RFC Europe playtesting feedback thread

[The Turk]

How come every time I conquer a city, with positive stability as Cordoba, it flips to independent in a couple turns? Not only is this extremely annoying as I have to conquer each city twice, but it also takes my WHOLE army with it. I understand if you want to represent independent governors rebelling and becoming independent, but they shouldn't be taking your entire army with them.

Nor does this make sense if you have positive stability.

I understand the historical reasons for this, but it's simply bad game-play, and the history can be depicted in other ways.

 

[V. Soma]

I just want to express how much I enjoy this mod of RFC - best experience I ever had!

I have so far won UHV of Hungary, Poland, Genoa, Cordoba, France (all Viceroy level, to learn things)
I love the history feel...

 

[Genghis Khaiser]

How come every time I conquer a city, with positive stability as Cordoba, it flips to independent in a couple turns? Not only is this extremely annoying as I have to conquer each city twice, but it also takes my WHOLE army with it. I understand if you want to represent independent governors rebelling and becoming independent, but they shouldn't be taking your entire army with them.

Nor does this make sense if you have positive stability.

I understand the historical reasons for this, but it's simply bad game-play, and the history can be depicted in other ways.

I totally agree. This completely discourages players from fortifying anything besides the core area or even the capital. What should be done is the city taking either half of your army or four units, whichever is less. Alternatively, the more fortified a city is, the least likely it could be to become independent.

 

[Baron03]

I had a general stability question. I played as Arabia, which is mostly unplayable for the current svn.

I played a safe run and conquered North Africa to Tunis. Everything went well. I didn’t conquer Edessa and Antioch. I build culture in Alexandria and Cyrene to avoid that penalty. I settled Cairo and two other cities in North Africa.

Starting around turn 85 my stability started dropping into the negative. On the interior advisor it listed cities as the problem but I’m not sure why. I hovered at -5 or -6 and then on turn 95 four cities declared independence pushing me to -36 stability.

how is the cities portion of stability calculated?

 

[PiR]

how is the cities portion of stability calculated?

I think you'll have everything you need here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/stability-guide.564135/

 

[Baron03]

I think you'll have everything you need here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/stability-guide.564135/

Thank you! It was right in front of me the whole time...

 

[AbsintheRed]

I had a general stability question. I played as Arabia, which is mostly unplayable for the current svn.

I played a safe run and conquered North Africa to Tunis. Everything went well. I didn’t conquer Edessa and Antioch. I build culture in Alexandria and Cyrene to avoid that penalty. I settled Cairo and two other cities in North Africa.

Starting around turn 85 my stability started dropping into the negative. On the interior advisor it listed cities as the problem but I’m not sure why. I hovered at -5 or -6 and then on turn 95 four cities declared independence pushing me to -36 stability.

how is the cities portion of stability calculated?

I played a couple test games recently, and Arabia till ~1000 wasn't that bad in my playthrough. I only had one Arabia game though, and only the first half of it.
What was the cause of the negative city stability in your case?

 

[Baron03]

I played a couple test games recently, and Arabia till ~1000 wasn't that bad in my playthrough. I only had one Arabia game though, and only the first half of it.
What was the cause of the negative city stability in your case?

My game could’ve been a fluke then. The only major negative modifier in the stability tab/screen was attributed to “cities”. I reloaded the game just before I experienced four cities declare independence, and it gradually went up to zero as I replayed the game. I think the very low probability of a city declaring independence caused a very unlikely chain reaction of three more cities declaring independence.

 

[Genghis Khaiser]

Is it normal that certain technologies are insanely expensive? For example, you could be within the game's top three scores and certain tech especially in the mid to late game take forever to research. And I mean like 30 - 50 turns, costing 10K to 30K beaks. I use Great People and they make barely any difference, even if I try WB'ing research building it still takes too long.

Is this normal? How do I make techs cost less?

 

[PiR]

Can you see a percentage next to the research bar?

 

[Genghis Khaiser]

Can you see a percentage next to the research bar?

View attachment 582122

Yes. What does it mean? How do I change it?

 

[PiR]

I don't know all the factors linked to it, and I'm not sure if it's documented, I could not find it in RFCE Civilopedia.

But there are multiple factors impacting your research in the way you say. The first is for RFC in general, and also in RFCE, it's the size of your empire, the more you have cities the more the tech will cost. This is indicated in the Civilopedia and is actually a major balance effect of RFC. So when building huge empire you have to massively increase your research in order to continue discovering techs at the same speed as your opponents, otherwise you'll get behind. You can save and liberate/give to AI some of your cities and you will see the base costs of tech decrease (not the number of necessary for that tech, in the tech tree for example).

What I have experienced in RFC is also that if you are too ahead of history, then the tech might cost a lot. For example discovering Islam as Ethiopia long before the Arabs appeared was extremely hard, but a couple of turns before they arrived, the tech suddenly cost a lot less before it's historically accurate to discover it now. Probably the same mechanic is in RFCE, which I have played less so I am not sure.

