RFC Europe playtesting feedback thread

[eris23]

due to lack of open borders and tech trading (probably), the empires are dying like flies. in 1550 it was only 3 empires left, with me (england) collapsing, (due to poor economy, maybe i overexpanded a bit, and i m not supposed to colonize ireland and scotland - which i turned to tundra)...

needless to say, if netherlands hadnt spawned it would only ve been 2 empires...

btw, where is madrid?

 

[3Miro]

I was thinking about doing UHVs, but I guess I should look at stability next. One of the problems is that there is no whip and Rhye has implemented huge stability penalty for large cities. Also, it turns out that economy depends far more on food than on commerce and not at all on gold (i.e. merchants have virtually no effect)

 

[jessiecat]

due to lack of open borders and tech trading (probably), the empires are dying like flies. in 1550 it was only 3 empires left, with me (england) collapsing, (due to poor economy, maybe i overexpanded a bit, and i m not supposed to colonize ireland and scotland - which i turned to tundra)...

needless to say, if netherlands hadnt spawned it would only ve been 2 empires...

btw, where is madrid?

Madrid became the capitol of Spain in 1561. Previously it was Toledo. Why would you even want Madrid?

I agree with you about large empires. In all my test games I have collapsed once I reached 8 cities or more. Instability seems mostly linked to size of empire and lack of open borders. City maintenance costs are crippling when its so hard to generate any wealth.

 

[eris23]

in england i turned everything to cottages (except for ressources of course) and still...i was at a 10-20% research usually...
i think i ll edit the courthouse building to do 75 percent maintenance cut as default, and 90 for germany. either way, is there some way to manually and foolproofly (if this adverb exists) alter some files to make stability hits on economy less...pervasive

 

[Verily]

I just tried the Byzantines on Monarch. Maintenance costs are absolutely devastating; I had over -100 gold/turn running 0% science from the very beginning of the game, lost every unit but a single Archer in each city to desertions, and could not escape from the economic collapse. Some of this might be intended to allow the Arabs and Bulgarians to actually be able to penetrate Byzantium, but it's a serious problem nonetheless.

One solution would be the greatly reduce number-of-cities maintenance costs. Since the map is designed for most civs to have a lot more cities than would be typical in a standard game of Civ4 or of RFC, cutting number-of-cities maintenance to a quarter of its current value would not be unreasonable. City distance maintenance could also be cut by half given how far away from the capital a lot of the cities are likely to be. That would allow the Byzantines to at least break even on 0% science from the beginning of the game and maybe to actually run some science once Tyre and Jerusalem flip.

 

[kbk]

France (and possibly other civs) seems to have the Incan UP: Mountains are producing 2 food, and one hammer.

 

[micbic]

Ypu are actually right. Noticed that when playing as Burgundy.

 

[3Miro]

New version is up. Visit the Civ Discussion tread for details.

 

[kbk]

Okay, I played Arabia until around 900 with the Nov 10th version.

I rapidly conquered Anatolia all the way through Constantinople, and only lost a few troops. The Byzantines were largely using archers to defend, but Constantinople had a castle with a long bowmen, so I lost a few troops there. Afterwords they collapsed, and I claimed their African cities.

Around 750 I started to have stability problems, and by 850 I had cities declaring independence. I only had one foreign contact: The Bulgars, who wouldn't give me open borders (they were orthodox, and I was Islamic).

So I think expansion stability for Arabia could be tweaked upwards, especially since they have a huge land area on the RFC-Europe map, and their UHVs are expansion related. I had a 14 cities by just expanding relatively historically through Anatolia + Constantinople and N. Africa. All my other stability categories were 3 stars, Expansion was 2 stars and dropping. Which reminds me, at least for testing purposes, you should use let us see specific stability numbers on the F2-economy screen.

There should be a at least one more independent city in N. Africa, maybe Tunis.

 

[jessiecat]

Okay, I played Arabia until around 900 with the Nov 10th version.

I rapidly conquered Anatolia all the way through Constantinople, and only lost a few troops. The Byzantines were largely using archers to defend, but Constantinople had a castle with a long bowmen, so I lost a few troops there. Afterwords they collapsed, and I claimed their African cities.

