Poking at RAND

[Arkaeyn]

Hey all,

I finally(!) got BTS and wanted to get back in the message board debugging fun (I saw that I had a credit in a readme, which was very exciting). Since I lost 6 months of my life to Rhye's random maps in Civ3, I thought I'd focus my energies on it for Civ4. I've played a few games today, and wanted to note my impressions:

First of all, the game seems slightly unbalanced, but I'm not sure if it's the mod, or me. My Rhye's and Fall strategies were almost always based on practice and repetition - my China was impervious to barbarians because I knew where to put axemen and spearmen. Here, that doesn't exist. This makes it feel like the older civilizations have a much harder time than they did in Earth Rhye's. I'll poke at it some more, but the best time I had was with Greece. Any advice?

Switching to new civilizations is a real roll of the dice. I got excited about Ethiopia finally being an official Firaxis civ, and switched. It was in a massive jungle/desert, right next to India. I declared war on India, hoping cities would flip...and they didn't. So I was stuck with a ghastly starting position and a war I didn't really want.

On the plus side - I love the idea, in the readme, of having the cities named according to where they're founded. This is something I was pressing for since Civ4 came out. I haven't seen a whole lot of this demonstrated as significantly different from the original city name list, but I haven't played a whole lot.

 

[musicfreak]

First of all, the game seems slightly unbalanced, but I'm not sure if it's the mod, or me. My Rhye's and Fall strategies were almost always based on practice and repetition - my China was impervious to barbarians because I knew where to put axemen and spearmen. Here, that doesn't exist. This makes it feel like the older civilizations have a much harder time than they did in Earth Rhye's. I'll poke at it some more, but the best time I had was with Greece. Any advice?

That's the point of the mod. RFC gets old after you've repeated the same strategy 10 times per civ. Here, there's no repetition because every game is different.

However, I do agree that it's imbalanced, but I'd blame that on it being a fairly new mod. It's not as "mature" as RFC. Also, not as many people play it; most prefer normal RFC, so there's less opportunities for playtesting and feedback.

And, of course, welcome to RFC.

 

[Rhye]

welcome back!
Raising to 2 the threshold of switching civs seems reasonable

 

[Arkaeyn]

Musicfreak - yeah, the imbalance is what I'm worried about. Fighting off the barbarians can get extremely difficult without that knowledge. Maybe it's supposed to act that way. But there also seems to be a much lower chance of having a civilization with significant terrain boundaries. For example, as the Romans in Rhye's Earth, the Mediterranean and the Alpes act as two significant borders that makes fighting off the barbarians much easier. Rome and Milan can churn out reinforcements, knowing that they're much less likely to face attacks than cities in Gaul or the Balkans. Likewise, China has huge mountains, jungles, and coastlines to prevent barbarians from going wild in their borders.

In RAND, the number of barbarians seems to be roughly the same, but the borders are so random it's difficult to deal with.

 

[Arkaeyn]

I just succeeded at surviving much longer in a RAND game. I started as Babylon, switched to Russia. Babylon proved to be quite strong, as it had several mountain ranges in which to nestle its cities. I was one of two civs to survive the ~500AD barbarian attack.

The map was interesting. I was playing a Standard map, that had a similar Eurasia continent pattern. Most of the civs were in the "middle east" or "east Asia." Japan had all of "Europe" to itself, and became a massive superpower. The other major power, Turkey, spawned in the center of the collapsed Egyptians, Arabians, and Babylonians, and flipped large numbers of cities.

Africa had no civs, and with a massive desert, nobody pushed to build cities there. A fairly large island east of "Asia" and west of "America" spawned both England and Spain. Each only had room for three fairly pathetic cities. I'm not sure how abnormal this is.

As Russia, I got to the Incas first, took Cuzco, and then sent over a settler. The city it founded wanted to immediately flip to Japan, which was strange - normal? Spain, Carthage, and Japan all founded cities in the new world.

Eventually, my lack of courthouses caught up to me, and Russia collapsed. But I had fun.

I like what I'm seeing in general for balancing the game, but there's a lot of randomness that seems a bit too important for the game, particularly in the map creation.

Distribution of resources seemed a little bit too balanced. I had virtually no resource trading with other civilizations. In some cases, it was because they didn't want to trade, but there also wasn't a whole to to trade. Not sure if this is intentional.

 

[Rhye]

could you post a map of the world?

 

[Arkaeyn]

Unfortunately, I don't have a later save for the Babylon/Russia game. This one is fairly early, with me still playing as Babylon.

Russia will spawn just to the north of Babylon, with a north-south strip of land between it and what would become Japan, which has basically everything northwest of there.