Another factor would be that % you can see in the top bar, which I never found documentation for, but I believe from experience the -x% means you will research this faster than normal and the +x% means it will cost you more than normal. You can start a new game with a civ and you will see that. I guess if you are the first civ to research a certain tech you have a huge malus, but if many others (your neighbors? your partners in trade?) have discovered it, you will be fast to discover it. Also some tech are given to certain civs to help them build their historical wonders and have a high cost to others (ex Alhambra for Cordoba).

I hope it helps, before someone can confirm official mechanics.

 

[PiR]

Yes. What does it mean? How do I change it?

See here:
"Research is another thing that is slightly different from the Vanilla game. Not only will technologies get more expensive the more your Empire grows, but they will also be harder to reach the more ahead of your time you will be (shown ingame as a percentage modifier on your research bar). This means it will be harder or next to impossible to beeline techs that would be anachronistic. That in turn means that you have to match your technogical aims with the discounts and penalties of your era."

 

[Baron03]

This is a minor piece that I was looking at. I Wasn’t sure if this was the correct thread, but I went through the list of great people names in the current version. It was hidden in the xml. I categorized each name the best that I could to country of origin and occupation (merchant, spy, artist, engineer, general, and scholar). Generals are not in focus for this and I’m regarding it as obsolete anyway... However, I did want to mention that classifying wasn’t easy because some people cover wide fields. Also, philosophers, explorers, and diplomats aren’t exact matches to begin with.

summary: there are 250 listed within the xml file. 35 are artists, 20 engineers, 19 merchants, 41 scholars, 11* spies, 23* theologians, 69 generals, 22 unknown, 8 outside timeline, and 2 duplicates.

**1 spy is “unknown” and 1 theologian is before the mod timeline.

I’m not too concerned about having unique great people for each region. However, my attention is with the Macro groups and the overall low count of spies, merchants, and engineers. Scandinavia only has 7 total great people, but it can probably be combined with Central Europe, which has 33.

I wanted to look into additions and post what I come up with a later day. I Attached file below as a picture... but the data isn’t exact since I didn’t finish up the unknown items.

 

[Baron03]

Okay, I spent some time today to search for more unique great people. I found 105 mostly through Wiki categories. The New GP list is organized into three categories, assuming the first attached file are correct:
NAME
Country
Occupation
However, it is difficult to categorize some people due to their many specializations. Also, countries are difficult since people tend to move via employment.

The second file looks at the macro regions again by giving two tables. Table B summarizes the new great people and table C total it with the old. To summarize: if all of these new GP suggestions are included then that brings the mod to a total of 253 (not including generals and unknowns). Scandinavia, Islamic, and Iberia have the lowest totals: 18, 18, and 25. The lowest specialists are spies at 26 and engineers at 32. Scholar is of course the largest because it is the biggest catch all covering the sciences and related fields. Hopefully this will be of use.

edit: just to clarify, the macro regions are completely arbitrary on my part. I don’t care if there are only three categories: Western Europe, Eastern Europe, and Islamic. Or even none. Whatever works best for Absinthe.

 

[Baron03]

Attached file finishing up a deep dive into potential Islamic GP additions; organized by occupation. 1 is a Croatian though. With this, but not including unknowns, all Islamic civs within the mod will have:
Artist: 12
Engineers: 9
Merchants: 7
Scholars: 28
Spies: 2
Theologians: 6
Total: 64 (given that there will be 7 Islamic civ, this seems like a good amount).

This would give a total of 300 great people within the entire mod (not including generals).

 

[gilgames]

@AbsintheRed Dont you want to upload something?

 

[Baron03]

A not important Wales question. I know that England is a little oversized (in relation to Europe) but does Wales look better with a land tile below Gwynedd? Attached picture. I always thought the current shape was exaggerated somewhat. Then again, how much of a difference will one tile be?

 

[gilgames]

A not important Wales question. I know that England is a little oversized (in relation to Europe) but does Wales look better with a land tile below Gwynedd? Attached picture. I always thought the current shape was exaggerated somewhat. Then again, how much of a difference will one tile be?

it would

 

[SebastianP]

I feel this fits better in this thread, maybe.

Playing as the Byzantines. Battling the Timurids.

My knight vs. Timurid (98.1% victory chance)
battle lost
- reloading save game -
taking another (!) knight.
knight vs. Timurid (88.4% victory chance)
battle lost again

And that is not a one-timer. I kept losing units in battles despite extremely low probability (roughly 90%+ victory chance) as the Byzantines when e.g. fighting mongols, arabs etc.

It just seems too much "luck" to be true. Are there some secret modifiers with the Byzantines that do not get added to the victory chance calculation?

That would make sense. If not, I better hurry and play the lottery. I seem to have a hand for odd numbers... :-D