for reborn civs, player led or not.
-In fact, the only other instance of colonies in the New World besides myself and China were Austria purchasing Mexico City (which was hilarious and a wonderful, unintentional nod to history with Maximilian of Mexico by the AI) and three Spanish cities: Santiago de Cuba (in 1830), Cartagena de Indias, and Cumana. The US took Santiago, then burned the other two. Kind of sad that there wasn't much colonization of the New World.
-Speaking of Colonies, Africa is...empty. Only the Dutch colonized there beside me (Johannesburg) and when their civilization collapsed due to losing Amsterdam it became an independent city...and then Independent City promptly razed itself. Africa needs more in it, in some form or fashion. If Africa was empty, then Australia didn't even ever exist on this planet, quite literally almost.
-I had some weird issue with settler stacking occasionally where it wouldn't go under a military unit. I had to learn that Settlers won't go in desert or Tundra or snow, but not being able to go on floodplains or build farms there confuses me. I know building farms in floodplains wasn't a thing for RFC in 4, but I've never understood the reasoning.
-Huns are insane and razed...I think most of the known world during their time of autoplay. There was absolutely nothing in India after that and nothing ever showed up there again. The only presence was Sri Lanka and Siam on the outer edges, and the former got treated to an AH annexation. Vikingland minor is another crazy effective one that wiped England and caused a lot of headache.
-Stability is fairly easy to manage, but it is pretty opaque. At one point my country was borderline collapsing because I moved units away from my cities due to plague. A more comprehensive breakdown of your scores being visible may help players understand what they can and can't do to help their situation.
-Unit limits: I'm fine with these, but it's frustrating when you upgrade a unit only to be told that the military loyalty will drop next turn. Can we get a preview before instead of after? Like an "are you sure"? And can we make the number limit more clear instead of when you're right at your limit or over? It would be helpful.
-Brazil and US spawned fine, with the former doing pretty well, though it's a bit jarring that neither requisite colonial power ever made it over for these two to actually spawn. The United States was fairly disappointing, as after planting three cities it never tried to expand except to conquer a couple Spanish cities, invade Iberia, lose it, then repeat. It didn't even try to manifest destiny across the Continent, leaving the whole thing empty. Maybe it's because I played prince, but I was pretty unimpressed with the United States. Our war at the end of the game resulted in half of French Canada and all American Cities being nuked to smithereens, which was fun and significant, but still made me realize the US should be doing much more.
-Appropriately Italy managed to be a battleground for a medieval start, with myself, Spain, Austria, the Italian minor, Arabia, Rome, and Byzantium all vying over it. That was nice. The other big battleground was...the Baltic/Northern Germany? This was a constant area of conflict with again myself, England, the Netherlands, Spain, Austria, Germany, Russia, all fighting over something there at different periods.
-Another fun attempt at AI recreating history was the Turkish-Austrian conflict showing up and the Turks bowling across the Balkans and Carpathia at one point and to the doors of Vienna, which was really cool! But that actually broke their stability and then the turks collapsed and Austria picked up the pieces. Later they would become the true Roman Empire (of course without Rome, but Constantinople works).
-I had several landsknecht simply disappear in the Sahara after founding Coutonou (a name I picked, because there was no coded name there, Misrata was another in Libya, I just like having appropriate names and I felt like those could be added to those tiles for Euro colonizers), is that intentional?
-I like the implementation of plagues in this one. Sure, it can be a nuisance, but I like how land units can infect one another. Although, it felt like they always lasted the same amount of time and there's no real way to mitigate, and i think that having hospitals and med labs in a city should cut down on the plague time for a city/help units resist. Funny though was coronavirus showing up in the early modern era...in Inca. Maybe they were supposed to have smallpox or something but instead the Euros brought corona.
-The map works really well! I think it's very playable, though I would kill for some more fish/water resources spread out. It felt like there were too few of those.
So, my suggestions:
-A way to mitigate the tech penalty for colonizers with RP goals and widespread core areas would be valuable. If you want to keep it at 16% I feel like it is understandable for smaller to medium sized civs, but something needs to help the ones that RP bigger.
-Add some more water resources.
-There's a random mountain in the Baltic, I'm not sure why it's there. If it's not intentional, maybe remove it?
-Prod the colonizers a bit more if possible. This would help the game feel more alive, especially continents like the Americas, Africa, and Australia, as well as India if needed.
-Make it so that Independent Cities/minor civs don't just raze themselves when they flip. It would keep the world filled out more.
-Ensure that during flips all former power units are ejected properly - this happened with Tunis and I couldn't take it from under Spain because the Spanish Great Admiral was still garrisoned in the rebel town.
