RFC Europe playtesting feedback thread

[Wessel V1]

It's their UP. Also, I've tried to start a game, and since I had some time left (doing my homework, it took 100 minutes to load*), I started as the Swedish. The start was lucky, since some Norse genius found ALL optimal city spots in Sweden. (At least, that's my opinion, I've found them myself when I was playing the Norse). So, a pretty powerful start. No idea where to send my settlers though. The southern coast of Finland is already culturally occupied by Moscow, so probably I'm going to send them to the western coast. Some observations, the first few turns:

- Sweden has only 100 gold at start. Don't know about the other civs (didn't pay attention), but 100 is not enough. I think 800 or 1000 is better, since the first few turns are very expensive. The AI builds lots of units in Sweden, and combined with the war-declaration-army, I controlled an army of no less than 60 units, resulting in -80 gold per turn, -3 on 50%.
- Good job on the tech levels, Sweden is perfectly fine at start. Venice has collapsed, so I can't give any feedback on their tech level.
- The new unit system is okay so far, but Longbowmen seem to be a bit overpowered. Against my Knights, they have 33 strength. They receive 125% city defense (walls and castle) but still. Not that much of a problem, my unit upkeep is way to high
- Knights can fortify, is that on purpose?
- Flipping cities are quite large, and lack health and happiness (not enough rescourced yet). The Norse could provide them, but the new Swedish empire can't. Again, it's nothing to worry about, just a small observation.

* My PC isn't that excellent, ATI X1600 graphics card, 1 GB RAM, 3.x GHz. It certainly takes less time on a decent computer.

 

[3Miro]

Playing USA on regular RFC takes about 50 minutes to load on my machine from the 600AD start. The Dutch take less than 2 hours on RFCE. It is a long time to wait, but then again the map is large and we do have many civs. Anything less would have made less of an interesting mod. You can make a save on the first turn after spawn, so you don't have to wait every time.

I think one of the Swedish UHVs is to found cities sway from the main spawn area. They need to expand into Denmark, Russia, Germany and Poland (use whatever means necessary).

Starting gold has not been decided for any civ. Any volunteers on checking what reasonable amounts would be?

 

[jessiecat]

A bit of info on load times. I tried a stopwatch test on the first 10 civs and these are the results.

Burgundy (est. 0) -under 20sec.
Byzantines (est. 0) -same
Franks (est.0) -same
Arabs (est.5mins) -30secs.
Bulgaria (est.5mins.) -60secs.
Cordoba (est.5mins.) -under 2 mins.
Spain (est.10mins) - about 2 mins.
Norse (est. 10mins.) - 2 mins. 30secs.
Venice (est. 10mins.) -about 7 mins.
Kiev (est. 15 mins.) -about 8mins.

I realize that the next civ. loading times get quite a bit slower but what I've seen in RFCE is very comparable to loading times in RFC. I don't know how much it depends on the machine people are using, Mine's pretty strong but not all that fantastic.
(AMD Athlon Dual Core 2x64bit, 5200 mhz., 3 gigs of RAM, Nvidia GeForce 7600LE graphics card).

 

[3Miro]

Loading time would depend heavily on the CPU and very little on the graphics. My CPU is a bit slower then jesseicats and I can load and play all civs. More accurate loading times would be entered eventually.

BTW the model number of the CPU is 5200, the actual speed in that case is 2.6Ghz.

 

[Verily]

The load time on my most recent Dutch test was just shy of an hour, if that helps. That was before the Jan. 29 version, but not much seems to have changed.

 

[sedna17]

Played a test game as England.

Iron is only available in Wales and Scotland, which makes it imperative to conquer one of these regions. I decided there should be a little more challenge in getting Wales and a lot more in Scotland, so some barb warriors now spawn in Wales and some barb ax/spear in Scotland.

France did not declare war on me at spawn time, but if they do, defense of Calais is near-impossible. England now gets heavy lancers if someone does declare war on them on spawn. It's still hard to get them across the channel in time to help, but c'est la vie.

I met a bunch of people, who were mostly friendly and willing to trade techs, so I quickly gained half-a-dozen new techs, putting me ahead of the "normal" pace of technological progress I thought should happen.

I had just conquered all of Britain when France declared war on me (~ 1150) and attacked Calais. It was a strong attack, and I had to scramble to meet it. For the next 50+ years we fought. France was more powerful (Burgundy collapsed shortly after the war began), but of course my home island was pretty safe from an AI invasion. Still, I was repulsed from an attack on Paris, and Armored Lancers were a continual threat to Calais, even with walls. There was plenty of good naval action too (both of us with Cogges). Eventually with an amphibious assault I gained a second French city in Caen. They still wouldn't make peace (unless I gave them a city), so I took a break to ponder.

Overall, the warfare was pretty good. Heavy Cavalry are very useful units, but it's worthwhile having a bunch of cheap infantry too. It takes an awful lot of trebuchets to get through a walls+castle city in any reasonable length of time. It's generally kind of hard to take cities, but not impossible since there isn't a super-strong defender. Warfare of course delayed our research, I was just reaching knights when I left.

 

[3Miro]

I was wondering if we should turn off tech brokering. With tech trade enabled, people would be covering the tech tree very quickly no matter how slow we make the research. What do you think?

 

[sedna17]

I would be all for turning off tech brokering. An additional benefit is that it keeps the game mechanics more similar to the latest version of RFC.

