RFC Europe playtesting feedback thread

[sedna17]

@civmademepoor

The format for Civilopedia entries is pretty simple.
Files live in Assets/XML/Text/

It doesn't matter where a particular TXT_KEY is, Civ searches all these files for it. Thus, when I was doing some work adding/modifying the unit pedia entries I made a new file

CIV4GameTextInfos_RFCE_UnitPedia.xml

and just stuck the text there. I think that file is pretty self-explanatory. The name of the appropriate TXT_KEY for blank entires is easy to see in the Civilopedia (i.e. it is the string that shows up instead of the real entry). I suggest continuing to edit this file for Units, and use this file as a template to create new .xml files for BuildingPedia, ProjectPedia, or whatever you want to add text for.

The only trick is that entries should really have at least dummy text for other languages. It's okay (at least for now) to duplicate the English text inside the tags for the other languages, but this will at least allow non-English copies of Civ to load the mod. An example is:

	<TEXT>
		<Tag>TXT_KEY_BONUS_HEMP</Tag>
		<English>Hemp</English>
		<French>
			<Text>Chanvre</Text>
			<Gender>Male</Gender>
			<Plural>0</Plural>
		</French>
		<German>
			<Text>Hanf</Text>
			<Gender>Male</Gender>
			<Plural>0</Plural>
		</German>
		<Italian>
			<Text>Canapa</Text>
			<Gender>Female</Gender>
			<Plural>0</Plural>
		</Italian>
		<Spanish>
			<Text>Cáñamo</Text>
			<Gender>Male</Gender>
			<Plural>0</Plural>
		</Spanish>
	</TEXT>

Does this make sense?

 

[jessiecat]

Found the Venetian "bug". It was not really a bug, just an issue. The code works well with defining areas in terms of rectangles. The Dalmatian coast is horrible to describe in terms of rectangles, the way I had it originally I had 3 rectangles that actually included Laibach. Now I have the area in 4 rectangles, lets hope it works.

I will post a quick one file patch.

I added your patch to Python/Victory.py and tried it again from 1500 but no luck. It seemed to work in earlier versions but not now. Maybe it would be better to just make it 3 cities on the Adriatic, 1 each in mainland Greece, Crete and Cyprus instead.

 

[jessiecat]

Finding screen art for colonies would be great Jessiecat, thanks. You can provide me with images and I'll re-size/convert them appropriately.

I've now posted art for most of them on the files thread, Still looking for one or two more.

 

[3Miro]

I added your patch to Python/Victory.py and tried it again from 1500 but no luck. It seemed to work in earlier versions but not now. Maybe it would be better to just make it 3 cities on the Adriatic, 1 each in mainland Greece, Crete and Cyprus instead.

I did it with your 1500AD save and it did work. Are you sure you copied the file in the right place, something like:

Program Files\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization IV\Beyond the Sword\Mods\RFCEurope\Assets\Python\Victory.py

There should already be a Victory file in there, just replace it with the one in the zip.

The way I have it right now is that Venice should hold all the cities located 1 or 2 tiles from the sea. Also the area around some lakes. It should not include any more strange tiles.

 

[3Miro]

4) Since Portugal still doesn't have a UP, here are some ideas:
-The Power of Madeira: worked sea tiles give +1 culture. (Also solves some of the pressure coming from Andalusia).
-The Power of Tordesillas: 25% production bonus for colonial projects.

3) Any thoughts on making whole colonies tradeable (if that's even possible). E.g. instead of capitulating, I'll give you Brazil.

The Portuguese UP has been decided upon, I have just not coded it yet. It would be similar to the Chinese from RFC, just applied to Colonies.

I can implement a colonial switch, however, it would be very hard to teach the AI to recognize a "trade colony" option. It may eventually get implemented, but for now I think we should leave it like that.

 

[jessiecat]

The Portuguese UP has been decided upon, I have just not coded it yet. It would be similar to the Chinese from RFC, just applied to Colonies.

