[Modmodmod] RFC:Europe Extra Civs

[civ_king]

@civ_king, thanks for the tips on Lithuania's 1st UHV. Although I don't like it very much, it does seem doable after all.

I managed to get the Magnus IV and VII Union as Sweden (in 1329). Norway actually came to the talks for once

We had the same religion (eventually), but I converted to Catholicism late because Norway had no state religion most of the time, so there was no religious diplomatic bonus. But I did settle a city close to Norway's borders and 'liberated' it, and ended up with +6 relations (pleased), one for liberating the city, 4 for trade relations, and 1 for prolonged open borders.

They came to the talks, but because I gifted Norway all my gold (admittedly, 300 is not much!) I couldn't spend a lot of money for the Union (something like 76), but took the 2 turn anarchy penalty, lost all religious buildings (the one Catholic Church in Kalmar ) and lost 75% spy points. I did nothing military-wise, ending up with an advantage anyway, and gobbling up Norway peacefully

Stability immediately post-Union shot up to 31, came down during the anarchy turns (lowest was -2 shaky) and then settled back to about +16.

Also Denmark asked for mighty Sweden's protection and became a vassal of the Swedish Empire!

Haven't continued yet, but will see if I can get the Danish cities through the Kalmar Union too.

doable yes, odds of success are really low though



Is there anyway to make it so if iUnionCiv2 wins union then in future unions it can be iUnionCiv1 or iUnionCiv2?

Increase the DOmination land percent required,
With the additions of so many civs you have made it way easier to win a domination victory, please increase the domination land percent, currently I believe the formula is Domination %=50-2(iNumActivePlayers-1) minimum 25%, since you have increase the number of civs by 11 the odds that there are 13 or more civs alive is much higher

 

[Morholt]

What, Transylvania as romanian?
I don't want to be mean, but is this a joke?
Anyway, I don't really think there is real place for a romanian civ
During the middle ages they were not important enough IMO
Also, adding a new capital in Wallachia would hurt Bulgaria too much

I don't really agree with you, but if you want to have Tranysylvania, it should only be possible if Hungary collapsed by the mid 16th century (probably because of ottoman conquest)
Then Hungary could respawn as Transylvania, leaving room for Austria to get some of the northwestern hungarian cities and the ottomans to get the southern cities
If Hungary never collapses, obviously no Transylvania, and the union system can take place

Having Transylvania as a respawn of Hungary is a good compromise for the time being.

But let's talk about the merits (and demerits) of a Transylvanian civ. Yes, the region was historically a part of Hungary, and even today there are areas of Hungarian majority. But Transylvania as a whole has always been Vlach majority. The Vlachs however were mostly peasants, whereas the ruling class was Hungarian. Some exceptions of course, like the Hunyadi family which was Vlach in origin (Matthias Corvinus was from this family).

Transylvania was politically independent from Royal Hungary and went to war with the Habsburgs. This might be seen as a part of the Austro-Hungarian-Turkish wars, but there were also religious differences between Transylvania and Hungary proper.

I think the biggest argument for an independent Transylvania is the new ambitions from it's rulers. Transylvania looked north and south and east, on several occasions attempting to unite the Romanian Principalities as well as invading Poland.

 

[KievanRus]

Serbia's unique power seems to lend it some exploitable abilities:

Problem: If I wanted to cut off any other civ's city, all I would have to do is settle a city 3 tiles away in all 4 cardinal directions. This would effectively eliminate any workable tiles from that city's radius.

Solution: Instead of their UP lending them every tile in the city's radius, how about a culture boost to all tiles within either Serbia's core and outer provinces OR a culture boost to the province within which the Serbian city is located. This would still give them some form of cultural domination without eliminating foreign competition.


Problem: The third UHV requires Serbia to have more military units than the Ottomans. The Ottomans, however, have a much larger potential empire zone. Having more cities seems it would make the Ottomans' military production substantially larger than Serbia's.

Solution: Have the UHV require Serbia to either kill a certain amount of Ottoman units or collapse the Ottomans, or conquer a few Ottoman cities or collapse the Ottomans.


Problem: The first UHV requires Serbia to have a certain amount of stability in a certain timeframe. This would be too easy to do with a Golden Age and a few courthouses. Also, if the required stability was just raised, it would make it MUCH more difficult, as it's hard to achieve a much higher stability with ANY civ.