The second save is from a game I played as Greece, which went much better. It felt like a historical map, with a Middle East/Mediterranean where most of the early action took place, and other civs spawning all over the Eurasia continent during the middle ages.


There was what appeared to be a slight bug. The Mongols spawned in the eastern, landlocked part of my Greek empire, and took several of my cities, including my Confucian religion. Later, I captured the Taoist holy city, and decided to convert to Taoism in order to get the holy city benefits.

Every turn, however, the Mongols kept demanding that I convert back to Confucianism. There were never any ill effects. The save is towards the end of the game, Kublai should be nagging every turn.

Also, what caused my collapse in the last game, in addition to the ill-advised religion switch, was MASSIVE plague damage. I had two major cities, Corinth and Athens, which were 10+ population. Plague hit both of them and knocked them down to 1 population point, destroying all my military units. Then it happened again. Might be a little strong.

 

[musicfreak]

Every turn, however, the Mongols kept demanding that I convert back to Confucianism. There were never any ill effects. The save is towards the end of the game, Kublai should be nagging every turn.

Yeah, that's a known (annoying) bug. Rhye hasn't found the cause of it yet.

Also, what caused my collapse in the last game, in addition to the ill-advised religion switch, was MASSIVE plague damage. I had two major cities, Corinth and Athens, which were 10+ population. Plague hit both of them and knocked them down to 1 population point, destroying all my military units. Then it happened again. Might be a little strong.

Well, the plague is supposed to be strong, but even for me it wasn't that bad. Were those cities really unhealthy to begin with? I can't think of anything else...usually I lose 3, 4 population points max, and about 2 units per city.

 

[Arkaeyn]

Well, the plague is supposed to be strong, but even for me it wasn't that bad. Were those cities really unhealthy to begin with? I can't think of anything else...usually I lose 3, 4 population points max, and about 2 units per city.

Corinth didn't have an aqueduct yet, but I believe Athens did. Corinth was also hit extra hard because I realized that I hadn't switched off its specialist, so it was generating less food than it should have.

Both cities were built as moneymakers, with lots of coastal trade routes, if that makes a different.

Also, the Mongols had recently flipped most of the land mass and took a lot of my health resources, so I was lower than I had built with those.

 

[Rhye]

thank for the reports, I'll see what I can do

 

[Arkaeyn]

Here's another couple of quirks/issues. I'm playing as China, and the Mongols just spawned on my border, flipping Luoyang. My city of Xian is the closest to Luoyang, and has a good amount of culture. The culture around each city is inverted - I have pink squares next to Luoyang, and the Mongols have brown squares next to Xian. Both are too far away to be of any use to either civ, and it kind of messes up the map.

Also, another thing I've noticed with RAND is at the southern part of my empire, where there's a square of iron that isn't near a city. A worker of mine on automated Build Trade Route put a fort on the iron, instead of a mine. I've noticed that this happens regularly with resources on hills that are outside of the normal city limits.

 

[musicfreak]

Here's another couple of quirks/issues. I'm playing as China, and the Mongols just spawned on my border, flipping Luoyang. My city of Xian is the closest to Luoyang, and has a good amount of culture. The culture around each city is inverted - I have pink squares next to Luoyang, and the Mongols have brown squares next to Xian. Both are too far away to be of any use to either civ, and it kind of messes up the map.

I agree that too much culture is flipped. What happens internally is all your culture is converted to their culture, which I think is completely unfair. I think all your culture should simply be erased, and maybe give them like 100 culture or something to have a head start, but as it is now it takes a long time (too long) to get that culture back.

Also, another thing I've noticed with RAND is at the southern part of my empire, where there's a square of iron that isn't near a city. A worker of mine on automated Build Trade Route put a fort on the iron, instead of a mine. I've noticed that this happens regularly with resources on hills that are outside of the normal city limits.

That always happens in Civ4. Forts add the resource to your trade network, so it doesn't really matter either way. I personally don't like it, as forts take twice as long (more?) to build than mines, but either way it's an issue with the Civ4 AI and not RFC.

 

[Arkaeyn]

I just don't really understand how it happens so that the culture by their new city is still mine, but the culture near mine is theirs. Like the game remembers the outward boundaries of the culture but not the inner parts?

I didn't know that about forts and the AI - it may be a BTS thing, I never noticed it before I got BTS.

 

[musicfreak]

I just don't really understand how it happens so that the culture by their new city is still mine, but the culture near mine is theirs. Like the game remembers the outward boundaries of the culture but not the inner parts?

Yeah, the outer boundaries and very inner plots are processed differently. I personally think that whole system needs to be rewritten (or at least tweaked), because not only does it do weird things (like you mentioned) but it's also nearly impossibly to get your culture back. This is extremely annoying when the flip area includes tiles close to your capital.

