RFC Europe playtesting feedback thread

[gilgames]

I've made 5 try....


attemp nr.1.: fail, Byz had 10+ unit in europe....Hardi razed
attemp nr.2.: fail, hardi AND slounm razed....no worth to try...
attemp nr.3.: possible fail, 1 unit in hardi, 4 in tess, 2 in athen, couldnt take tessaloniki, no merc till 750, left with 3 konik, but no contantinapolis, no saloniki(2 archer, fort) and its crap :s
attemp.4.: fail, hardi, tess razed, got +2 units on spawn, 1 kill barb in first turn.
attemp.5.: maybe, hardi 2 units, Tess 3 (athen 2), got 2 on spawn. all went well, till i got tess too. athen fended off my konniks but left without workers, barbs raped my infrastructures....

so as you see, the slopw frow need luck too. but imo the quick pick better then....or im doing something wrong...

ps: reporting on kiev tomorrow

 

[gilgames]

So i made some test run with the "not takeing Tsarigrad instantly" version...

attemp nr.1.: fail, Byz had 10+ unit in europe....Hardi razed
attemp nr.2.: fail, hardi AND slounm razed....no worth to try...
attemp nr.3.: possible fail, 1 unit in hardi, 4 in tess, 2 in athen, couldnt take tessaloniki, no merc till 750, left with 3 konik, but no contantinapolis, no saloniki(2 archer, fort) and its crap :s
attemp.4.: fail, hardi, tess razed, got +2 units on spawn, 1 kill barb in first turn.
attemp.5.: maybe, hardi 2 units, Tess 3 (athen 2), got 2 on spawn. all went well, till i got tess too. athen fended off my konniks but left without workers, barbs raped my infrastructures....

all in one, the bulgarian start up, is worse as i remembered

now i'm gonna testplay kiev. any suggestion are welcome....

 

[Chep]

Kiev has those annoying barbs that prefer to pillage improvements than to attack your units. Raze the road coming to Kiev from the south-east this will lead them towards Bulgaria, untill that one collapses, then they come for you.

 

[gilgames]

oh and a minor bug report...

I use /hope) latest SVN, the pope has strange diplo modifiers!!!, like -5 this war spoils our relation!!!
or in a bulgarian game (orto) +1 we care for our bro and sis'...

how is it?

 

[DC123456789]

Catholicism and Orthodoxy are treated as the same religion until 1054 (The Great Schism) for diplomacy purposes, so that explains the second "bug". As for the first one, I have no idea.

 

[swinnend]

In version 1.1

I was playing as Austria,
- I vassalized Bulgaria
- to weaken the Ottoman empire, I took their cities in Greece, and I gave them (liberated) to my vassal, Bulgaria
- All those cities made Bulgaria unstable, and they collapsed.
- the Greek cities I had just conquered, went back to the Ottoman empire (OK), with my troops still in it!
- so I took some cavalry, moved it out and back in, and thus conquered them again.

If this is a feature, I would like to see an historical precedent

 

[DC123456789]

They have a lot of Ottoman culture. When a civ collapses, cities with a lot of culture belonging to another, living civ will automatically flip back.

 

[AbsintheRed]

I agree that conquering it right from the start makes it easier. Tho' imo it makes it a bit too easy - once you have Constantinople you can essentially complete the rest of the UHV at will with no real challenges, as well as getting uber tech from the shrine and faith from the Theologians. The few times I took Constantinople from the off on Monarch I won the UHV 10-15 turns early, and the faith goal was done by around 1100AD.

And there is of course the simple luck element of relying on winning that first battle for Constantinople, basically turning the entire game into a one shot gamble. Win and you're fine, lose and you have to quit and start again. Not my favourite way to start the game

Yep, my thoughts exactly
With a good strategy all UHV's for Bulgaria are manageable, without relying on luck
Naturally the sooner you are able to conquer Constantinople the better, but even if you wait and conquer it with a fairly well developed army around 900AD (without any luck factor), you are still good to win both UHVs.

