Release Candidate

[Wessel V1]

Two Dutch starts this evening, two CTDs before I got started. First one in 1580AD, this one in 1524AD. I reloaded it a few times but it kept crashing, also when I reloaded an autosave from a few turns earlier. Given the timeframe, could it be the Reformation code?

 

[Tigranes]

Indy city of Bulgar no longer spawns on the map

Why? It was there in a real life and represents the important Indy civ Muslim Bulgaria on Volga...

Another important indy city representing Khazars is Sarkel (Judaism there). Kievan Rus had some civilized some neighbors, you know...

Here is a map with all important cities on Kievan spawn. Please keep at least those which represent civs like Khazaria and Volga Bulgaria:

Spoiler :

 

[Sian]

i guess the reason is that Volga Bulgar is to far east to be represended on the map ...

 

[Hamir]

Interesting new Britain map.

Aside from the city names, Calais also doesn't flip, presumably because of the map changes.

It looks good I have to say. There seem to be quite a few more resources (not sure West coast of Ireland needed to be strengthened), but it feels less balanced, and harder to place the cities.

Previously when playing as England I just went for London-Bristol-York-Chester-Edinburgh-Wick-Dublin-Belfast+1 other Irish city. This covered the vast majority of the British Isles and all were good, solid cities. Now to reach the resources or cover the core land without building a huge amount of cities that overlap is difficult. The crab to the left of York for example is impossible to reach due to the placement of York, without building a city on the Isle of Man. The land in the midlands is also hard to cover without cities a couple of tiles from eachother.

I'm not sure looking at the map where the game is suggesting a place my cities. I think the historic maps work best when there are obvious City spaces - you decide where you want the cities to be placed first, and then work the resources out second. This feels more like resources dotted around, and fitting the cities around them the best you can, ahistorically.

I might just be missing something - happy to hear suggestions for where to place cities...

 

[ezzlar]

Dont you get culture for wonders in cities you have captured? I have also noticed that if I target a square which isnt entrable with right mouse button click when moving the unit goes into an eternal sentry.

The mongols spawning in Anatolia is really hurting the Ottomans.

Edit: When you hit the Renaissance your spies get the secret agent art instead of the old monk like guy.

 

[youtien]

France got new map too, and became even more powerful than before. Now we don't have to fetch dye on Holland, and we have deer near Toulouse. Also the extra worker helps. The only challenge is UHV #1, Then we just reconquest Burgandy and have 100+ turns to build and farm. French has to real threat for now, AI English just stand on the island, Germany has only one chance - when they spawned. Spanish/Cordoba no threat either.

There has to be some balance.

 

[Michael Vick]

France got new map too, and became even more powerful than before. Now we don't have to fetch dye on Holland, and we have deer near Toulouse. Also the extra worker helps. The only challenge is UHV #1, Then we just reconquest Burgandy and have 100+ turns to build and farm. French has to real threat for now, AI English just stand on the island, Germany has only one chance - when they spawned. Spanish/Cordoba no threat either.

There has to be some balance.

I wouldn't want to weaken France, just give them more competition possibly. I would make Burgundy stronger and have them more likely to take over all of Flanders and the Netherlands (as historical). I don't have as much of a problem with Germany not competing as much, the whole unified Germany thing is kind of fictional, it's more realistic in a sense when they collapse. Spain and Austria should be the other big competitors. Austria still isn't nearly as strong as I would like to see it, Spain needs slight resource improvements in a few of their major city spots to compete with France, they need more of a means to really go after Flanders and Italy. I've seen Spain AI get Sicily and maybe one city in Naples but never more than one in mainland Italy. The AI should be less likely to attack Portugal after Cordoba.

 

[ezzlar]

I dont like that. It would almost always be the same powers to compete against. Game was more randomized earlier.

 

[Sian]

a slightly more aggessive England would work as well ... In most games they just end out fiddling around in Britain, never trying to get south into France.

Maybe even, if not possible to tweak the AI to move enough troops, tweaking the mercenarys in normany and whereever else they're expected to have cities to create a few which can only be hired by england, or maybe even tweak the Crusade code so they semi-often (as an AI only) creates a small army in France's nothren coast

 

[Michael Vick]

a slightly more aggessive England would work as well ... In most games they just end out fiddling around in Britain, never trying to get south into France.

