RFC Classical World

Very strange bug in the Antigonids UHV: I destroyed both the Ptolemies and the Seleucids, got the golden age and a 2/3 check, but suddenly the counter reverts to 1/3 and sets goal 2 to 'NO' after 98BC. They're still dead though. Save included. Svn version 554.

Had a good game going on so far. After getting some experience with some easier civs (also won as the Celts, no problems here), I tried a civ that I considered a medium one. I took Aleppo, made peace with the Seleucids and conquered Egypt next. Economy wasn't much of a problem so I could delay Fairgrounds. Peltasts were the way to go, to defend new cities and also to take Byzantium. The latter city is, together with Athens (combined with a free great saint from Ephesus), crucial as it's a quick shot for iron. That iron let me build some heavy spearmen. The Seleucids weren't doing bad with Pella and Jerusalem as their outer cities. Luckily, the Hebrews took Damascus and when the Parthians spawned I had an army large enough to take Ctesiphon, Babylon and Susa. The Parthians didn't start at war with the Seleucids so I gave them Fishing to convince them. Just before the deadline the Seleucids collapsed. Goal 3 should be met in time but I lost some cities to the Parthians (sneaky bastards) which I'm going to retake if possible, together with Jerusalem.
 

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fixed that bug. also added a condition to prevent respawns of the Seleucids or Ptolemys from wrecking the Antigonid goal. after updating you should be able to play on and win your game.
 
Thanks for fixing it. I won a few turns later.

After that I tried the Qin a few times: it's so awfully tight. I missed the first goal by 1 turn (Great Wall in 215BC, Terracotta army in 213BC) and got the second goal if Gojoseon wouldn't exist. I think I'm going to give it a rest, the saving and reloading for unit placement against barbarians is tiring me. Basically you can't afford to lose too many units which makes it particulary hard since you also cannot afford to lose valuable land improvements. Still it requires optimal play: postpone getting the Chu cities, allocation of citizens to production or commerce tiles every few turns, deliberately run in a food deficit, no roads to connect resources and even getting a spy to the Tocharians for more trade income. I like to have some of these challenges because they raise my general level of gameplay but for now I think I'm going to try another civ, even though I have some improvements in mind.

EDIT: I forgot about tax collectors, those should make life a lot easier...
 
I pulled it off in the end... I wanted to load a start where 1. the chariot doesn't die taking out the spearman in Jinyang and 2. at least one slave emerges at the conquest of Luoyang or Jinyang. It took some time to get such a start, but after that it was quite a decent run. I made some further improvements with chopping woodlands and I took out Gojoseon right after Shu. I razed the city, didn't think it could be of much benefit with the barbarian pressure virtually paralyzing local slaves. It all fitted neatly, thanks for the challenge.:) Now I have to face the Han but I think they shouldn't be much of a problem, considering I won a BC war against them with Au Lac. Small bug by the way: the pasture near Qufu isn't on the pig but on the tile next to it.

EDIT: Harder than it seems. Partially because of a bug: the pig tile and the flood plain next to Xianyang are in the flip zone of the Han but because of a RFC bug don't revert to my tiles the turn after. This causes Xianyang to shrink to 3 population in stead of 6 what it used to be, halving my production. The easiest would be to delete the row from the flip zone I think.
 
After the initial war against the Han (I could only keep Shu, Xianyang and Jinyang, I gave Ji away to get peace), I regained the tiles near Xianyang and built some UUs and catapults. In the meanwhile, the Han spread their armies and were no trouble. Stability was, I was unstable a few turns but I managed to get back to 0 in a rush to get my economy running again as I was losing money with 0% research. Mainly due to overkill I think. UHV goal 3 never became a problem though. Some more bugs:

- After the city of Liao-tung is razed, another city appears. I noticed this when it flipped to me so I can't recall when exactly. Anyhow, it spawned on the pig tile in stead of the much beter actual location of Liao-tung.
- The goals of Au Lac are in the wrong order. The victory screen says the largest province goal and the Han goal have to be completed in an inverted order. The civilopedia says it right but it's still a bit confusing.
 