 

[AbsintheRed]

I've made 5 try....


attemp nr.1.: fail, Byz had 10+ unit in europe....Hardi razed
attemp nr.2.: fail, hardi AND slounm razed....no worth to try...
attemp nr.3.: possible fail, 1 unit in hardi, 4 in tess, 2 in athen, couldnt take tessaloniki, no merc till 750, left with 3 konik, but no contantinapolis, no saloniki(2 archer, fort) and its crap :s
attemp.4.: fail, hardi, tess razed, got +2 units on spawn, 1 kill barb in first turn.
attemp.5.: maybe, hardi 2 units, Tess 3 (athen 2), got 2 on spawn. all went well, till i got tess too. athen fended off my konniks but left without workers, barbs raped my infrastructures....

so as you see, the slopw frow need luck too. but imo the quick pick better then....or im doing something wrong...

ps: reporting on kiev tomorrow

First: Which version do you play? Barbs shouldn't raze that many Byz cities in Europe in the latest SVN versions (actually European barb pressure for AI Byzantium was reduced quite a while now)
Do you play on Monarch?

Second: About your attempt 5:
You should have stopped after Hadrianopolis and Thessalonica.
Use your remaining Konniks to defend your realm, until you have enough spearman

 

[swinnend]

They have a lot of Ottoman culture. When a civ collapses, cities with a lot of culture belonging to another, living civ will automatically flip back.

It is OK for them to flip back, but I would expect my troops to be thrown out of the city, as it would be if it happened to my city. Now there are 4 Ottoman cities with Austrian troops in it.

 

[AbsintheRed]

In version 1.1

I was playing as Austria,
- I vassalized Bulgaria
- to weaken the Ottoman empire, I took their cities in Greece, and I gave them (liberated) to my vassal, Bulgaria
- All those cities made Bulgaria unstable, and they collapsed.
- the Greek cities I had just conquered, went back to the Ottoman empire (OK), with my troops still in it!
- so I took some cavalry, moved it out and back in, and thus conquered them again.

If this is a feature, I would like to see an historical precedent

Oh, so the cities were Ottoman, the units in it were still under your control?
Then you are shameless enough to conquer those cities again, without any defense in them?
While this is certainly a bug, I'm off to search for some historical examples

 

[AbsintheRed]

oh and a minor bug report...

I use /hope) latest SVN, the pope has strange diplo modifiers!!!, like -5 this war spoils our relation!!!
or in a bulgarian game (orto) +1 we care for our bro and sis'...

how is it?

The -5 for "this war spoils our relationship" shouldn't be there of course, unless you WB-d a war against the Pope.
Do you have a savegame?

 

[Chep]

Well, maybe for you Absinthe. You make 50k food with Kiev while I just gave up on another try after I had only 13k in 1250 and still had 2 provinces to settle...

I might try again some time but this game already had an awesome start where I only got 1 attacking barb every 3-4 turns until Bulgaria collapsed around 1000AD. Then I had the usual 2-3 every second turn for a while.

and they usually raze 1 city per game. They take out 2 Archers over 2 turns or 1 Crossbowman on a single turn and poof city gone^^

and then you have triple Keshiks spawning, pillaging for 1 turn or 2 and then their reinforcements spawn. If you don't have enough knights to deal with them or castles in all cities they attack it's game over.

with the barbs you really have to know where they spawn so that you can post your units accordingly. I have the impression that this changes the game at least as much as an empty Constantinople for Bulgaria.

 

[AbsintheRed]

Well, maybe for you Absinthe. You make 50k food with Kiev while I just gave up on another try after I had only 13k in 1250 and still had 2 provinces to settle...