Solution: Require the construction of a certain amount of courthouses and/or castles. This would achieve the same effect of having a higher stability, without depending on the still somewhat wacky stability system.


I hope that these are useful suggestions and that others agree with me here.

 

[Morholt]

Serbia's unique power seems to lend it some exploitable abilities:

Problem: If I wanted to cut off any other civ's city, all I would have to do is settle a city 3 tiles away in all 4 cardinal directions. This would effectively eliminate any workable tiles from that city's radius.

Solution: Instead of their UP lending them every tile in the city's radius, how about a culture boost to all tiles within either Serbia's core and outer provinces OR a culture boost to the province within which the Serbian city is located. This would still give them some form of cultural domination without eliminating foreign competition.


Problem: The third UHV requires Serbia to have more military units than the Ottomans. The Ottomans, however, have a much larger potential empire zone. Having more cities seems it would make the Ottomans' military production substantially larger than Serbia's.

Solution: Have the UHV require Serbia to either kill a certain amount of Ottoman units or collapse the Ottomans, or conquer a few Ottoman cities or collapse the Ottomans.


Problem: The first UHV requires Serbia to have a certain amount of stability in a certain timeframe. This would be too easy to do with a Golden Age and a few courthouses. Also, if the required stability was just raised, it would make it MUCH more difficult, as it's hard to achieve a much higher stability with ANY civ.

Solution: Require the construction of a certain amount of courthouses and/or castles. This would achieve the same effect of having a higher stability, without depending on the still somewhat wacky stability system.


I hope that these are useful suggestions and that others agree with me here.

1: I agree it is somewhat exploitable. I might change it to a soft bonus at some point.

2: Disagree, you can win the current one by collapsing the Ottomans also. Basically you have three options: Collapse them, Conquer so many cities from them that they become a minor power, or just build a lot of units while killing theirs.

3: Agree that it would be a simpler UHV but it would encourage aggressive expansion to get more cities to build more things. Rather I wanted this UHV to require a careful, conservative playstyle.

 

[civ_king]

SO are you going to tweak domination victory?

 

[Wessel V1]

I have a question about the Scottish 2nd UHV condition. It says that I have to become close friends with the French, but what happens if:

1. France collapses?
2. France unites with Burgundy and in some weird circumstance gets sucked up in a Burgundian union?
3. France collapses and respawns just before the UHV date?

Is there any way to accomplish the condition or is the game simply lost (if I want to win by UHV that is)?

 

[CrossRFC]

But let's talk about the merits (and demerits) of a Transylvanian civ.

From a gameplay perspective, Transylvania adds an extra challenge to Hungary, a civ that, due to the Carpathian mountains, does not have to deal with much conflict.

Secondly, it's relatively small size can make it fall prey to Ottoman dominance easier than a united Hungary (for example, take Serbia, which weakens Bulgaria's dominance of the Southern Slavic zone, and makes them more vulnerable to the Ottoman advance later in the game). In the majority of my games, the Turks are still struggling to take any of the Balkans, which makes Eastern Europe a much less interesting place.

Also, even though Transylvania was historically part of Hungary until recent history, it does have a ethnic Romanian majority and would be a good representative of the Romanian culture group which, despite that people's lack of importance in RFCE's time period, is one of the last numerically significant culture groups to lack representation in RFCE++. While some disagree with its relevance in RFCE, Transylvania has for most of its history been a principality (e.g. a vassal) of another state, was never completely integrated into another country. Hence why it should exist in RFCE++, even if it is doomed to be vassalized by another.

Speaking of principality, perhaps that can relate to its UP: something about less loss of independence if vassal, combined with the ability to vassalize instead of being conquered?

Lastly, it can have interesting, difficult, but not impossible UHV's such as uniting Romania, as was done by Michael the Brave in 1599-1600 (it lasted less than a year though, so it could be the third UHV). The first UHV can deal with Transylvania's, along with Moldavia and Wallachia's revolt against Hungary when the nations were first created in the 14th century (perhaps Hungary could be given more advantages and tempted to found cities in Moldavia?). The 2nd UHV should not be anti-Ottoman because there are too many of those. How about being the #1 of a certain economic or cultural condition in the East?