Now trying Satavahana. Kalinka is the most opportunistic AI (= smartest AI) I have seen so far. Every time I try to conquer the Pandyans that Kalinka guy declares war on me just when my army is out of position (in multiple games!). They managed to take my capital this way. Bharuch was taken by Saka so I'm lucky that capital switching in RFC:CW is less damaging than in RFC. In the end I got so annoyed by the Kalinkas I attacked them first before the Pandyans. Because they have just 1 city it's all about getting that city before their stack gets near one of my cities. Some catapults are very useful to achieve this. The first goal is super easy because usually the barbarians have pushed the Mauryans out of the holy cities so I used my free barb wins to take both cities. I didn't even need caste system anymore, so slavery all the way. Now the third goal was a bit vague to me (does Nan Yue count or not), so I looked into the python file which said:

# Satavahana UHV2: 10,000 culture by 100AD
if sd.getGoal(iSatavahana, 1) == -1:
if iGameTurn <= getTurnForYear(100):
if pSatavahana.countTotalCulture() > 10000:
sd.setGoal(iSatavahana, 1, 1)
else:
sd.setGoal(iSatavahana, 1, 0)

# Satavahana UHV3: Spread Buddhism and Hinduism to 4 southeast asian cities by 200AD
if iGameTurn == getTurnForYear(100)+1:
if sd.getGoal(iSatavahana, 2) == -1:
sd.setGoal(iSatavahana, 2, 2)

The UHV screen says 10,000 culture but the culture counter says x / 15,000. The third goal says 200AD but that's only in the # marked section so AFAIK it's counted as 100AD. However, the victory screen says spread to 3 cities in stead of 4.
 
changed the borders of Qin, Zhao and Wei provinces to prevent the problem you described with the Han spawn taking Xian's food.

fixed the Au Lac UHV order

moved Qufu's pasture

moved the respawn of Liaotung to the correct tile

Libya is now in Carthage's normal regions

I know the Qin game is very tight. I like it that way. For some reason I always thought that ultimately there should be a handful of civs that are very hard and Qin fits since they are so time-restricted anyway. also the historical fact of Qin Shi Huang, a single leader comes from nowhere and conquers all of China, an unprecedented feat, but his dynasty fails to survive him, makes me feel that the Qin should be hard.
 
I fully agree with that. One of the reasons I like prefer this mod over RFCE is that it manages to stay closer to the RFC philosophy: close action since a relatively small proportion of the map is actually used. This creates more dynamic gameplay and also leaves more room for harder UHVs like this. It's also the reason I argued RFCE 2.0 not to use a larger map, but that's not up to me to decide. The Qin goal is hard but not too hard, after all an average player like me did it in a few tries and I used some strategies that I haven't used in 7 years of Civ IV.

Yet another small thing: the Borobudur wonder doesn't work or isn't coded yet, the great saints couldn't complete a great work like a great artist could. It's a nice wonder however, works well with Pataliputra and caste system.
 
Bactria felt easy. I completed the UHV in 44BC. I was at 200+ gold / turn in the end and I was building military to take over India, so I think I could have gone to about 30K, maybe more. The trick is to wait for the Sungas. If you're lucky you still have some free barb wins left, if not the Hetairoi should be promoted already from other fights. I waited too long so both holy cities flipped back to the Mauryans, but with only 1 Archer in them I conquered them quickly. With both shrines the game was a path towards victory. I took Mathura in a quick war from the Satavahanas, which secured me 3 provinces in India. The palace was established quickly. I had 3 options for the Royal Mint:

1. Get a Great Engineer in Antiochia Margiana
2. Use some slaves to rush it
3a. Take Herat to get the gold
3b. Build a spy to walk to Egypt or Nubia to trade for gold.

Fairly easy. I have to say though there was no archer in Takashila at start, so if I were a bit smarter I could have made it my capital in turn 2. Because you don't want to lose the Hetairoi you have to waste some archers / spearmen to take it which makes a big difference.

Now I've played some games there are a few things that I noticed in general. The Middle East is very dynamic. Sometimes Rome is dominant, sometimes Judea manages to take some cities including Alexandria, the Antigonids can be a factor, even Pontus has a role once in a while. India is often mostly controlled by Satavahana, except for the Pandyan regions. Gaul is sometimes controlled by Rome, sometimes by the Celts. Ca Loa is usually doing okay in Southern China, but this time their capital is controlled by the Nan Yue. Carthage though is often a bit weak, I haven't seen them with more than 6 cities yet. Even the Tocharians control an empire of that size sometimes so they feel a bit left behind. I'd like them to start an invasion on Rome or Marseille or something like that.
 
fixed the Borobudur effect and also the Archimedes Workshop effect (Great Scientists can hurry buildings). the buildings were in the wrong order.

I was going to move the Kushan spawn back to 25AD to give them a few more turns for their "world's largest empire" goal which is very hard now since both Rome and the Han start very large in the 80BC start. this will put more pressure on the Bactrians. maybe the gold amount should also be raised?
 