I might try again some time but this game already had an awesome start where I only got 1 attacking barb every 3-4 turns until Bulgaria collapsed around 1000AD. Then I had the usual 2-3 every second turn for a while.

and they usually raze 1 city per game. They take out 2 Archers over 2 turns or 1 Crossbowman on a single turn and poof city gone^^

and then you have triple Keshiks spawning, pillaging for 1 turn or 2 and then their reinforcements spawn. If you don't have enough knights to deal with them or castles in all cities they attack it's game over.

with the barbs you really have to know where they spawn so that you can post your units accordingly. I have the impression that this changes the game at least as much as an empty Constantinople for Bulgaria.

Yeah, it's certainly true that I know the mod very well, probably better than anyone else
It probably means lots of advantages when playtesting. And actually I'm sad about this
You are right, I have to take this into account as well when aiming for an "ideal" balance.

Btw, the 50.000 food for Kiev was before the barb changes (no more free wins, etc.)
But I do think 40.000 is manageable, even with the current version

 

[gilgames]

donno which version, updated in a month. and yes, on monarch

i have a save, i guess upload tomorrow...

 

[AbsintheRed]

Well, maybe for you Absinthe. You make 50k food with Kiev while I just gave up on another try after I had only 13k in 1250 and still had 2 provinces to settle...

I might try again some time but this game already had an awesome start where I only got 1 attacking barb every 3-4 turns until Bulgaria collapsed around 1000AD. Then I had the usual 2-3 every second turn for a while.

and they usually raze 1 city per game. They take out 2 Archers over 2 turns or 1 Crossbowman on a single turn and poof city gone^^

and then you have triple Keshiks spawning, pillaging for 1 turn or 2 and then their reinforcements spawn. If you don't have enough knights to deal with them or castles in all cities they attack it's game over.

with the barbs you really have to know where they spawn so that you can post your units accordingly. I have the impression that this changes the game at least as much as an empty Constantinople for Bulgaria.

You shouldn't defend in your cities, that should only be the second line of defence.
Put some axeman/spearman on forested hills, so no (or just very few) barbs will go for your cities/improvements
This is very important in the early game, both for Kiev and for Bulgaria

 

[Chep]

well, during the first 5-10 turns as Bulgaria you don't have any Spearmen^^

As Kiev I do this, but the barbs often go around my defenders. (I place them on the southern forest tile east of Kiev, north of the "Barbarian Highway".)

and they don't always come this way. Once 2 of them came via Kursk (still independent) or a few times they came from Poland/Hungary.

I think I'll have to try to expand more recklessly. The one time I won with Kiev I rushed even more since the German version still said that I'd have to build 3 cathedrals^^

But you really have to find the right places to stop the barbs from coming near you cities.

 

[AbsintheRed]

well, during the first 5-10 turns as Bulgaria you don't have any Spearmen^^

But you have Konniks, much better than spearman/axeman
That's why both I and Swarbs said, that you shouldn't expand too quickly with Bulgaria

 

[Chep]

I know (now) and in my winning game I didn't found any city of my own before I had conquered 2 of Byzantiums cities

But now I'm retrying Kiev, but when Bulgaria is already extinct (4 out of 5 starts so far and the fifth one didn't work out as mentioned above^^) when I start this effectively costs me 2 techs

edit:

but I found something nice:

If you send a horse archer or skirmisher here (I always do, in order to trade techs with arabia) you can pillage the cottage, retreat towards Constantinople and the barbs will most often pillage the horses. As Byzantium usually doesn't have any others they'll trade you a lot of gold, health and happyres for your horse. And you probably won't be needing it anyway during those first 20-30 turns
this usually only lasts about 10 turns, but still its 60-90 gold + the res (+the gold you pillage)

 

[Wessel V1]

The general rule for barbarians is to have some more defenders than you actually need. If you have exactly enough units to control the barbarians, once in a while one breaks through your defences which means you need to reinforce and rebuild lost improvements. However, if you have more units than actually needed, the backup is already in place and no improvements are lost. Once you dominate the barbarians and your improvements are all safe, you're fine to go wherever you want. Just remember to have more units than strictly needed.