 

[civ_king]

So I just generated a Dutch start

French: They completed 2/3 UHVs (Empire of Holy Land and World), still control the Holy Land (Syria, Lebanon, Jerusalem), Solid stability, Burgundy and Genoa consumed, they are Protestant (probably why they have the first six colonies)

Iberia: Aragon and Castile united with Aragon coming out #1, Spain just respawned with only Toledo, Aragon and Portugal are Solid, Cordoba (still Muslim) is meh, Portugal settled Santa Cruz de Tenerife. Would be nice if Aragon conquered Corsica and Malta (could Sardinia perhaps be ok?).

Ottomans/Balkans: Control all of Anatolia, French seem to be holding them in on the south side. Did the Balkans get rejiggered? There is a city three tiles west of Istanbul... Serbs control Belgrad to Atina and Drats. Bulgarians Lom to Galats. Ottomans have the random city of Gaziantep on Epirus island thing. Hungarians don't have Belograd.

Baltic: Prussians driven from Prussia, now live in Pomerania, Courland and Riga. Lithuanian beat out Poland. Total razing of Kievan Rus. Scandinavia is three countries, no one controls Iceland.

Dutch: Due to many more civs I got 12 OBs on first turn, will play to see how they are.

 

[AbsintheRed]

But let's talk about the merits (and demerits) of a Transylvanian civ. Yes, the region was historically a part of Hungary, and even today there are areas of Hungarian majority. But Transylvania as a whole has always been Vlach majority. The Vlachs however were mostly peasants, whereas the ruling class was Hungarian. Some exceptions of course, like the Hunyadi family which was Vlach in origin (Matthias Corvinus was from this family).

Agreed with almost everything here, expect this: "Transylvania as a whole has always been Vlach majority"
It's true that the area almost always had significant number of vlachs. And yes, they eventually got to be the majority.
But this is the direct consecuence of the mongol and turkish invasion of Hungary, which led to depopulization of some (or most) of the hungarian areas.
Especially the mongol invasion was lethal (50% of the hungarian population dead!), after it the hungarian ruling class had to "invite" (or rather tempt) peasants from the neighboring countries.
Still, from the conquest of the Carpathian-basin (when it was totally finished somewhere in the 10th century) to the end of the 15th century, hungarians were clearly the majority in the Transylvanian region too.
But then came the Ottomans, and with no centralized hungarian rule there was no real chance for the hungarians to dominate the territory
Btw, this was exactly the case in the southern regions too (which are today part of Serbia)

Note that this attached table is the hungarian population, not the total population of Hungary:

Also, after the Ottomans were finally defeated in the end of the 17th century, the Habsburgs were also strengthening this process
Simply it was opposed their interests to have a strong Hungary
Eventually they failed, but Hungary didn't get back it's true glory until the beginning of the 19th century

"The ethnic composition of Hungary was fundamentally changed as a consequence of the prolonged warfare with the Turks. A large part of the country became devastated, population growth was stunted, and many smaller settlements perished. The main inhabitants of the Ottoman ruled area were ethnically Hungarians, hence their number was substantially diminished. The Austrian-Habsburg government settled large groups of Serbs and other Slavs in the depopulated south and settled Germans in various areas, but Hungarians were not allowed to settle or re-settle in the south of the Great Plain."

Transylvania was politically independent from Royal Hungary and went to war with the Habsburgs. This might be seen as a part of the Austro-Hungarian-Turkish wars, but there were also religious differences between Transylvania and Hungary proper.

I think the biggest argument for an independent Transylvania is the new ambitions from it's rulers. Transylvania looked north and south and east, on several occasions attempting to unite the Romanian Principalities as well as invading Poland.

Transylvania was only independent while there was no centralized hungarian government: under the Principality of Transylvania, from the mid 16th century to 1699.
Also, Transylvania looked in every direction to strengthen it's position
There wasn't really any new ambitions, hungarians had all these before
And naturally the final goal of Transylvania was to unite Hungary against the Ottomans, on more occasions than not
Btw, Michael the Brave was from Wallachia, so it has nothing to do with the Transylvanian ambitions. I'm not really sure why did you bring him up here

From a gameplay perspective, Transylvania adds an extra challenge to Hungary, a civ that, due to the Carpathian mountains, does not have to deal with much conflict.

Secondly, it's relatively small size can make it fall prey to Ottoman dominance easier than a united Hungary (for example, take Serbia, which weakens Bulgaria's dominance of the Southern Slavic zone, and makes them more vulnerable to the Ottoman advance later in the game). In the majority of my games, the Turks are still struggling to take any of the Balkans, which makes Eastern Europe a much less interesting place.

