RFC Europe playtesting feedback thread
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sedna17
Emperor
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- Mar 12, 2008
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More information please. What do you believe should be fixed?
sedna17
Emperor
- Joined
- Mar 12, 2008
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- 1,091
I'm going to have to politely disagree with you. The Dutch game is challenging, but perfectly playable and fun. See my account here. Since then I've actually played a third game in which I had three cities (Amsterdam, Gronigen, and Burgundian Anvers/Antwerp) -- but Gronigen and Antwerp were under a lot of culture pressure. The English were colony fiends, but I still managed to (just barely) get four colonies. Amsterdam built all of my colonies. Buy useful buildings with your gold. Don't try to the initial colonies, instead get Amsterdam to be an awesome city first.
The only issue I have with the Dutch game is the one identified that sometimes it is not possible even to found a second city, and we will be making sure that this is always possible.
Kochman, by "this issue" are you referring to the mercenary problem, or are you saying something else?
One other point of confusion I should clear up. The AI does not attempt to go for UHVs, so it is not relevant whether the Burgundian UHV calls for them to settle in the Netherlands. The AI does attempt to settler in the areas specified in their SettlerMaps (see the Reference folder included in the mod) and to take over areas in their WarMaps, and these are normally in sync with areas you're asked to take over for the UHV, but there isn't a direct connection.
Issos
Chieftain
Finished my exams today, now it's time to conquer the world! 
Bad thing is that i can't resist playing civ, especially when learning history, so i played few games
Norse and Venice are, as it had been said, a bit too easy, i finished both of them by UHV in less than 2h each. More wars than last time, still almost no battles.
I also started few games as Netherlands to see how would Europe change until 1580. Great thing i noticed were some cities in Poland conquered by Germany, and state vassalized - there have been some wars, apparently
. Bad thing is that i also noticed one city conquered by France, and another one by Spain (sic!) - both in where Belarus is now. England tend to be leading one, or almost last one, i like that. Poland, as usual. Once i found myself at war with very strong Burgundy, just after spawn. Antwerpen swapped to me, i also founded two cities in unsettled Germany. Burgundy seems to be unintrested in reclaiming its lands, although it holds strong army just by the border. It's going to be good game 
. Also, i managed to found second city in 3/5 of starts, so i don't think fixing Netherlands start is necessary.
Bad thing is that i can't resist playing civ, especially when learning history, so i played few games
Norse and Venice are, as it had been said, a bit too easy, i finished both of them by UHV in less than 2h each. More wars than last time, still almost no battles.
I also started few games as Netherlands to see how would Europe change until 1580. Great thing i noticed were some cities in Poland conquered by Germany, and state vassalized - there have been some wars, apparently
. Bad thing is that i also noticed one city conquered by France, and another one by Spain (sic!) - both in where Belarus is now. England tend to be leading one, or almost last one, i like that. Poland, as usual. Once i found myself at war with very strong Burgundy, just after spawn. Antwerpen swapped to me, i also founded two cities in unsettled Germany. Burgundy seems to be unintrested in reclaiming its lands, although it holds strong army just by the border. It's going to be good game . Also, i managed to found second city in 3/5 of starts, so i don't think fixing Netherlands start is necessary.I've actually managed to win the dutch UHV once, and a well there was a 2nd that only counted for me 
(founded Amsterdam 1E of starting position, 5 great merchants settled in Amsterdam part didn't count)
I'll try to get some more dutch starting positions to have a broader view, but i'd guess only about 10-20% of the starts actually give you somewhat of a chance.
This largely depends on whether or not Germany survives it's spawn. If Germany is around there's a good chance that they will have built close enough to the flip zone to not flip, but steal most of your nice resources(i.e. Köln, Münster, Hamlen, Aachen, Bremen). Calais can also be a problem when it comes to culture.
I've noticed a different problem but it's also relevant for the dutch.