 

[micbic]

Instead of the current system of tech trading, I would propose a far more realistic way of representing tech exchanges. It could be something like ''tech diffusion'' (I think there is a such system in Rise of Mankind). If two civs a) have neighboring borders and b) have signed an Open Borders agreement, there should be a rate (eg 1% per turn) that the one civ can get any technologies that a neighbor has. For example: If the Franks and Burgundian borders reach at 650 AD, the two leaders have signed OB and the Burgundians have Bronze Casting, if the Franks make no attempt to get it by research, they should get it 100 turns after the Burgundians have researched it. If there are two neighbors with Open Borders with that civ, there will be a 2% research bonus for each tech, etc. It would be more realistic than eg Simeon meeting Justinian at the city of Plovdiv, telling him. ''Hey, I've got Chain Mail. Care for giving it to me for Religious Art?"

Any thoughts?

 

[3Miro]

Well, any scenario involving a meeting between Justinian and Simeon is unhistoric since those lived 300 years apart.

There is already the mechanics of techs becoming cheaper as more and more rivals discover them. We could increase that and perhaps include an additional bonus for sharing borders (i.e. Bulgaria would get bigger discount for a tech known by the Byzantines than one known by the Franks, even if Bulgaria has contact and OB with both).

Full tech leaking, such as described by micbic would involve some serious coding.

For the brokering, then I guess whoever gets the next test version should include the line in the WB file (copy it from the latest version of RFC).

 

[merijn_v1]

Venetia is still the techleader in my game. I saw their techrate is slowed down, but it's still too much.

 

[3Miro]

Venetia is still the techleader in my game. I saw their techrate is slowed down, but it's still too much.

It is their UP. We meant to give them a financial edge, but I guess we gave them a more of a scientific one.

It is Ok for them to be the techleader as long as everyone else is not too far behind.

 

[3Miro]

To all playtester, have you tested the colonies and if they provide resources like they are supposed to. To be honest, I am not sure if I coded it correctly, let me know if there are nay problems (preferably with a savegame couple of turns before building the projects).

 

[jessiecat]

It is their UP. We meant to give them a financial edge, but I guess we gave them a more of a scientific one.

It is Ok for them to be the techleader as long as everyone else is not too far behind.

It does make a couple of the UHVs nearly impossible though. In my games I've never seen Cordoba get Scientific Method, Hungary get Free Religion or England get Industrial Revolution first. The Venetian tech rate is still too fast IMO.

 

[3Miro]

It does make a couple of the UHVs nearly impossible though. In my games I've never seen Cordoba get Scientific Method, Hungary get Free Religion or England get Industrial Revolution first. The Venetian tech rate is still too fast IMO.

If the AI cannot achieve an UHV, then I am OK with that. I don't think the AI can do the Roman or German control in RFC and definitely not the Mongolian for the short time given. India is also impossible for the AI.

We should make sure UHVs are possible for the Human player, however, Venetian UP may have to be reconsidered (or the effect of the Republic civic in general). Venetians should be more rich then scientifically advanced.

 

[BurnEmDown]

How about a power that keeps changing beakers into gold?

 

[jessiecat]

Another word about load times Tried the Dutch yesterday. Took 1 hr. 20 mins. to load. Not too bad. Sort of like America in RFC.

 

[Just666]

I played two (long) games, with england and genoa. here are some things I noticed that could be changed:

- genoa's starting possition on a Iron resource, better move the iron one to the right (east).
- Milan got razed by someone so I did not have a milan at start, missing milan (waiting for settler, building building, gaining pop) negetively influenced my ecconomy. also I could settle on corsica right away. I don't know whether it's possible to change this, but it would be better.

- englands starting possition, the ai settles london 1 tile above the thames, while in fact the thames runs trought London. the map is correct but the starting possition should be one down (south)
- I recieved Calais at spawn, but it's culture was no match to the cultur of Paris, maybe if u recieved a theather when it flips (or something like that)
it could have some kind of culture war.
- this was VERY strange, byzantium had 4 vassals:
>turkey, they didn't stand a chance vs bizantium
>burgundy, which was almost dead (by the franks)
>portugal, dunno why. (how far away can you be from byzatium???)
>Papal States :s, I know they are still working on them, but able to be a vassal is something that can't be removed fast enought. (I wich I know how)
also by being a vassal it was at war with almost every catholic nation, which isn't very historicly correct either.
- Dublin (independent) became orthodox, I can say that exept for Iseland u can be further away from constantinople than that. (it may have something to do with the Norse being orthodox). I really don't know whether this is resolvable or this is a flaw in Civ.

edit: forgotten something

printing press was first discovered by france (before 1400), it founded the protestant holy city, which was the only protestant city for the rest of my game. becouse it was founded before 1400 AD (very historecry inaccurate) the dutch didn't even spawn yet. while the dutch were a inportant nation becouse of their spreading of the protestant religion (with the printing press)

 

[3Miro]

Just666, are you using the latest version of the game. The Pope should not be anyone's Vassal, it should have been fixed. Can you post a savegame.

 

[sedna17]

Also, I moved London's capitol (i.e. starting spot) one square south in... probably the Jan 31st version, so I do think Just666 is probably using an old version. Still, a lot of the report is helpful, so thanks anyway.

In particular, I'm not concerned if Ireland becomes orthodox (we don't want perfectly deterministic religions). I am concerned that protestantism doesn't do nearly enough. I think we will probably implement something like "Protestantism in RFC" (link here) in order to more accurately represent the disruptive impact this should have.