I get that the goal is to increase the chance of the Ottoman dominance in the Balkans.
But really, you want to have Transylvania break away from a strong, united Hungary only to weaken them? You want to have Transylvanian-Hungarian wars?
In my eyes it's absolutely out of question. Would be wrong on so many levels...

As I said, Transylvania should only be possible if there is no Hungary in the game.
After a hungarian collapse I can imagine a separate Principality of Transylvania, but having them both? Nah

Also, even though Transylvania was historically part of Hungary until recent history, it does have a ethnic Romanian majority and would be a good representative of the Romanian culture group which, despite that people's lack of importance in RFCE's time period, is one of the last numerically significant culture groups to lack representation in RFCE++. While some disagree with its relevance in RFCE, Transylvania has for most of its history been a principality (e.g. a vassal) of another state, was never completely integrated into another country. Hence why it should exist in RFCE++, even if it is doomed to be vassalized by another.

Yes, it do have romanian majority today. But this wasn't always the case.
Also Transylvania was a principality only under the Ottoman presence in the Carpathian-basin. It was a completely integrated part of Hungary before and after that

Speaking of principality, perhaps that can relate to its UP: something about less loss of independence if vassal, combined with the ability to vassalize instead of being conquered?

Yeah, something similar sounds nice to me

Lastly, it can have interesting, difficult, but not impossible UHV's such as uniting Romania, as was done by Michael the Brave in 1599-1600 (it lasted less than a year though, so it could be the third UHV). The first UHV can deal with Transylvania's, along with Moldavia and Wallachia's revolt against Hungary when the nations were first created in the 14th century (perhaps Hungary could be given more advantages and tempted to found cities in Moldavia?). The 2nd UHV should not be anti-Ottoman because there are too many of those. How about being the #1 of a certain economic or cultural condition in the East?

I don't get this, why Michael the Brave again?
Yeah, he wanted to unite Wallachia, Transylvania and Moldavia against the Ottomans
But he was Wallachian prince, not a Transylvanian one...

Also, what do you mean by Transylvania's revolt against Hungary? There was no such thing.
They only revolted against Habsburg rule, not Hungary

 

[MariusMR]

Just some feedback on Sweden, I won the Historical victory last night and it was painful

On a side-note, I managed to unite Sweden and Denmark (Kalmar Union) in 1386 and I took a huge hit in stability (down to -11), only recovering to 0 in 1416. I switched to Imperialism at -6 when I discovered banking, it dropped down to -10 following the anarchy, up to -2 after capturing the Barbarian Visby and settled at +2 eventually in 1418 mainly due to building stability buildings.

I founded Protestantism in and immediately converted and declared war on Prussia because it was settling in on the Baltic coast in Novgorod after I conquered and collapsed the Republic and the cities were still in revolt leaving a huge vacuum.

I raised the city Prussia settled and discovered that, even though Prussia's state religion was Catholicism, the city didn't have a Catholic community so it didn't count towards the razing meter. I pushed into Livonia and Courland, razed three cities with Catholicism (Memel, Riga and some other one) and the meter showed I had done so

Prussia converted to Protestantism and Catholicism disappeared in their cities, so I conquered Königsberg and Wehlau, Prussia collapsed and I conquered and kept Danzig too. I then razed two independent cities in Poland with Catholic communities (which collapsed eons ago), Poznan and Krakauw if I remember correctly, and met the UHV requirements triggering a Golden Agein 1564!

There was only one foreign city on the Baltic Coast left, Lübeck owned by Germany, I healed my troops, marched them on the German side of the Oder within my cultural borders (having captured the independent Stettin decades ago), declared war and captured Lübeck in 1580.

The painful part was having to play for an additional 170 years (110 turns) after I had met all the UHV requirements

The game got incredibly laggy and unstable, and I had the memory allocation failure error approximately every third or fourth turn whenever an AI wants to talk to me Quick saving was the order of the day, but it was painful and slow

In the end the mighty Swedish Empire had researched everything but the Industrial Revolution and even built the most colonies (who knew Bergen is such a production power house! ) Oh, and the formation (+25% against cavalry) promotion for Sweden is awesome against the Prussians with their Teutonic Knights and general propensity towards creating knights.

The one issue with Sweden is that the production (military and otherwise) power houses are in Sweden and Norway, on the other side of the Baltic, and the action is on continental Europe. Novgorod eventually became my base on the 'mainland' because Sweden, on this map, is an island.

