RFC Europe playtesting feedback thread

[st.lucifer]

What do you mean ''contracting''? Removing them?

Yeah, I'm wondering if we should consider removing one of them. We might also consider making the Hungarians play like the Mongols in RFC - have a big early spawn, a lot of horse units, militaristic traits and UHV goals, and planned obsolescence about the time Austria spawns. We sort of tried that for Bulgaria, but it hasn't really worked out that way.



By the way, if you're playtesting, please play on monarch level, which is where most people who try the mod will be playing. Observations from viceroy aren't very useful.

 

[sedna17]

I should say that right now the stability is purposefully left high, so that civs don't collapse too frequently during alpha-testing. We do plan to bring that down. I agree that Hungary should normally get subsumed into a rising Austria. We might have to bring two of the UHVs forward for that to work well. I think they currently are:

1. Control the most territory in Europe in 1500AD
2. Be the first to adopt Free Religion.
3. Never lose a city to barbarians or Ottomans by 1650AD

 

[Cethegus]

I'm not sure why you're running Common Law in a test game unless its very late and you've got all the other civics to go with it. Its not the best civic for warmongering in general as you take a hit on stability from too much military.
Personally I just stick with Feudalism, Feudal Law, Manorialism, Vassalage and Electorate all through the game. (best for military, free units etc.)
Check out the RFCE Wiki at Rhyes of Wiki for more details about civics.

I forgot how the civics work in RFCE and thought the earlier poster referred to the amount of HAPPY faces foreign military units produce in your cities. But alas, I was wrong and should remain out of this thread until I start playtesting again. Brainstorming should be kept elsewhere.

Oh and by the way, thanks for reminding me of the RFC Wikidot. There are all the answers I need.


EDIT:
What I meant with the strategic use of military was that you could send your leftover military units to idle in other civs' cities that are running Common Law to create unrest. This way you could affect your enemies (that could be Friendly with you at the same time) without a need to declare war or waste espionage points.

 

[jessiecat]

I should say that right now the stability is purposefully left high, so that civs don't collapse too frequently during alpha-testing. We do plan to bring that down. I agree that Hungary should normally get subsumed into a rising Austria. We might have to bring two of the UHVs forward for that to work well. I think they currently are:

1. Control the most territory in Europe in 1500AD
2. Be the first to adopt Free Religion.
3. Never lose a city to barbarians or Ottomans by 1650AD

Did you see post 435? I've posted saves from two games that crashed due to the Turn 280/1440AD bug. It may be a coincidence but I think it may be linked to the respawnings. This never happened before the new test version.

 

[micbic]

By the way, if you're playtesting, please play on monarch level, which is where most people who try the mod will be playing. Observations from viceroy aren't very useful.

If I ever get a victory at monarch... But I will do that for the good of the mod.

As for the Austrians-Hungarians issue, if I knew programming, I would place a Serbian Civ instead of the Hungarian (leader: Stefan Dusan, spawn date 1160 AD, Power: the Hungarian one would fit nice, UHVs: Control Salonica at 1300 AD, do not lose any city to the Ottomans, Byzantines or Austrians till 1600 AD, build 8 Orthodox Monasteries at 1700 AD), since it covers more empty space that the Hungarian does as well as gives more expansion area to the Austrians, and replace the Hungarians with barbarian attacks, to simulate the Magyar invasion. But I don't, so it is just an idea.

 

[sedna17]

Did you see post 435? I've posted saves from two games that crashed due to the Turn 280/1440AD bug. It may be a coincidence but I think it may be linked to the respawnings. This never happened before the new test version.

Could well be linked to respawns. I'll have to turn it back off and then, to be safe, generate my own test Dutch starts. Why couldn't the bug occur early in the game where it would take less time?

micbic, thanks for your suggestion re: Serbia, but the Civ list is definitely closed and finished.

 

[micbic]

@sedna: No problem for that. I suppose that means no civ will be dropped?

 

[operafantom]

About Austria-Hungary problem: the Ottoman attacks would be necessary to make Hungary weaker. After that Austria could vassalize or conquer or don't know Hungary. Actually in the real history the situation was sg like that. So after the Hungarian loss at Mohacs 1526 Habsburg Ferdinand could become a Hungarian king. Austria became a main power after that. Of course Habsburgs ruled not only Austria, but North Burgundy and Flandria,too. What if when Austria spawns they would be forced to get these territories? And when I played they couldn't get Praga because Germans had done that before. So they were absolutely weak. They should get Praga too. Or West Austrian territories.

 

[st.lucifer]

About Austria-Hungary problem: the Ottoman attacks would be necessary to make Hungary weaker. After that Austria could vassalize or conquer or don't know Hungary. Actually in the real history the situation was sg like that. So after the Hungarian loss at Mohacs 1526 Habsburg Ferdinand could become a Hungarian king. Austria became a main power after that. Of course Habsburgs ruled not only Austria, but North Burgundy and Flandria,too. What if when Austria spawns they would be forced to get these territories? And when I played they couldn't get Praga because Germans had done that before. So they were absolutely weak. They should get Praga too. Or West Austrian territories.

That might not be a bad solution to manage the small space issue - force Austria to take Hungary as one of their UHV conditions, and have the Hungarians expand quickly at the expense of economic development (ensuring a later collapse if the UHV isn't reached).