I'm usually pretty in a hurry to have my cities make their 1st culture expansion so I like to either produce culture and/or run specialists if possible. The problem is that the amount of culture the town actually receives somehow gets miscalculated.
Just tried it out with the dutch.
Antwerpen founded on turn 1 and ran 4 great artists, 1 starved of course, but even 3 great artists would have produced 12 culture points(only 10 are needed for the 1st expansion).
I had 8 culture points in Antwerpen on round 2, that makes a 50% deficit. Or I'm simply missing out on something
Possible additions/solutions/helpful things for achieving the UHV:
More troops
Being able to found Amsterdam 1E of starting location
Pre-founded cities by Independents if not founded by a certain date, works with Calais
Prolonging the culture pushback of neighboring civs 1-2 turns
Increasing dutch flip zone 1 tile further east and possibly south
Replacement of resources around Amsterdam
Possibly more health resources near Amsterdam (some Pig or even better some Fish/Crab would be nice, after all before Trade got so important the dutch relied heavily on fishing).
Sheep (the area now known as the Netherlands was also a major producer and trade center for cloth in the time period of the game.
I've added 3 different initial saves, all have severe drawbacks.
V1:
Amsterdam and Groningen foundable, Antwerpen flips. All important resources accessible. Recommend buying city walls instantly though, Burgundy means business
If you go protestant Burgundy will be nice for a while but either they settled a great artist in Calais to annoy me or it has a quite heavy culture production.
V2:
Amsterdam and Groningen foundable, Antwerpen nonexistant. The clam W of Amsterdam will never be available due to massive culture from Calais. Germany had initially lost it's capitol one again so expansion eastward isn't limited. Liege to the south(independents) could possibly be conquered.
V3:
Amsterdam and Antwerpen foundable, Groningen might be possible during culture pushback but I don't think so. Münster is a cultural monster and will encompass the clam N of Amsterdam for a while after it's culture returns.
That Antwerpen is foundable is only due to luck since Aachen most likely would have interfered if there hadn't been some sort a battle a few rounds earlier.
(founded Amsterdam 1E of starting position, 5 great merchants settled in Amsterdam part didn't count)I'll try to get some more dutch starting positions to have a broader view, but i'd guess only about 10-20% of the starts actually give you somewhat of a chance.
This largely depends on whether or not Germany survives it's spawn. If Germany is around there's a good chance that they will have built close enough to the flip zone to not flip, but steal most of your nice resources(i.e. Köln, Münster, Hamlen, Aachen, Bremen). Calais can also be a problem when it comes to culture.
I've noticed a different problem but it's also relevant for the dutch.
I'm usually pretty in a hurry to have my cities make their 1st culture expansion so I like to either produce culture and/or run specialists if possible. The problem is that the amount of culture the town actually receives somehow gets miscalculated.
Just tried it out with the dutch.
Antwerpen founded on turn 1 and ran 4 great artists, 1 starved of course, but even 3 great artists would have produced 12 culture points(only 10 are needed for the 1st expansion).
I had 8 culture points in Antwerpen on round 2, that makes a 50% deficit. Or I'm simply missing out on something
Possible additions/solutions/helpful things for achieving the UHV:
More troops
Being able to found Amsterdam 1E of starting location
Pre-founded cities by Independents if not founded by a certain date, works with Calais
Prolonging the culture pushback of neighboring civs 1-2 turns
Increasing dutch flip zone 1 tile further east and possibly south
Replacement of resources around Amsterdam
Possibly more health resources near Amsterdam (some Pig or even better some Fish/Crab would be nice, after all before Trade got so important the dutch relied heavily on fishing).
Sheep (the area now known as the Netherlands was also a major producer and trade center for cloth in the time period of the game.
I've added 3 different initial saves, all have severe drawbacks.
V1:
Amsterdam and Groningen foundable, Antwerpen flips. All important resources accessible. Recommend buying city walls instantly though, Burgundy means business
If you go protestant Burgundy will be nice for a while but either they settled a great artist in Calais to annoy me or it has a quite heavy culture production.