 

[Arkaeyn]

Here's a problematic map I found - started as China, switched to Persia. It demonstrates two things:

1. Someone else mentioned that India usually had a weak starting position. This is a great demonstration of that.

2. Jungles and mountains have divided the continent in half. I know that, to some extent, this kind of thing is the goal in the RAND map generator. This is just a little bit excessive - the Persians are now totally cut off from anyone else.




By the way, I've switched over to large maps - not because the Standard maps were too small, but because they tended to have too few civs - my computer wasn't slow between turns at all! Large seems to feel better in terms of general civilization expansion. Standard maps seemed to have HUGE swaths of unused land, and too-distinct "continents" of civilizations formed.

 

[Arkaeyn]

Having played several more games, including one almost to completion, I'm getting more of a feel for the game and what makes me like a round and then dislike it. The key thing I've noticed causing me frustration is the feeling that I'm constantly reacting instead of acting. Much of the time I feel like I'm far behind - don't have enough troops to fight off the barbarians, don't have enough libraries or markets, can't ever build a wonder, don't have enough revenue to found a new city, and so on.

I've noticed that two civs - Greece and Rome - almost always allow me to feel like I'm more in control of what's going on. Almost too much control - in one game as Rome, I built every wonder of the world after Stonehenge and until the Hagia Sophia.

With any of the starting four civs, I feel like I'm really far behind in tech. As Japan I feel like I start a little bit too late (or could use another settler at the start? Not really certain). The modern European civs have a lot of luck involved with their spawning, but they can be good.

One solution I see recommended consistently is sacrificing population under slavery, which I've started doing much much more than before (this may help me with the starting civs, actually, especially Egypt. Hmm)

 

[Rhye]

so, is it too hard compared to RFC classic?

 

[Arkaeyn]

I'm not sure that's the way I'd think about it. It's less that it's hard or easy, and more that the balance seems slightly out of whack. When I do well, I do REALLY well. I'm 300-400 points ahead of the nearest competitor, at least until I get greedy and inevitably collapse. When I do poorly, I get so far behind in the tech race and have so little money, it's more frustrating than fun.

I can see a couple of reasons for this. First of all, I'm playing on standard or large maps, so there are fewer civilizations. The civs seem to come in groups of two kinds - geographically and chronologically. I'm not entirely sure of how the geography works. It seems like there's Mediterranean, European, American, Middle Eastern, Asian, and isolated civs. Chronologically, there's Ancient, Classical, Medieval, and Modern civs. I've generally been playing Ancient or Classical civs.

The Classical civs benefit gameplay-wise from spawning at roughly the same time in roughly the same area. Greece, Rome, Carthage, and Persia (there's also Japan). In a normal game of RFC, they compete with each other. In a game of RAND, one or two of them may not spawn, and they may spawn in an area far, far away from each other. Persia, I've noticed, occasionally gets terrible 80% desert starting locations, and Carthage occasionally is far far away.

In RFC, Greece generally has to deal with a cramped starting position, Romans to the west, Persians/Babylonians to the east, and barbarians to the north. Having three really good cities is doing pretty well, but it's also difficult to do much worse.

In RAND, Rome may not spawn, and there may be two or three civilizations in range, but none trying to expand. Or there could be massive swaths of barbarians. Doing well could be quickly creating the largest empire in the world, and churning our wonders and great people. Or getting torn to shreds by barbarians.

So "harder" isn't necessarily how I'd put it. RAND, I think, makes it more likely that you'll either be frustrated or bored.

 

[Arkaeyn]

Maybe a slightly better way to put it would be that I feel like I'm playing a puzzle game. My cities are kinda like Tetris pieces, and sometimes I don't get the pieces that make the best combinations, and sometimes I get all of them

Here's another example of map frustrations. I played as China until Germany spawned. The Germans appeared next to Rome and Vikings. Somewhat cramped, but doable. I got involved in a bad war against the Romans, when all of the sudden, Russia appeared right on top of me. Suddenly my capital has 4 squares of culture around it. Totally crippled.

I think I agree with the recommendations that cities distance limits should be set back to 3 squares, instead of the 2 from RFC. Is that something that's easy to change in the Python or XML so I can test that?

 

[musicfreak]

I think I agree with the recommendations that cities distance limits should be set back to 3 squares, instead of the 2 from RFC. Is that something that's easy to change in the Python or XML so I can test that?

DLL, actually. I don't know if I agree with that, but to be honest I wouldn't care either way. There's enough room for 3 squares in between, but on the other hand one of the things I've always liked about RFC was the fact that you have more options when it comes to placing cities. The problem is the AI... They seem to abuse it.

But I agree with the rest of your points.