I can implement a colonial switch, however, it would be very hard to teach the AI to recognize a "trade colony" option. It may eventually get implemented, but for now I think we should leave it like that.

Just to confirm you were right. I downloaded the patch wrongly. I fixed it and the Venice UHV works fine.
Chalk up another UHV win for me then. Thanks.

 

[civmademepoor]

The Portuguese UP has been decided upon, I have just not coded it yet. It would be similar to the Chinese from RFC, just applied to Colonies.

I can implement a colonial switch, however, it would be very hard to teach the AI to recognize a "trade colony" option. It may eventually get implemented, but for now I think we should leave it like that.

Whoops! Thanks!

 

[civmademepoor]

@civmademepoor

The format for Civilopedia entries is pretty simple.
Files live in Assets/XML/Text/

It doesn't matter where a particular TXT_KEY is, Civ searches all these files for it. Thus, when I was doing some work adding/modifying the unit pedia entries I made a new file

[. . .]

Does this make sense?

This made perfect sense and I edited a civ (Burgundy, [rhymes with witch] and a half to get that mess down to three-four readable paragraphs), saved it as CIV4GameText_DynamicCivNames_00BUR and tried to check to see if it worked, but it gave me a runtime error (application requested to terminate in an unusual way) when I tried to open RFCE directly from the worldbuilder save or once I opened the civilizations menu in the civilopedia after going in from BTS vanilla>load a mod> etc. . .

If I'm missing a step please let me know. If not (or I am but it's very complex), would it help to compile some text and save it somewhere?

Thanks!

 

[sedna17]

You also have to be a bit careful with the encoding (if your text has any accents in it). If you can zip and post your modified file here I'll take a look at it and see what's going on.

 

[civmademepoor]

You also have to be a bit careful with the encoding (if your text has any accents in it). If you can zip and post your modified file here I'll take a look at it and see what's going on.

Franche-Comté would have been one offender, but after removing it I got the same error, but it took longer to happen.

 

[jessiecat]

Just downloaded the latest version. The new opening screen looks good but maybe the start box could be shifted to the upper left corner to show more of the map. Also can't see any new art for Atlantic Access. Playing as Poland, I just got Astronomy and all you get is a line "reveals Atlantic Access" but no description and no art.
Nor does it seem to reveal anything on the map either.

 

[jessiecat]

A couple of questions about the Crusades. Playing as the Franks, I was invited to lead the 1st. Crusade and captured Jerusalem (Al Quds) in 1098. It is now 1251 and I still hold it despite half-hearted attacks by the Arabs. And there has been no call for crusade since. Does holding Jerusalem cancel any further crusade? And why haven't I been swallowed by the Arab culture in over 250 years? Screenshot below.

 

[Samsa]

Hello, was randomly reading in wikipedia as i found this:
Tsargrad is the slavic name for Constantinopel, so the name should be adjusted for all the slavic nations in RFCe, also the russians.

 

[micbic]

@samsa: Did it in latest version of the city name maps file (only for Bulgarian, I don't think that any other slavic nation can go as far)

 

[BurnEmDown]

jessiecat, first, how the hell did you manage to capture Jerusalem? I never managed to capture an Arab city with the crusades. Second, it seems the crusades don't start until the crusade-spawned troops die.
Which brings me up to a bug I've encountered: It seems, if I have crusade troops near Jerusalem, and then sign peace with Arabia, they get kicked out possibly all the way out of Byzantine, which means much less chance of them to die and having another crusade. Also, I never signed peace with Arabia after the 2nd crusade, and so when the 3rd started I signed peace since they had a Cogge near my troop-carrying galley. which made my Crusade troops appear near Byzantine.