V2:
Amsterdam and Groningen foundable, Antwerpen nonexistant. The clam W of Amsterdam will never be available due to massive culture from Calais. Germany had initially lost it's capitol one again so expansion eastward isn't limited. Liege to the south(independents) could possibly be conquered.
V3:
Amsterdam and Antwerpen foundable, Groningen might be possible during culture pushback but I don't think so. Münster is a cultural monster and will encompass the clam N of Amsterdam for a while after it's culture returns.
That Antwerpen is foundable is only due to luck since Aachen most likely would have interfered if there hadn't been some sort a battle a few rounds earlier.
As I pointed out in my previous posts (#3474, #3476) playing with Hungary a successfull game on emperor difficulty is quite insanely hard because of the massive amount of barbarians who mostly destroy the improvements around the cities and don't let you expand.
To solve this problem I recommend lowering the number of 7 strenght lancers by half.
3Miro
Deity
We balance the game for Monarch difficulty. It is way too difficult for us to balance it for all Civs for all difficulty levels. This is how RFC itself works and this is what we are doing as well, if you notice in the original RFC there are many UHV conditions that are impossible on Emperor level.
3Miro
Deity
@Daffy: the Dutch culture is a bug. Good job on noticing it.
I have fixed the culture bug and I have also added a comment that explains how culture modifiers work. I hope this will avoid further problems.
For everyone who wants to test this, open the file RFCEurope\Assets\Python\RFCEBalance.py (use something like Notepad or TextPad) and then edit the line
to look like
Hopefully this will improve the Dutch gameplay.
I have fixed the culture bug and I have also added a comment that explains how culture modifiers work. I hope this will avoid further problems.
For everyone who wants to test this, open the file RFCEurope\Assets\Python\RFCEBalance.py (use something like Notepad or TextPad) and then edit the line
Code:
gc.setGrowthModifiers(iDutch, 100, 50, 50, 100, 50, 4 )
Code:
gc.setGrowthModifiers(iDutch, 100, 50, 200, 100, 50, 4 )Hopefully this will improve the Dutch gameplay.
The problem with culture being incorrectly calculated is not only related to the dutch. I've also had the problem with the portuguese and austria at least. It's probably easy to miss since it's only noticeable in the early stages of city development.
And forget the sheep I mentioned earlier, cloth production in the netherlands ist probably represented by the dyes available around amsterdam
And forget the sheep I mentioned earlier, cloth production in the netherlands ist probably represented by the dyes available around amsterdam
I tend to disagree on this. Hungary on Emperor is truly a difficult challenge, but it is not because of the barbarians - in fact they are the only reason that IMO the game was balanced on emperor and made the game fun. I would go as far as saying that the number of barbarians should be this high on monarch as well.
Dealing with the 7 strength lancers is easy, they spawn by four, that means to defend it, you should have two or three stacks of 4 spearmen with woodland/forest defence upgrade staying ready close to the places where they usually spawn. In the moment they spawn, move the stack to a forest tile close to them, so they are in the lancers attack radius. I can guarantee, that they will always attack the closest units your stack of four spearmen (thats why moving the stack close to them is necessary) and they wont move to your cities or try to pillage your land. I didnt lose any spearman with this kind of defending, this is the best way to deal with them.
As for the later mongol invasion, there is only one tile on east in the Carpathian mountains where they can invade. That tile has 75% bonus defence (hill+woodland), so you first need to build a fort here increasing the defence bonus to 100%. I moved 15 guisarmiers with woodland defence upgrades (although 10 is enough) that held back more than 30 mongol horse units during the few turns they were attacking, then they gave up
I managed to do the first UHV, having the biggest land in europe. Kiev collapsed due to the mongol invasion, I made Poland collapse, and gained the necessary land by conquering Austria. The second UHV - no Ottoman city in Europe - well, I screwed that up. I should have thought about it sooner and attack the one city they had on the Balkans before the second plague. I didnt expect it coming, and during 100 years two plagues hit me that killed 90 procent of my army and over 60 procent of my population twice! This meant, that I didnt have enough time to build new units and conquer the ottoman city before 1526. The conclusion is that it is not impossible, you just have to think about it sooner.