Maybe even, if not possible to tweak the AI to move enough troops, tweaking the mercenarys in normany and whereever else they're expected to have cities to create a few which can only be hired by england, or maybe even tweak the Crusade code so they semi-often (as an AI only) creates a small army in France's nothren coast

I think maybe AI England should be coded to prioritize building huge navies? With more ships sitting around with nothing to do, England might cross over to France more often? Even if not, as long as England has a big navy their presence will be felt if you're ever at war. Killing your ships, improvements, blocking your Atlantic Access (blockading colonies). Either way this problem is supposedly going to be solved by the strait mechanics in 2.0.

Another thing to get Britain more involved would be to be put Gibraltar/Cadiz, the Baleares and Malta on their war map possibly.

Do people at least agree that Burgundy should be stronger? I don't think I've ever once seen them with their historical territory in the low countries. I think Brussels could be made one of the very high priority cities in the Burgundy settler map, no? An extra settler at spawn? Flipping a pre-placed indy Brussels maybe?

 

[Caliom]

Ok, i want to give some feedback too. I played one game so far. I startet as Spain and switched to Austria later. The game played nice with lots of AI vs AI warfaring and cities beeing captured and recaptured.
Cordoba collapsed a few turns after i spawned because barbs razed their capitol . It took some time to settle the whole Iberia. I placed many cities and it played out nice that they didn't expand to the big fat cross so quickly. I think the resources in iberia are well balanced and placed, allowing many overlapping cities, but no super cities. I like that.
Burgundy conquered independent Toulouse, but didn't settle in the low countries, probably because France controled the territory there. Nevertheless it was as strong as France and constantly battled with them. Burgundy conquered some french cities and lost it again. I think England was at war with France too but didn't move their troops out of their town in Normandy. Eventually Burgundy and France collapsed both. After they respawned Burgundy vassalized to Genua and France to England.

Venice started weak. They didn't get Ragusa, because Bulgaria got it first. But they conquered Constantinopolis collapsing Byzantium. After Bulgaria collapsed too they conquered the whole dalmatien coast up to Greece and settled on the Krim. At the end they were second in score after spain.

The start as Austria was devastating. Germany declared war on me and moved their troops in front of Prague the same turn the city flipped to me together with Salzburg.
I had no chance to defend the city without walls and just two arbalests. I couldn't upgrade my units because iron was out of reach until Wien expanded, which took a while. The heavy lancers austria starts with are useless against promoted knights and teutonic knights. Better units and some walls would have helped. I loaded several times and then decided to cheat with the wb to play along.

Germany then attacked Poland and conquered Stettin, but Poland defended well and retook it. The city changed hands a few times. With Moscow and Lithuania it was the same, constant warfare without one party becoming stronger than the other.
Norse warmongered with england, germany, poland and later sweden.

Ottomans were weak. Didn't attack venetian Constantinople and eventually collapsed.
Portugal was weak too. Didn't settle the islands for very long.
Cordoba respawned with just one city and collapsed early again. Could need a buff here.
Overall the AI placed cities very badly, ignoring hotspots on the settler map very often.
The plague hit me as austria very hard. I don't like the mechanic as it is now at all.
Reformation and swedish spawn worked for me.

 

[3Miro]

I will start working on the Autosave bug, those take time.

Bulgar should be included on the right edge of the map, just to be included, although it shouldn't convert to Islam until relatively late.

Squatting can only be done with the capital and hence it is possible only in very few situations. For example, if France builds a regular city in Burgundy, then Burgundy will just flip it. The easiest solution would be to allow for Capitals to flip on spawn, that should discourage squatting.

 

[Highlander_]

I've played RC1 version and found strange graphic issue that did not occured in Beta 12 and Beta 13 (and of course in my vanilla CIV version). All details are set to High.

When playing as England (tried four times - the same), I cannot see four terrain improvements: cottages, hamlets, villages and towns. Other elements are OK as usual. I've also entered WorldBuilder and tried to add i.e. village manually, and I was the same story - terrain was affected, but no graphic icon.