-Help rebirth civs with units and push out other empire's units. Also, it was frustrating when I would have good stability and a rebirth of Germany from a collapsing Austria resulted in myself losing Stuttgart simply because it's German core land. In RFC 4 you could fight this (or if you had solid stability there wasn't really an issue), and I didn't even get the alert. That was unfortunate. (At least until Germany collapsed and it switched back to me, because I re-founded it after it was razed because no one was using the tiles).
-I think more defined minor civs may help with some of the emptiness, especially if the game checks certain dates and there's nothing there (and it may also avoid CS razing what is supposed to be part of their league), or if you need to spawn a city or two for a rebellion. Some ideas of mine:
In South Africa, a South African or Zimbabwean minor civ.
In East Africa, a Zanzibar minor civ, a Rwanda minor civ, and a Madagascar minor civ.
In West Africa, a Nigeria minor civ, a Guinea minor civ, and a Kanem Bornu minor civ.
In North Africa, an Algerian minor civ and a Libyan minor civ.
In South Asia, either a South Asian Cities minor civ, or you can break out a couple of the more significant polities from the region: Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Mysore are ones I think could work well to give India a bit more if the Huns show up and raze it all.
In the Mid East, Syria, Georgia, and Oman are my suggestions if those regions are empty.
In Central Asia, Kazakhstan could show up as well.
In Oceania, New Zealand, Philippines, and Papua could show up. I also think that Indonesia is one of those minor civs that should get a few more cities spawned over time if they still exist, not sure if you can do that. I also suggest Hawaii, though to make that
playable I would turn that mountain for Oahu into a hill, add a sugar somewhere in the chain, another fish or some pearls perhaps by Oahu, and add an atoll or two to represent the minor islands. If you decided to make a Polynesia civ, it would also help give that starting position some weight to it.
Europe is pretty full, so I won't suggest there.
With North America there are very few "good" candidates since you have America, a Canada minor, if it shows, and the latin American minors. The ones I do think would be possible (but not required) are a Cree Confederacy, California (so something shows up there in the mid to late 1800s if no one ever goes there), and Cuba. I mean you could go crazy and make Salt Lake City a thing since it was a semi-independent and weird project, but perhaps not (though it would ensure America has something to move into, same for California). And you COULD do Texas, but it looks like USA takes that territory fast already.
South America is pretty well populated with Inca and Brazil, the Argentina minor, and then remaining colonies if they exist.
A couple civs that should have the chance to be in the rotation:
-Sweden, as it would shake up the Baltic gameplay. Perhaps Sweden minor civ could also take over the Vikingland cities at some point so Viking raids finally end (and represent the union of Sweden over Norway).
-Songhai and Ethiopia being promoted to major. Africa, as the birthplace of humankind, needs more in it. You could do Zulu as well, but I just...don't care for Zulu. But that's an...option too.
-Alternatively: Morocco and Poland would be cool OPTIONS, but Poland may choke up Europe too much so leaving it as a CS is fine. Also I think I read you gave the Moroccan ability to the Turks, so you'd have to invent one or just leave them out. Which is understandable, as North Africa is so close to Europe that it just adds to the crowded feel there.
Last thing is for the Netherlands. Their start position is so bad, I feel like they need some buff to help. I don't think there's been any changes to them mechanically, but I would suggest giving them the double trade routes from Venice as that civ won't be needing them for this mod. It fits with the Netherlands historically to have massive trade, helps their weak position (maybe start them with cargo ships when they found that first city too?), and makes that civ vastly more interesting.
Thank you for my long winded feedback, and enjoy my screenshots! Let me know if there's a civ in particular you'd like me to try out.
EDIT: 5 workers also felt like a really low limit and there were a couple civs who were stuck on “collapsing” for most of the late game with no effect. Might be a bug?
@Rhye
- I planted probably too many cities early on (Paris, Brest, Bordeaux, Geneve) and had about 6 cities in Europe (including Rome, Barcelone) before I could really get to colonizing anywhere. The 16% technology increase is punishing in this mod, and didn't feel great for someone who was RPing as a OTL colonial power. I still had a lot of fun, but it was impossible to finish the tech tree, and I had already forgotten how to play Civ V since I hadn't touched it in years and re-antiquating myself with the systems took some time. I hope that there's either a decrease in this percentage, or a way for historically colonial powers to somehow modify that, maybe a special "colony" status like puppet cities where it doesn't increase your tech, but maybe the city is more costly some other way. This tech penalty was so rough that the newer spawning civs managed to blaze ahead with few cities (like the US especially), while I remained ahead of the smaller powers simply because they were constantly fighting and killing each other.
-All AI Empires rarely had more than 4 cities. The exception to this rule ended up being Brazil, Russia, and China, each with about 6 at the most. Brazil largely did historically with their territory expansion, but forewent the Amazon for Buenos Aires. China was roughly the same, but also had a surprise North American colony in California which eventually became a terrorist state. Russia managed to make it halfway across Siberia before settling for fighting over the Baltic and claiming Georgia.
