RFC Classical World

[srpt]

re: Byzantine city flipping: I was actually using the SoI birth method birthConditional. what was happening was that method was dumping back out to birthInFreeRegion under certain conditions (I think barbs razed Byzantium), thereby reverting to the lCoreRegions, so I just told it to use lNormalRegions that case as well. (Byzantium should have been on the "no raze" list but I forgot to change the coords when I changed the map).

re: Hellenic shrine: you guys are talking about what should be the hellenic shrine right? the whole shrine idea doesn't really jive well in this case, but we gotta use something. I was thinking the Oracle would be fine. whatever it is will be built long after 320BC since Egypt's first great person will usually be an engineer from the Pyramids, which makes both the Oracle and the Statue of Zeus ahistoric time-wise and location-wise. I want the Great Library to stay as a wonder and I will make the AI beeline it so it gets built there. may have to remove the 3 libraries requirement to make that happen reliably. However both the Oracle and the Statue are named so generically that at least neither will look all that incongruous(sp?). the Oracle at least is about knowledge, and so relates more to the representation of Hellenism as a cultural force in the game than the Statue, which seems to have more paternal/tribal/militaristic connotations.

re: Roman survival: well you could have a third goal as follows: after conquering Trajan's empire, do not lose any cities to barbarians, be stable enough to preclude the Byzantine spawn, reconquer all the territory lost to the spawning Franks, Visigoths, Ostrogoths and Vandals, and beat the Arabs and Tang in tech in 850AD.

actually come to think of it there aren't that many ahistoric goals in this mod. ok I checked and theres a few but not many (Qin surviving the Han, Carthage sacking Rome), certainly not one per civ.

 

[Saturninus]

For the Hellenic shrine, why not use a pantheon? The one in Athens is THE Pantheon, but that's only because its the most famous. It's very reasonable to assume there was one built in Egypt though

For the Roman UHV, I just finished jurisprudence (the library helped a lot). The cut in maintenance has been so huge that I /do/ have the resources to hold back the barbarians indefinitely. The forests actually create a choke point in Belgium where all German barbarians have to pass that I reinforced. They're gonna have to have a massive surge to become a legitimate threat. But I really like reclaiming the lost respawn land, and why not reclaim byzantine too instead of avoiding its spawn? If you let the crisis of the third century happens, avoiding their spawn is gonna be a nightmare, and the empire was reunited a few times.

The historic vs ahistoric was referring to the trend from the original RFC and RFCE, I hadn't actually compared these yet.

 

[srpt]

I tried the Mauryans starting with 2 axemen instead of the elephants and I still got to within a few turns of being able to whip a settler for Deccan and get the first UHV, so I'm going to keep it that way. the axemen only managed 2 cities before they died. by the time I got to Madurai I needed the upgraded elephants. fun attempt, way overstretched, leaving cities unguarded, lost Mathura twice, (not while it was unguarded, both times barb javelin vs spear).

 

[Wessel V1]

To 'defend' againt the German tribes I use woodsman 3 legionaries. These are really awesome. Some swordsmen accidently got right next to my borders at the Rhine (on the woodland hill between those forests), so I parked one of those guys right next to them. They were too afraid to enter my territory and were stuck ever since.

EDIT: it seems that sometimes I get double units on spawn as the Romans. Sometimes I get 1 full galley, 4 Legionaries and a worker, sometimes I get 2 full galleys and 8 legionaries and 2 workers. I always get one settler though.

EDIT 2: Whoops, version March 11th this is. I forgot to update on my laptop that I use in weekends.

 

[merijn_v1]

2 Bugs:

1. I can't load the Egyptians. I got a "You've been defeated" message in the 1st turn.

2. The Nubian UP doesn't work properly. I get Drill I and Combat I, instead of Drill I and City Garisson I.

 

[srpt]

the Egyptians load fine for me.

I changed the Nubian promotion to Combat I to make them more dangerous to Egypt. forgot to change the text.

I'm buffing the Parthians defensively a bit by giving them marksmen and marksmanship on spawn. hopefully they will survive til the Kushan spawn more often. right now its about 50-50.

 

[merijn_v1]

I have the same problem with the Seleucids. (I expect I have the problem with all starting civs.)

 

[patkog]

Hey there,

I really enjoy playing your mod! However, I got the same problem with the starting civs, after loading the game tells that I'm defeated!

PS: I'm playing the newest svn version

 

[srpt]

should be fixed now. update and try again.
@patkog: welcome and thanks.

 

[rrosen]

Revision 231 works fine for the starting civs for

Haven't seen anything aboute the Sabeans (spelling?), so tried them out.

You start out with a single settler and archer, with the first goal to control 3 provinces in 150 BC. The provinces are Arabia Felix (Yemen), Arabia (Saudi Arabia) and Makan (Oman). Your unique unit is a merchant. Your tech is abysmal, so I start with going for fishing.

Spoiler :

Are they particularly targeted with events? The first time I had one hurricane that destroyed buildings, one hurricane that killed citizens and one earthquake that destroyed three improvements, all before 150 BC.

My first try was a spectacular failure. Until 165 BC I had managed to build a single archer and a settler and research fishing, only to discover that all fish and crabs were out of reach from the starting location. The other civs were all grumpy and refused to do any trade, not too suprising considering my backwardness. Clearly, more optimized play was needed to reach the goal in 150 BC.

Spoiler :

Second try I settled one space south.... and got a cyclone in 302 BC, which killed one of my two citizens. With such a start, I would surely fail and restarted.