 

[jessiecat]

jessiecat, first, how the hell did you manage to capture Jerusalem? I never managed to capture an Arab city with the crusades. Second, it seems the crusades don't start until the crusade-spawned troops die.
Which brings me up to a bug I've encountered: It seems, if I have crusade troops near Jerusalem, and then sign peace with Arabia, they get kicked out possibly all the way out of Byzantine, which means much less chance of them to die and having another crusade. Also, I never signed peace with Arabia after the 2nd crusade, and so when the 3rd started I signed peace since they had a Cogge near my troop-carrying galley. which made my Crusade troops appear near Byzantine.

In the latest version I downloaded today, the crusading troops have 3 or 4 guisarmes added to help them against the Arab horsemen. Plus, I was lucky as they only defended the city with a spearman and 2 archers. I lost all my knights except one but had 3 men-at-arms and a guisarme left. I built walls and castle first but I'm surprised they didn't make more effort to take it back.

 

[3Miro]

- Tsargrad might be Russian, the Bulgarian version should be Tsarigrad. I was thinking of including it, however, I decided against that. Tsarigrad literally means "The City of Tsars", referring of course to the Byzantine Emperors. If Bulgaria (or any Slavic nation) captures the city they are not going to be any Byzantine Tsars left in there and the nation is not going to move its capital there either. So the city of Tsars would be kind of Tsarless. If you think it is appropriate, include it.

- In order for a Crusade to spawn couple of criteria should be satisfied. 1) It should be after specific year, 2) Jerusalem should be held by a non-Catholic non-Orthodox nation (i.e. Pagan or Islamic), 3) there should be at least 8 turns since the last Crusade called.

- as soon as Jessiecat looses Jerusalem, there would be another Crusade. In the mean time the Pope is happy having control over the city. I don't know why the Arabs are not more aggressive trying to recapture the city.

- I will see if it is possible to code the Arabic AI to move troops into Jerusalem upon a Crusader call.

- If you are at war and sign peace treaty, all of your troops are moved away from the enemy territory. Those are standard Civ IV rules. The closest friendly or neutral spot for your troops could very easily be near Constantinople or even further west.

- I don't know about the Crusaders spawning near Constantinople. Did you sign peace between the turn when you got elected the Crusade leader and the turn when the Crusaders arrive? I should make sure this is impossible.

- if you sign peace treaty between the time you were elected and the time the Crusaders spawn, they should still spawn near Jerusalem. They will just be "kicked out" of Arabic territory the next turn. (similar to the Conquerors/Conquistadors in RFC, if you get the units in the New World, but do not declare war, they just get kicked out of the native's territory and then get to wonder around)

- Crusaders could spawn near any non-Catholic capital as long as someone uses financial influence to take over the Crusade. Are you sure this did not happen? Otherwise Crusaders should spawn near Jerusalem.

 

[BurnEmDown]

I'm pretty sure they spawned near Constantinople, and I never got the option to take financial influence over the crusade. And if you code more troops in Jerusalem then PLEASE give the crusades some siege units, All I can do with them as it is is raze improvements and scratch the main defender a bit.

 

[3Miro]

I'm pretty sure they spawned near Constantinople, and I never got the option to take financial influence over the crusade. And if you code more troops in Jerusalem then PLEASE give the crusades some siege units, All I can do with them as it is is raze improvements and scratch the main defender a bit.

I was waiting for sedna17's siege weapon redesign to put those in. I will look at the new version and add siege weapons, the Crusaders do need those.

Do you have a save for the Constantinople spawn? That should not happen.

 

[micbic]

- Tsargrad might be Russian, the Bulgarian version should be Tsarigrad. I was thinking of including it, however, I decided against that. Tsarigrad literally means "The City of Tsars", referring of course to the Byzantine Emperors. If Bulgaria (or any Slavic nation) captures the city they are not going to be any Byzantine Tsars left in there and the nation is not going to move its capital there either. So the city of Tsars would be kind of Tsarless. If you think it is appropriate, include it.

I have included it just for more diversity.