-Portugal and Netherlands are two unenviable positions that really don't feel like they stand a chance for the AI player. Portugal respawned about four times, the first three being reconquered the turn they spawned by Spain which is...just not great. Spain kept their units in their territory and just instantly destroyed them. I'm not sure Portugal got much of anything to even stand a chance. Netherlands starts in such a cramped area that they only survived being invaded by Spain by my repeated gifting of excess units, and later Austria-Hungary invaded them. I wasn't going to fight AH as they were my friend, and I had other things to deal with at the time.
-I reached my first colony in North America around early 1600s which isn't too bad. I say this though with the caveat that colonies in the New World were horribly sparse. I revived England at one point because I was tired of Vikingland (and didn't need the excessive penalty so gave them their cities back) and they proceeded to do nothing until they decided invading a reborn Germany for Rostock and Berlin would be a better use of their time. They lost the latter to AH. Not one attempt at a colony from them, presumably because they had a difficult time catching up after the respawn. There probably needs to be something to help with this for reborn civs, player led or not.
-In fact, the only other instance of colonies in the New World besides myself and China were Austria purchasing Mexico City (which was hilarious and a wonderful, unintentional nod to history with Maximilian of Mexico by the AI) and three Spanish cities: Santiago de Cuba (in 1830), Cartagena de Indias, and Cumana. The US took Santiago, then burned the other two. Kind of sad that there wasn't much colonization of the New World.
-Speaking of Colonies, Africa is...empty. Only the Dutch colonized there beside me (Johannesburg) and when their civilization collapsed due to losing Amsterdam it became an independent city...and then Independent City promptly razed itself. Africa needs more in it, in some form or fashion. If Africa was empty, then Australia didn't even ever exist on this planet, quite literally almost.
-I had some weird issue with settler stacking occasionally where it wouldn't go under a military unit. I had to learn that Settlers won't go in desert or Tundra or snow, but not being able to go on floodplains or build farms there confuses me. I know building farms in floodplains wasn't a thing for RFC in 4, but I've never understood the reasoning.
-Huns are insane and razed...I think most of the known world during their time of autoplay. There was absolutely nothing in India after that and nothing ever showed up there again. The only presence was Sri Lanka and Siam on the outer edges, and the former got treated to an AH annexation. Vikingland minor is another crazy effective one that wiped England and caused a lot of headache.
-Stability is fairly easy to manage, but it is pretty opaque. At one point my country was borderline collapsing because I moved units away from my cities due to plague. A more comprehensive breakdown of your scores being visible may help players understand what they can and can't do to help their situation.
-Unit limits: I'm fine with these, but it's frustrating when you upgrade a unit only to be told that the military loyalty will drop next turn. Can we get a preview before instead of after? Like an "are you sure"? And can we make the number limit more clear instead of when you're right at your limit or over? It would be helpful.
-Brazil and US spawned fine, with the former doing pretty well, though it's a bit jarring that neither requisite colonial power ever made it over for these two to actually spawn. The United States was fairly disappointing, as after planting three cities it never tried to expand except to conquer a couple Spanish cities, invade Iberia, lose it, then repeat. It didn't even try to manifest destiny across the Continent, leaving the whole thing empty. Maybe it's because I played prince, but I was pretty unimpressed with the United States. Our war at the end of the game resulted in half of French Canada and all American Cities being nuked to smithereens, which was fun and significant, but still made me realize the US should be doing much more.
-Appropriately Italy managed to be a battleground for a medieval start, with myself, Spain, Austria, the Italian minor, Arabia, Rome, and Byzantium all vying over it. That was nice. The other big battleground was...the Baltic/Northern Germany? This was a constant area of conflict with again myself, England, the Netherlands, Spain, Austria, Germany, Russia, all fighting over something there at different periods.
-Another fun attempt at AI recreating history was the Turkish-Austrian conflict showing up and the Turks bowling across the Balkans and Carpathia at one point and to the doors of Vienna, which was really cool! But that actually broke their stability and then the turks collapsed and Austria picked up the pieces. Later they would become the true Roman Empire (of course without Rome, but Constantinople works).
-I had several landsknecht simply disappear in the Sahara after founding Coutonou (a name I picked, because there was no coded name there, Misrata was another in Libya, I just like having appropriate names and I felt like those could be added to those tiles for Euro colonizers), is that intentional?
-I like the implementation of plagues in this one. Sure, it can be a nuisance, but I like how land units can infect one another. Although, it felt like they always lasted the same amount of time and there's no real way to mitigate, and i think that having hospitals and med labs in a city should cut down on the plague time for a city/help units resist. Funny though was coronavirus showing up in the early modern era...in Inca. Maybe they were supposed to have smallpox or something but instead the Euros brought corona.