However - tried to play other nations (Bulgarians, Byzantine) and graphic was correct.

Anybody had similar problem?

 

[ezzlar]

There is a post with a fix earlier in this thread.

 

[Highlander_]

Found it, thanks!

 

[AbsintheRed]

Why? It was there in a real life and represents the important Indy civ Muslim Bulgaria on Volga...

Another important indy city representing Khazars is Sarkel (Judaism there). Kievan Rus had some civilized some neighbors, you know...

Here is a map with all important cities on Kievan spawn. Please keep at least those which represent civs like Khazaria and Volga Bulgaria:

Spoiler :

i guess the reason is that Volga Bulgar is to far east to be represended on the map ...

Indeed, Bulgar is way too far to the east
On the other hand, putting Sarkel on the edge of the map could work, will look into it

 

[AbsintheRed]

Interesting new Britain map.

Aside from the city names, Calais also doesn't flip, presumably because of the map changes.

It looks good I have to say. There seem to be quite a few more resources (not sure West coast of Ireland needed to be strengthened), but it feels less balanced, and harder to place the cities.

Previously when playing as England I just went for London-Bristol-York-Chester-Edinburgh-Wick-Dublin-Belfast+1 other Irish city. This covered the vast majority of the British Isles and all were good, solid cities. Now to reach the resources or cover the core land without building a huge amount of cities that overlap is difficult. The crab to the left of York for example is impossible to reach due to the placement of York, without building a city on the Isle of Man. The land in the midlands is also hard to cover without cities a couple of tiles from eachother.

I'm not sure looking at the map where the game is suggesting a place my cities. I think the historic maps work best when there are obvious City spaces - you decide where you want the cities to be placed first, and then work the resources out second. This feels more like resources dotted around, and fitting the cities around them the best you can, ahistorically.

I might just be missing something - happy to hear suggestions for where to place cities...

Actually I planned to improve resource placement in the British Islands, I'm also not statisfied with the current version

Dont you get culture for wonders in cities you have captured? I have also noticed that if I target a square which isnt entrable with right mouse button click when moving the unit goes into an eternal sentry.

The mongols spawning in Anatolia is really hurting the Ottomans.

Edit: When you hit the Renaissance your spies get the secret agent art instead of the old monk like guy.

- Wonder Culture: IIRC this is standard BtS behaviour. Not sure if we should change it

- Barb spawns: Will continue to improve and better balance it. Also plan to separate a couple more spawns for the human player and the AI

- Spy art is a bug. What do you guys think, we should get a new art for the renaissance era, or just set the current art for that too?
Merijn, could you do this when it's decided?

 

[AbsintheRed]

Bulgar should be included on the right edge of the map, just to be included, although it shouldn't convert to Islam until relatively late.

I don't like the idea of having a city that far away from the borders of the map
Even it's a cool flavor to have an islamic city there, I think we should avoid it

Squatting can only be done with the capital and hence it is possible only in very few situations. For example, if France builds a regular city in Burgundy, then Burgundy will just flip it. The easiest solution would be to allow for Capitals to flip on spawn, that should discourage squatting.

Maybe even that's not necessary then
Whoever squatts he/she does it intentionally, with knowing the exact consequences
It's a kind of cheat in my eyes, which can also be done in WB even if we forbid squatting

Btw, what's your thoughts on reducing cities into towns in the starting area's 3*3 tiles?
What's the current mechanics right now, they are simply destroyed in all cases?

 

[merijn_v1]

- Spy art is a bug. What do you guys think, we should get a new art for the renaissance era, or just set the current art for that too?
Merijn, could you do this when it's decided?

No problem. If someone provides the art, I will. (I will give the spy the monk-art for now, until a better one is found)

 

[merijn_v1]

I remember something. When we included the Lithuanians, we didn't change the bonus of their UB (+3 XP to all land units), because we didn't know any and it we had other priorities. But know, we still didn't change it. Does anyone knows a good bonus? Or should we keep it as it is now? (Which is IMO a bit OP)

Another thing (but with lower priority to change it): It has the same art as the Swedish UB. Does anyone know a good art for one of them?
Lithuanian UB: http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=7384 ?