In 1748, after having traded six different resources and 118 gold per turn to England for one Atlantic Access resource, I spot a little black dot just North East of Denmark.

Was there Antlantic Access in Scandinavia / the Baltic prior to RFCE++? If so then I must have always missed it because when I play(ed) as Germany, I usually (re)conquer Groningen and Amsterdam for Atlantic Access instead of Denmark

I loved playing Sweden, and loved the huge Empire (not the largest, Russia was no. 1 in terms of area, or the largest I've ever had - France makes good empires )

However, the late UHV is painful, as I remarked above

In this game Spain didn't seem to have an opportunity to even exist, as there was no Leon (not even a razed one) and no other cities in Castille or the traditional Spanish settlement areas Cordoba (the Duchy, not the Caliphate ) eventually collapsed Aragon and Portugal, capitulated the respawned Portugal and Morrocco, and even collapsed France twice! (Okay, England had a huge role to play in that too )

Cordoba just stays too strong if the Iberian Peninsula is represented / controlled by AI Spain, Aragon, Cordoba and Portugal.

And IMO the strengthened English holdings in Picardy and Normandy have made them too strong and I often see France collapse as a result. It does sometimes respawn (in 1698 in this case), but in the south and west of France (Brest, Bordeaux usually).

In this particular game The Ottomans were super strong and Byzantium and Bulgaria capitulated, with Serbia and Hungary collapsing.

The Maghreb is much better now, and the additions of civs there has made it more lively and much more historically accurate and, for once, actually occupied by something other than Independents.

I hate the Independents, but the Swedish razing UHV gave me great pleasure (and revenge) as I sacked and razed indie Catholic cities

What I hate the most is when I declare war on an independent city in Volhynia, the ships from Groningen, for example, come and raid my coast Because you're focused on central and eastern Europe, you don't expect an assault on the coast of Norway and Denmark and they end up pillaging all the oceanic improvements

In short, I hate Independents and support any way of reducing them (even if it means razing )

Lithuania and Poland are incredibly prone to collapse. Lithuania was Sweden's vassal, Moscow declared war and conquered ONE Lithuanian city, and the entire civilization collapsed two turns later

I started a game as Moscow now, and must say that Novgorod and Crimea make for interesting (and unexpected) game play and challenges. In the current game Hungary is also very strong (occupying Kiev) and we're all at war.

I've managed to collapse Novgorod, but Crimea and Hungary are still after my tail.

The Muscovy UHV about no barbarian cities seems overly simplistic and too easy right now, considering the presence and spawn of both Novgorod and Crimea before the required completion date. I only had to conquer three barbarian cities.

 

[Opera]

I guess, since the point of the UHV is to have no Mongols, killing Crimea should be part of the goal.

 

[AdrienIer]

The Crimean game is very hard if you get a strong (alive) Kiev. Could you make it a conditional spawn like the Ayyubids in SoI, only if Kiev is defeated and there is at least one mongol city in eastern Europe ? It wouldn't seem very logical for a Mongol state to form in Crimea if the Mongols have been defeated by Kiev.
After a first try where Kiev was very strong (I abandoned very quickly, even taking the nearest city proved very hard, so the capture of Moscow would've taken too long), the second try was good : independent cities all around, I kept Kiev and razed the rest, build Qirim between Kiev and Azaq, and started my razing campain throughout Moscowan lands. Moscow was razed around 1545 (Which caused the collapse of the civ), and the 20th city was razed (Riga, as I didn't want to start a war I only send my troops against independents) around 1580. After that it's basically a waiting game until 1699 with your 4 cities, not DoW on anyone, trying to build wonders (clearly difficult) and repelling the occasional Mogais or Kalmyks.

 

[Opera]

I did declare war on a lot of civs, just so my capital would get more free citizens. Usually if you've razed successfully, there's a big empty buffer zone between other civs and your cities anyway.

I do agree about Kiev; only once did I see them survive the Mongols and they do end up very powerful. Pushing them to collapse would be good when the human's playing as Crimea.

 

[Morholt]

SO are you going to tweak domination victory?

I guess, will look into it.

I have a question about the Scottish 2nd UHV condition. It says that I have to become close friends with the French, but what happens if:

1. France collapses?
2. France unites with Burgundy and in some weird circumstance gets sucked up in a Burgundian union?
3. France collapses and respawns just before the UHV date?

Is there any way to accomplish the condition or is the game simply lost (if I want to win by UHV that is)?