-The map works really well! I think it's very playable, though I would kill for some more fish/water resources spread out. It felt like there were too few of those.
So, my suggestions:
-A way to mitigate the tech penalty for colonizers with RP goals and widespread core areas would be valuable. If you want to keep it at 16% I feel like it is understandable for smaller to medium sized civs, but something needs to help the ones that RP bigger.
-Add some more water resources.
-There's a random mountain in the Baltic, I'm not sure why it's there. If it's not intentional, maybe remove it?
-Prod the colonizers a bit more if possible. This would help the game feel more alive, especially continents like the Americas, Africa, and Australia, as well as India if needed.
-Make it so that Independent Cities/minor civs don't just raze themselves when they flip. It would keep the world filled out more.
-Ensure that during flips all former power units are ejected properly - this happened with Tunis and I couldn't take it from under Spain because the Spanish Great Admiral was still garrisoned in the rebel town.
-Help rebirth civs with units and push out other empire's units. Also, it was frustrating when I would have good stability and a rebirth of Germany from a collapsing Austria resulted in myself losing Stuttgart simply because it's German core land. In RFC 4 you could fight this (or if you had solid stability there wasn't really an issue), and I didn't even get the alert. That was unfortunate. (At least until Germany collapsed and it switched back to me, because I re-founded it after it was razed because no one was using the tiles).
-I think more defined minor civs may help with some of the emptiness, especially if the game checks certain dates and there's nothing there (and it may also avoid CS razing what is supposed to be part of their league), or if you need to spawn a city or two for a rebellion. Some ideas of mine:
In South Africa, a South African or Zimbabwean minor civ.
In East Africa, a Zanzibar minor civ, a Rwanda minor civ, and a Madagascar minor civ.
In West Africa, a Nigeria minor civ, a Guinea minor civ, and a Kanem Bornu minor civ.
In North Africa, an Algerian minor civ and a Libyan minor civ.
In South Asia, either a South Asian Cities minor civ, or you can break out a couple of the more significant polities from the region: Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Mysore are ones I think could work well to give India a bit more if the Huns show up and raze it all.
In the Mid East, Syria, Georgia, and Oman are my suggestions if those regions are empty.
In Central Asia, Kazakhstan could show up as well.
In Oceania, New Zealand, Philippines, and Papua could show up. I also think that Indonesia is one of those minor civs that should get a few more cities spawned over time if they still exist, not sure if you can do that. I also suggest Hawaii, though to make that
playable I would turn that mountain for Oahu into a hill, add a sugar somewhere in the chain, another fish or some pearls perhaps by Oahu, and add an atoll or two to represent the minor islands. If you decided to make a Polynesia civ, it would also help give that starting position some weight to it.
Europe is pretty full, so I won't suggest there.
With North America there are very few "good" candidates since you have America, a Canada minor, if it shows, and the latin American minors. The ones I do think would be possible (but not required) are a Cree Confederacy, California (so something shows up there in the mid to late 1800s if no one ever goes there), and Cuba. I mean you could go crazy and make Salt Lake City a thing since it was a semi-independent and weird project, but perhaps not (though it would ensure America has something to move into, same for California). And you COULD do Texas, but it looks like USA takes that territory fast already.
South America is pretty well populated with Inca and Brazil, the Argentina minor, and then remaining colonies if they exist.
A couple civs that should have the chance to be in the rotation:
-Sweden, as it would shake up the Baltic gameplay. Perhaps Sweden minor civ could also take over the Vikingland cities at some point so Viking raids finally end (and represent the union of Sweden over Norway).
-Songhai and Ethiopia being promoted to major. Africa, as the birthplace of humankind, needs more in it. You could do Zulu as well, but I just...don't care for Zulu. But that's an...option too.
-Alternatively: Morocco and Poland would be cool OPTIONS, but Poland may choke up Europe too much so leaving it as a CS is fine. Also I think I read you gave the Moroccan ability to the Turks, so you'd have to invent one or just leave them out. Which is understandable, as North Africa is so close to Europe that it just adds to the crowded feel there.
Last thing is for the Netherlands. Their start position is so bad, I feel like they need some buff to help. I don't think there's been any changes to them mechanically, but I would suggest giving them the double trade routes from Venice as that civ won't be needing them for this mod. It fits with the Netherlands historically to have massive trade, helps their weak position (maybe start them with cargo ships when they found that first city too?), and makes that civ vastly more interesting.
Thank you for my long winded feedback, and enjoy my screenshots! Let me know if there's a civ in particular you'd like me to try out.
EDIT: 5 workers also felt like a really low limit and there were a couple civs who were stuck on “collapsing” for most of the late game with no effect. Might be a bug?
@Rhye
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glad to help out!!