Thats where I finished the game, not going further. The third UHV may be possible, I didnt go that far, but what I can say is that I played the game with Spain until 1700 and never seen anyone adopting free religion despite having the technology. So it may be a matter of luck, the one sure thing is that on emperor you will fall behind in tech race, so you should just hope that no one adopts it and concentrate your later research on reaching liberalism asap or building the wonder that opens all religions.
Pros and cons of emperor game with hungary:
+ diplomatic relations were much harder to maintain, there were many wars between me, bulgaria, poland, austria, even with the norse. Also in general I had worse relations with everyone as on monarch difficulty, making trade more difficult
+ war with barbarians forces made the game really interesting and challenging, I recommend implementing barbarian AI and numbers from emperor to the monarch game or at least making the monarch barbarians stronger
+ stability - that was a real challenge, building manor houses and courthouses in every city is a must, but still I had to watch my stability all the time to not letting my empire collapse. Pure fun
- other civilizations war AI still incerdibly weak, only attack on me was from Austria, thanks to the fact Wien was just few tiles away from Trencsen and they sent a few units - dealt with them easily. Despite the more difficult diplomatic relations and wars I didnt see the difference between monarch and emperor, they just dont attack - where is the fun in that?
- plagues - I defended the plague system in my previous post, but now I've truly seen the difference between getting hit by a plague in a fully developed monarch difficulty Spain, where every city was very healthy and had plenty of health resources and between a less developed hungary on emperor difficulty, with weaker access to health resources. With Spain I didnt lose more than 20-30 procent of my population, with Hungary it was at least twice that much. This wouldnt bother me so much as losing all my army with every plague - That is something that makes playing with a militarily oriented civilization really frustrating.
- I think we have too much buildings with high production costs with low effects. I would propose either reducing the number of buildings (for example no need for smokehouse, keeping granary with 50 procent of food storage, etc), or reducing the production costs for all buildings by 10 procent.
+- tech race impossible, although big impact on my resarch had a military oriented economy. I rather see this as a challenge, not an issue, but maybe the plague not killing off all my army all the time would give a bit more time to develop my cities as well.
Yep, the other problem is that you have no chance to adept Free Religion first on emperor, but if they could remove some lancers maybe the advancing would be easier for Hungary and may have a chance to win UHV
Otherwise I can understand that balancing is for monarch. Tho I always play RFC on emperor and succeeded with many UHVs, tho Egypt and Maya is pretty hard and I have to find a way ^^.
Otherwise I can understand that balancing is for monarch. Tho I always play RFC on emperor and succeeded with many UHVs, tho Egypt and Maya is pretty hard and I have to find a way ^^.
It will be nice if the Dutch flip zone is clearly stated. That way the Dutch player will know where he can settle right at the start of his spawn, and the German human player will know where not to build cities (unless of cos he dont mind the flip)
What effect would the change have exactly? Didn't notice any effect after I changed it.
I've been thinking about the reason why Germany collapses so often. I'm not sure whether or not anyone has come up with a solution for this, but anyway I've had an idea .
From what I've gathered Frankfurt quite often gets razed very early on by one of these barbarian 3 movement skirmishers or alike. The Germans move out all of their units at some point, imo they do this because they don't see any enemy units within striking range and therefore feel 'safe'. I also believe that they feel safe simply because they can't see that enemy unit waiting 3 tiles away with a free path to the city. I've had similar problems with unprotected workers being destroyed.