Whenever France does not exist you do not get points. When I made the UHV I simply assumed France would always exist (since France is generally one of the top three civs). Has this been a problem for you? I don't think I've seen France collapse without human intervention.

So I just generated a Dutch start

French: They completed 2/3 UHVs (Empire of Holy Land and World), still control the Holy Land (Syria, Lebanon, Jerusalem), Solid stability, Burgundy and Genoa consumed, they are Protestant (probably why they have the first six colonies)

Iberia: Aragon and Castile united with Aragon coming out #1, Spain just respawned with only Toledo, Aragon and Portugal are Solid, Cordoba (still Muslim) is meh, Portugal settled Santa Cruz de Tenerife. Would be nice if Aragon conquered Corsica and Malta (could Sardinia perhaps be ok?).

Ottomans/Balkans: Control all of Anatolia, French seem to be holding them in on the south side. Did the Balkans get rejiggered? There is a city three tiles west of Istanbul... Serbs control Belgrad to Atina and Drats. Bulgarians Lom to Galats. Ottomans have the random city of Gaziantep on Epirus island thing. Hungarians don't have Belograd.

Baltic: Prussians driven from Prussia, now live in Pomerania, Courland and Riga. Lithuanian beat out Poland. Total razing of Kievan Rus. Scandinavia is three countries, no one controls Iceland.

Dutch: Due to many more civs I got 12 OBs on first turn, will play to see how they are.

Aragon leading the Spanish union is cool, I take it they did not insta-collapse this time? Sardinia is Solid for Aragon, or did you mean they should conquer it? AI is useless at naval invasions so that's probably not going to happen. Currently the AI gets a cheat to help them conquer Sicily (like England gets for Ireland).

Did not change the Balkan cities, must have been the AI in action.

I guess the Dutch UHV will have to be made harder. Maybe a percentage of live civs?

Just some feedback on Sweden, I won the Historical victory last night and it was painful
...
The painful part was having to play for an additional 170 years (110 turns) after I had met all the UHV requirements

The game got incredibly laggy and unstable, and I had the memory allocation failure error approximately every third or fourth turn whenever an AI wants to talk to me Quick saving was the order of the day, but it was painful and slow
...
In 1748, after having traded six different resources and 118 gold per turn to England for one Atlantic Access resource, I spot a little black dot just North East of Denmark.
...
Cordoba just stays too strong if the Iberian Peninsula is represented / controlled by AI Spain, Aragon, Cordoba and Portugal.

And IMO the strengthened English holdings in Picardy and Normandy have made them too strong and I often see France collapse as a result. It does sometimes respawn (in 1698 in this case), but in the south and west of France (Brest, Bordeaux usually).
...
Lithuania and Poland are incredibly prone to collapse. Lithuania was Sweden's vassal, Moscow declared war and conquered ONE Lithuanian city, and the entire civilization collapsed two turns later
...
The Muscovy UHV about no barbarian cities seems overly simplistic and too easy right now, considering the presence and spawn of both Novgorod and Crimea before the required completion date. I only had to conquer three barbarian cities.

I guess the Swedish UHV needs to be either earlier or harder. A boost to Poland/Lithuania might help.

The instability upon the AI talking to you might be an old bug in a new shape. I'll look into it.

Scandinavia gets AA in 1680 which makes no sense as for example New Sweden was founded in 1638 and Danish India in 1620. I'll move it earlier.

Agree that Cordoba collapses too rarely and Poland-Lithuania too often.

English Normandy might get a slight nerf.

I guess, since the point of the UHV is to have no Mongols, killing Crimea should be part of the goal.

Crimeans are Tatars and not Mongols, but Russia did conquer them but only at the end of the scenario (1783). I guess it could be worked into a "wanted to but didn't" UHV.

The Crimean game is very hard if you get a strong (alive) Kiev. Could you make it a conditional spawn like the Ayyubids in SoI, only if Kiev is defeated and there is at least one mongol city in eastern Europe ? It wouldn't seem very logical for a Mongol state to form in Crimea if the Mongols have been defeated by Kiev.
After a first try where Kiev was very strong (I abandoned very quickly, even taking the nearest city proved very hard, so the capture of Moscow would've taken too long), the second try was good : independent cities all around, I kept Kiev and razed the rest, build Qirim between Kiev and Azaq, and started my razing campain throughout Moscowan lands. Moscow was razed around 1545 (Which caused the collapse of the civ), and the 20th city was razed (Riga, as I didn't want to start a war I only send my troops against independents) around 1580. After that it's basically a waiting game until 1699 with your 4 cities, not DoW on anyone, trying to build wonders (clearly difficult) and repelling the occasional Mogais or Kalmyks.