Third try. I prioritized pastures and mines to get production up. Built an archer first, then started a settler but switched to work boat when fishing was researched in 242 BC. But that hardly made a difference. You will be able to get four citizens working. They can produce four stuff each towards a settler, the sheep pature (4 food, 3 gold), mines (4 production) and sheep on hill (2 food, 2 production), for a net total of 8 production per turn. A settler costs 341. Another earthquake comes, but I'm more lucky with its targets this time. This time, the first settler finishes in 173 BC, clearly a failure.
What else is there to try? Maybe conquering Judea with mercenaries + building one city.

Fourth try: Science is immediately set to zero. Massive colonies of termites comes early on and destroy my pastures. Those disasters are really out to get the Sabeans. In 200 BC the first mercenary (an archer) appeared. This time, I had my settler ready and could found CITY NAME MISSING in 188.

Spoiler :

In 176 I attacked Judea, with a total force of two normal archers and two unpromoted mercenary archers. Through some incredible luck and reloading I managed to win against the defending archer in Jerusalem (14.6%), but they had a spearman as well, so I took it only the second turn. I had the territory needed!

Spoiler :

Then, the Galatian infantery turned up and slaughtered me.

The first goal is maybe possible, but not likely, if you get some good mercenaries and a great deal of luck and can hold Judea.

Fifth try: This time, I start with a monument, since the culture part will be hard too. City one spot to the south to get two hills. I got lucky with industrious villages the same turn the border expanded to the sheeps.
An identical force as last time is assembled - four archers, two of which are mercenaries. Ptolemids wander with a force of two spearmen and a galatian infatnery, so the attack has to be delayed. In 212 a third mercenary archer appeared, which could protect Saba against the wandering Egyptian stack, so I tried an attack. Even with extensive waiting and reloading, I could not beat the 15% odds that was the best I could get after sacrificing three archers.

Spoiler :

 

[srpt]

sorry for the frustration. I will work on Saba. they should start with fishing at least. I was also maybe going to spawn indy Adulis across the straight if I can find out when it founded. the events were just bad luck. I was thinking 1 settler to Mecca area or Makan and 1 conquest, so I guess they need to be able to produce a settler in time. I'll give them some attention.

try the Mauryans with no starting elephants. I was about 2 turns from being able to whip a settler and get the first goal.

 

[rrosen]

Nono, I'm not frustrated, it was fun to try them out and see if it was actually possible to accomplish . Of course I understood that they were one of the civs that has received the least attention. You are able to make the settler in time, so if a few mercenaries that are not archers become available Judea should be conquerable. I wonder how possible the culture goal is.

 

[Saturninus]

Are there any civs in particular you needed tested for difficulty or bugs? I've got starts saved for most everybody east of persia so I can fire them up quick and a pretty empty day staring at me.

 

[srpt]

I just finished a respawn of the Qin as a NanYue civ to make it harder for the Han to take south China, so I'm curious how that works out. (will be finished soon, update again in half an hour, just doing text)

I know the 1st Mauryan goal is possible but hard, would love to know if the sainthood one is possible.

I've only ever played the Satavahanas to observe the Mauryan-Sunga transition so I have no idea about them.

the Pandyans and Bactrians I've won with, so I have to back and make them harder.

I'm curious about how hard the Parthians are. I just gave them marksmanship to help them deal with barbs.

I know the Qin wonder goals are just barely possible with a forge and great engineer, would like to know how hard it is for them fighting the Han spawn.

thanks for the help, have fun and don't forget to take pictures!

edit: another thing I tweaked and haven't had time to test:
the Alexandria population goal was really easy because the 2 main competitors, Pataliputra and Luoyang, both went through major setbacks (the Han spawn and the Sunga rebellion) before the goal and had to start again from 2 or 3 pop, so I made some python that basically guarantees both cities granaries and farms after those events only if the human player is egypt. I also nerfed Alexandria rather severly. I'd like to know that the goal is now hard enough that I can put back 1 resource, probably bring back the wheat and give the dates to Diopolis. with the wheat in Diospolis it grows bigger than Alexandria under the AI, which is bad.

 

[srpt]

ok now I remember a couple of things about how Saba was supposed to work:

they were supposed to be able to trade their abundant incense for health resources, starting with wheat from egypt (+2 health), and thereby produce settlers faster. but I took away one of egypt's 2 wheats to make their UHV harder, so now they have none to trade.

also their unique unit wasn't coded the way I was thinking. they are now cheaper and pass borders. so you can spam them even to indy cities for gold, saving up enough to buy priesthood from someone. but I never did any checking as to how realistic the culture goal was.

also I quite sure I never added any Arabia specific mercs to the pool. I'll add some horsemen and camel riders.

 

[rrosen]

A challenge for the Sabeans is that you don't start with tech to trade over water, and there is quite a long road to build to connect to the Egyptians. Furthermore, only the Satavahans were willing to open border, they seemed to dislike me.

By the way, Saturnius, make sure to update frequently since the mod is improving rapidly.

 

[merijn_v1]

@ srpt

I made some changes to the map and suddenly the 220AD scenario is broken. All the preplaced cities/civs are gone. I'm sure I didn't touch them. Can you look into it?

 

[srpt]

what map changes did you make? and did you commit after you made them?

 

[Saturninus]

@rrosen

This is the part where I admit I lack much in the way of technical prowess. I like to think I can contribute some creative ideas and I have a good eye for when things look off in game, but I haven't updated since the march 19th version. I really am completely lost at what to with that svn link (or what svn is, for that matter).

 

[srpt]

svn is a setup that links your copy of the mod to a master copy on the sourceforge server (you can get svn here). whenever theres an update svn checks all the files and only changes the ones it has to. so you get an up to date copy every time without me having to upload the whole mod or you having to download it. you should get it. its a bit confusing at first to set up (or it was for me anyway) but once its up its easy.