 

[jessiecat]

Another crash. This time at 1416. Saved game below.

 

[jessiecat]

2 more crashed games, both just after 1400AD. Playtesting after that date has become impossible.

re. Austria, extending their core area NW, making sure they flip Prague and even Augsburg, even if they have been captured by Germany or Poland, is probably the best solution for now.

 

[sedna17]

EDIT:
What I meant with the strategic use of military was that you could send your leftover military units to idle in other civs' cities that are running Common Law to create unrest. This way you could affect your enemies (that could be Friendly with you at the same time) without a need to declare war or waste espionage points.

I agree this is a large potential exploit for the human player. The AI won't be able to figure out how to respond to it. I think we'll have to remove this side-effect. I'll add it to the "to-do" list for when we revisit civics.

 

[micbic]

Perhaps you could replace it with a war weariness modifier, just an idea

 

[sedna17]

Okay, I'm not getting crashes anymore -- I generated a couple Sweden starts and one Dutch one, and no problems. Only problem is, I'm not quite sure what I changed. I did reduce the mongol horde a bit, maybe too many huge barb cities is a problem. Now they still collapse Kiev but stall out a bit faster after that. Anyhow, I'll try to post a new test version tonight. Not too much changed, but I hope a few people will be able to test some late games and see if it's better for them now. I'm worried that if it's just a matter of decreasing the amount of "stuff" a little then people with less good computers than mine (though mine isn't that great) will still have crashes.

 

[jessiecat]

Okay, I'm not getting crashes anymore -- I generated a couple Sweden starts and one Dutch one, and no problems. Only problem is, I'm not quite sure what I changed. I did reduce the mongol horde a bit, maybe too many huge barb cities is a problem. Now they still collapse Kiev but stall out a bit faster after that. Anyhow, I'll try to post a new test version tonight. Not too much changed, but I hope a few people will be able to test some late games and see if it's better for them now. I'm worried that if it's just a matter of decreasing the amount of "stuff" a little then people with less good computers than mine (though mine isn't that great) will still have crashes.

It does seem a very consistent crash. Just had another one. Only for comparisons sake, what kinda system have you got? Mine handles the game pretty easily, only beginning to slow down a bit after 1400 or so.
It's a 5200mghz. DualCore Athlon (2x64bit), with 3 gigs of ram and an Nvidia Geforce 7600 graphics card.

 

[sedna17]

It does seem a very consistent crash. Just had another one. Only for comparisons sake, what kinda system have you got? Mine handles the game pretty easily, only beginning to slow down a bit after 1400 or so.
It's a 5200mghz. DualCore Athlon (2x64bit), with 3 gigs of ram and an Nvidia Geforce 7600 graphics card.

I run Civ on my (Mac) laptop under Bootcamp (i.e. it looks like a regular Windows system). 2.2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 2 GB of RAM and a GeForce 8600M GT (128 MB). So if my system isn't crashing anymore that's (hopefully) a good sign for yours.

 

[jessiecat]

I run Civ on my (Mac) laptop under Bootcamp (i.e. it looks like a regular Windows system). 2.2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 2 GB of RAM and a GeForce 8600M GT (128 MB). So if my system isn't crashing anymore that's (hopefully) a good sign for yours.

Or maybe not so good. Playing my first game on the new version as Genoa, everything fine until 1428.
Then CRASH!.

The error message that comes up quotes the following location:

c:\DOCUMENTS-\PAUL\LOCALS-\TEMP\d 149 appcompat. txt

and CODE -ADDRESS ox 000000000023c9f40

then a whole list of other stuff. If any of that means anything to you.
I've posted the last two autosaves, the 2nd. one was the turn before the crash.

EDIT To sedna 17. I've just noticed that the latest test version is based on the 3.13 verson of BTS but most of us are now using BTS 3.17. Could that have something to do with this problem?
Also, a couple of turns before the crash it announced "The Germans have renounced foriegn domination etc." ie they respawned. But when I checked WB they hadn't. And the events log has no entry for that either. Very strange.

 

[sedna17]

[I've just noticed that the latest test version is based on the 3.13 verson of BTS but most of us are now using BTS 3.17. Could that have something to do with this problem?

What do you mean, exactly? Where do you see this information (I'm not saying it's wrong, BTW)?

 

[sedna17]

This is a frustrating bug, Jessiecat. When I load up your save, it will crash, but without any useful (to me) information. When I start my own games, they do not crash, which makes it near impossible to debug. If I upload a single file that simply turns off re-spawns will you be able to install it and see if the crash keeps occurring for you?

If anyone else has experienced late-game crashes WITH THE LATEST VERSION (Dec 17), please report them here.

 

[jessiecat]

What do you mean, exactly? Where do you see this information (I'm not saying it's wrong, BTW)?

I may be wrong but I think our basic WB save was created before the latest upgrade of BTS. Vanilla BTS version 3.13 ships with the game disc. The 3.17 patch (based on Bhruic's unofficial patch) was released by Firaxis on 19.06.08 and is available through the forums and the Downloads section of the CivFanatics homepage. A good way to check is go to the main BTS game menu, go ADVANCED and check if any updates are available. I don't know whether any changes in 3.17 affect our mod or not. Same with RFC. Depends on whether people are running the old 1.181 or 1.182 versions. Esp. with the new 1.183 version released by Rhye this month. Just an idea.