No conditional spawns in RFCE and I actually agree with that decision. I agree that live Kiev makes Crimea way too difficult. Some ways to deal with this: make the initial Mongol invasion stronger, add several smaller "golden horde" invasions afterwards, improving Crimea's flip zone so Kiev declares on them so they get extra soldiers, or just force-collapsing Kiev when loading a Crimea game.

The next version is coming along surely but slowly. However my semester is starting so there's lots of things to take care of and I will not have as much time as before working on the mod for a while.

 

[CrossRFC]

Perhaps if an independent Transylvania takes too much away from Hungary, then Moldavia could be considered? There's currently nothing in the Moldavian area, and they are incontestably of the Romanian culture group. They can have similar characteristics to the Transylvanian civ I proposed.

 

[AdrienIer]

improving Crimea's flip zone so Kiev declares on them so they get extra soldiers, or just force-collapsing Kiev when loading a Crimea game.

Beware, if you make them flip too many cities it will mess up the 3rd UHV goal.

I just tried the Ottoman UHV, and it is a pain to have to build a city in Epirus, Arboria, Macedonia and Bosnia, since those are very small/close to an existing city. I was lucky enough to find a Bulgarian city in Epirus, but since it was on the north of the province and since the Macedonian city was on the west of Macedonia there was basically no space for an Arborian city. IMO Arboria should be split into Epirus and Macedonia, especially when I see the size of Aquitaine (Toulouse was never part of Aquitaine, it should be in a Languedoc province which would go down to Cataluna, with cities like Perpignan etc...). The problem of Bosnia is that Raguzza takes away most of its good land, while the rest belongs to Belgrad. A city is possible but too squashed up to be useful.

 

[Wessel V1]

Whenever France does not exist you do not get points. When I made the UHV I simply assumed France would always exist (since France is generally one of the top three civs). Has this been a problem for you? I don't think I've seen France collapse without human intervention.

No, although France became a German vassal 100 years after my post, early in the 13th century. I don't think the situation I sketched is very likely to happen often so it isn't much of a problem but I wondered what would happen just in case it did.

 

[ozqar]

Well, regarding all that dependability on France for the Scottish UHV, perhaps it's your role as Scotland to keep them from being conquered. It sounds very romantic and all hahaha. Although Jean is most of the time very ungrateful for your help! She has slapped me often! LOL

In any case, the UHV itself could be facilitated if France gets a mechanic where Paris (and perhaps a core area around it) will not become independent if the country is to fall into civil war. This way, there's always some France to please.

However, there's one uncool thing about the situation for the Scots, later on you'll most likely have to attack France in order to get Bretagne for your UHV.

On other things, could you increase Scotland's and Denmark's stability maps? It's a pain having to build that many stability buildings and still feel afterwards that you're on the brink of collapse!

 

[CrossRFC]

After playing numerous games as Serbia, Hungary or other eastern civ, I have noticed that Bulgaria becomes far too strong, becoming a superpower and in the top 3 in score, whereas it should fade out of existence as time goes on. This overpowered-ness is causing quite some headaches for the Turks, the Hungarians and the Austrians, as well as even Crimea. Around 1300 Eastern Europe turns into a big greenish-yellow blob, which is discouraging.

#1 Bulgaria is too stable
#2 its tech rate is too fast

I would recommend giving them many more military units to pester the Byzantines, but then giving the Bulgarians severe penalties in terms of building their infrastructure and economy, such as only one settler at start and no free workers.

 

[AbsintheRed]

Perhaps if an independent Transylvania takes too much away from Hungary, then Moldavia could be considered? There's currently nothing in the Moldavian area, and they are incontestably of the Romanian culture group. They can have similar characteristics to the Transylvanian civ I proposed.

Ideally Wallachia would be the right choice, it had amibitons for Transylvania and Moldavia quite a few times
I would absolutely second adding them, but unfortunetly our map is too small :/

I am not sure though how accurate would be something like this for Moldavia.
To add them instead of Wallachia, just to have something more or less represent the vlach culture group isn't feel right to me
Transylvania was definitely not suitable for something like this - both from historical and gameplay perspective - but I don't think Moldavia is much better either