Now to my idea
How about either adding/modifying a new building/terrain improvement that lifts the fog of war in the surrounding area, i.e. adding 1-3 tiles(depending on terrain, more on hills less on plains) of lifted fog of war around a fort within cultural boundaries(like a unit stationed there, just better). Or a new improvement, i.e. 'Watchtower'. This way you could strategically place watchtowers/forts near your borders, at choke points etc.
Or possibly adding an increased range of sight for the palace or to a castle built in a city.
The watchtower/fort idea would only help the Germans if they had something like that under their control quite early on but I like the idea, the castle wouldn't work either since they won't have one anytime soon. The palace seems like a possible option, or simply adding some more forests NE of Frankfurt to slow down the skirmishers.
Thought it might be worth mentioning
.From what I've gathered Frankfurt quite often gets razed very early on by one of these barbarian 3 movement skirmishers or alike. The Germans move out all of their units at some point, imo they do this because they don't see any enemy units within striking range and therefore feel 'safe'. I also believe that they feel safe simply because they can't see that enemy unit waiting 3 tiles away with a free path to the city. I've had similar problems with unprotected workers being destroyed.
Now to my idea
How about either adding/modifying a new building/terrain improvement that lifts the fog of war in the surrounding area, i.e. adding 1-3 tiles(depending on terrain, more on hills less on plains) of lifted fog of war around a fort within cultural boundaries(like a unit stationed there, just better). Or a new improvement, i.e. 'Watchtower'. This way you could strategically place watchtowers/forts near your borders, at choke points etc.
Or possibly adding an increased range of sight for the palace or to a castle built in a city.
The watchtower/fort idea would only help the Germans if they had something like that under their control quite early on but I like the idea, the castle wouldn't work either since they won't have one anytime soon. The palace seems like a possible option, or simply adding some more forests NE of Frankfurt to slow down the skirmishers.
Thought it might be worth mentioning
3Miro
Deity
I've been thinking about the reason why Germany collapses so often. I'm not sure whether or not anyone has come up with a solution for this, but anyway I've had an idea
From what I've gathered Frankfurt quite often gets razed very early on by one of these barbarian 3 movement skirmishers or alike. The Germans move out all of their units at some point, imo they do this because they don't see any enemy units within striking range and therefore feel 'safe'. I also believe that they feel safe simply because they can't see that enemy unit waiting 3 tiles away with a free path to the city. I've had similar problems with unprotected workers being destroyed.
Now to my idea
How about either adding/modifying a new building/terrain improvement that lifts the fog of war in the surrounding area, i.e. adding 1-3 tiles(depending on terrain, more on hills less on plains) of lifted fog of war around a fort within cultural boundaries(like a unit stationed there, just better). Or a new improvement, i.e. 'Watchtower'. This way you could strategically place watchtowers/forts near your borders, at choke points etc.
Or possibly adding an increased range of sight for the palace or to a castle built in a city.
The watchtower/fort idea would only help the Germans if they had something like that under their control quite early on but I like the idea, the castle wouldn't work either since they won't have one anytime soon. The palace seems like a possible option, or simply adding some more forests NE of Frankfurt to slow down the skirmishers.
Thought it might be worth mentioning
This will not work. Even if you see the enemy, the original AI will not react to it if it is more than two tiles away. I have done some modifications to this code, however, it sometimes has the other adverse effect of workers not connecting strategic resources that are too close to the border (and nations will suffer due to the lack of good units).
If leaving Frankfurt unprotected is the source of the German problem, you can try adding an immovable unit there (i.e. add one tagmata just for the test).
kochman
Deity
- Joined
- Jun 8, 2009
- Messages
- 10,818
I thought we already talked about, several times, the fix for Germany... am I missing something? The immovable unit idea was not the best solution... eliminating the barbs that are there right after Germany starts is easy.
Edit: the forest to slow the skirmishers is another good idea actually, as Jusos2108 points out below.
Edit: the forest to slow the skirmishers is another good idea actually, as Jusos2108 points out below.
3Miro
Deity
I haven't been around for the past month or so. At any rate the "increase" unit awareness fix will not work.