Around 750 I started to have stability problems, and by 850 I had cities declaring independence. I only had one foreign contact: The Bulgars, who wouldn't give me open borders (they were orthodox, and I was Islamic).

So I think expansion stability for Arabia could be tweaked upwards, especially since they have a huge land area on the RFC-Europe map, and their UHVs are expansion related. I had a 14 cities by just expanding relatively historically through Anatolia + Constantinople and N. Africa. All my other stability categories were 3 stars, Expansion was 2 stars and dropping. Which reminds me, at least for testing purposes, you should use let us see specific stability numbers on the F2-economy screen.

There should be a at least one more independent city in N. Africa, maybe Tunis.

I agree that stabilty for all civs above 12 cities should not be penalised.

Also about independents: There will be a lot added to N. Africa, Spain and France. Like Tunis, Alger, Oran, Fez, Tanger, Marrakesh etc. Tanger and Fez would flip to Cordoba at the start.

 

[jessiecat]

Had another try with Cordoba in the new version, Monarch difficulty. First UHV impossible. Cordoba can never grow big enough to match Constantinople. Had a long war with Spain, taking Toledo and Zaragoza from them. After making peace they rapidly took all the indys in a collapsed France and the Netherlands. Then they collapsed. Its now 1449 and I will collapse next turn due to 1 star economy. Started collapsing a few turns after Spain collapsed. Have saved the auto-save from 1440.

 

[onedreamer]

maybe the instability caused by collapsed neighbors should be toned down.

 

[Cornelio]

The independents... Seriously they have huge empires. A collapsed civ should be divided more between the independents, 'cause right now, they're kicking everybody's asses.
Do you see that huge Independent army? Do you see the huge Independent kingdoms?

 

[jessiecat]

maybe the instability caused by collapsed neighbors should be toned down.

Ah. The neighbours. It's always the bloody neighbours.

BTW Did you notice the economy in my saved game? How could inflation make up nearly 50% of all expenses? I'm no economist but what's that all about anyway? Is it like German hyper-inflation in 1923?

 

[Barak]

Was it intended to have a mine NOT chop a forest? Whenever I make an improvement to a forested tile, the forest remains.

 

[Hitti-Litti]

I'd like to know what major problems there are preventing a jolly good game with RFCE. I think that the collapse issue is a problem, and economy may need to be fixed(see jessiecat's post #34). Are fixing these problems the first priority in your to-do list? If they aren't, I think they should be, because even if some features are buggy, a stable game will get more test players than a game which you lose as Cordoba because a chain reaction of collapses starts in the Balkans.

 

[3Miro]

I am working on stability, but let me tell you, the concept is "messed up". There are things in it that make little sense to me (i.e. penalizing large cities).

 

[jessiecat]

I am working on stability, but let me tell you, the concept is "messed up". There are things in it that make little sense to me (i.e. penalizing large cities).

I know this sounds counter-productive but there is a thread somewhere that describes how to disable stability in RFC. How about we do that and then reintroduce specific stability penalties as required. I agree with Hitti Litti. There's little point in playing a game that collapses due to factors beyond the player's control.

 

[3Miro]

I think the main contribution on the tread that you mentioned is mine anyway. I know how to disable stability, but that is not the point here. I want to make it work right. There is some expansion problem that makes no sense to me, Arabia expands rapidly and then for about 50 turns stays stable in terms of Expansion. Then it suddenly (without building any cities), expansion drops to 2 stars. This happens shortly before 1000AD and that is the period that everyone describes how massive instability hits. It is not due to neighbors or chain reactions, there is something else.

Other than that, I believe I have fixed the Economy problems for now. I will try to work more on it today, but will probably have to wait until tomorrow.

 

[Hitti-Litti]

I have an idea: publish a version that has stability disabled. Then we can play the version without stability and point out gameplay problems and problems with AI while you're fixing the oddities of stability. That way I think you'll be able to publish a beta version of RFCE earlier, and also you will get more testers as you'll have a playable test version out earlier.