I think 200 gold per turn should be a normal amount the Bactrian player should get with his 3 Indian cities and no research at all (perhaps 120 after 25AD if we discount the non-Indian cities). If we take 25BC as a reference mark for 10,000, then 15,000 in 25AD and 20,000 in 100AD should be a minimum. I think moving the date a bit forward is better though, it makes little sense to require the player to play more turns to get an even more ridiculous amount of gold. Once you have your economy running it's just about staying alert that nothing bad happens and getting to the required amount. 25AD, or if you want the player to face the Kushians 50AD should be okay.
 
Parthians next. I first took out the Seleucids, but in stead of going to Antioch and Tyre, I went to India. Two holy cities should save my economy. They did, but also gave me a two front war. The Parthian UP is amazing because once you have vassalage and some spread out Great Generals, you can create horse archers with 80% chance of withdrawal. These rarely get killed in combat so you can safely attack at 30% odds, knowing that there is still 86% the unit survives. They're like catapults, just throw a few at cities and take your victim, except these get ridiculously experienced after a while. However, they're a little more expensive than the UU so both should work fine I think. In defence however Horse archers are not too strong and since I went to India, I faced *many* barbarians. The initial Saka stack was managable but I wasn't expecting the Kushans wave. I think I lost at least 3 cities. Next time I prepare a bit more defence. Killing the Romans wasn't too hard and I did it at about the same time I got the territory goal, so I won in 15AD with Alexander's empire with the exception of Pontus, Armenia, Thrace and Bactria but including 5 Indian cities, with a score of about 21K. I think next up are the Kushans who have an upgraded horse archer. Same strategy probably.

EDIT: none of my units got the Mobility promotion that I should get because of my UP.
 
I was going to move the Kushan spawn back to 25AD to give them a few more turns for their "world's largest empire" goal which is very hard now since both Rome and the Han start very large in the 80BC start. this will put more pressure on the Bactrians. maybe the gold amount should also be raised?

I'm not too sure about 25 AD... I've heard that Kushan expansion into Afghanistan was around 45-60 AD. They could perhaps spawn in 25 AD, but get their stack a bit later? That way the Bactrians get a little "warning" of what is to come.

Also yes, the amount of gold could probably be raised. The hard part of the UHV is the palace and royal mint. Getting the gold shouldn't be a problem with two holy cities.
 
When I play as Bactria, I face the rising tide around 10 B.C-20 A.D I often lose several cities but manage to take them back, however the Khusan and the Saka Barbarians continue to pour in and it is usually game over by 60 C.E unless I have the Tarim Basin. Then I watch the Khusans surge deep into India, like reality of course.
 
Why does Carthage have so many historical provinces in Asia? Syria, Cyprus I can understand (Phoenician legacy) but why would Pontus, Asia, Rhodes, and Crete be historical?
 
Judah was next on the list. A very short and straightforward game. Took Egypt, Tyre and Cyrene, slave rushed a temple in Alexandria and waited for the Great Saint to spawn. At the same time I used all cities to build missionaries, teachers and pilgrims. In the meanwhile, I hoped Rome would let me live, which they did. The city and civ goal seemed huge to me but it appeared to be less demanding than I thought, I got it in 30BC. From there on I wasn't sure about the third goal so I created and army of Maccabees and attacked the Antigonids. Antioch culture flipped to Parthia later on, but Ephesus and Byzantion (from Pontus) meant victory.
 
RFCCW is easily my favorite RFC mod, so great work!
I have been keeping an eye on it for a while but only got into it a few days ago.
So far I've played as Dacia, the Sassanids, Judea, the Antigonids, Ptolemy, and Carthage.
Now I feel it is time for me to give some feedback.

I'm not sure if anyone has managed to win as Dacia, but, in my opinion, the territorial goal seems to be currently
reliant on luck; I've only almost managed it once after many tries. But I'm going to try a different and see where it takes me.

The Sassanids were fun. I think someone has said this before, but I'll reiterate:
the button art for the Zoroastrian missionary is missing; pressing it causes the game to crash.

As Judea, I was lucky to have the Antigonids rather than the Romans as my neighbor.
When I played as Ptolemy and the Antigonids, I must say, I have never found mercenaries to be as useful as they are in RFCCW.

As for Carthage: to satisfy the luxury resource goal, do I need 10 different types of resources, or just 10 resources. If it is 10 different luxuries, then the goal is impossible, because I count only 9 different luxury resources that are easily accessible in Europe and the Mediterranean.

I haven't seen any UHVs to the end yet, but overall it's a great mod.
 
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