RFC Europe playtesting feedback thread

[jessiecat]

I found an issue that needs to be resolved. Playing as Cordoba, i conquered Spain only to find that they had chopped the forest containing the timber NE of Leon. So, this means that I cannot acquire that resource since I cant build a lumber mill there. The AI should be set to NOT chop those tiles if possible. Going into the WB to change the square...

You don't need to do that. Just build a fort on that square. Later build a lumber mill there when you get Replaceable Parts. It doesn't need the trees. All you want is the resource.

 

[Barak]

Ah, I forgot about the fort.

 

[sedna17]

The spainish unique power doesnt seem to work. The city screen shows the extra 2 EP. But the extra EP don't show up in the espionage screen.

Hmm... interesting. I'll have to delve into this a bit to understand what's going on.

Re: Timber/Lumbermills -- I agree it's confusing for the human to have to put a fort on timber, the whole concept works much more cleanly on "dense forests", which can't be chopped. If we weren't using snow-covered graphic for dense forests (i.e. if we had another forest graphic sufficiently distinct to also be dense forest in warm regions), that would be the way to go. But until then... the AI deals with it (loves building forts on resources anyway), and humans can make do.

 

[Tigranes]

Question/possible bug:

I bulbed the Music as Bulgarians, no one I knew had one, so I was expecting to see our first National Artist, but we got none. Later I discovered that Venetians start with Music. In RFC when no one researches Theology Arabs found Christianity, should Venetians get GA if no one got to Music before them? I checked all the civs and Venezia -- no one had Music and Venezia had no trace of a GA. Is it meant to be this way?

 

[AnotherPacifist]

Just like the Chinese don't get a free GA in 600 AD, the Venetians shouldn't.

A word on the Mongol hordes: I see why the AI inevitably collapses. I'm well protected with arbalests and mounted lancers (and I'm starting to build boyars). I'm about to conquer me some former Kievian and Bulgar cities (even though I have 18 cities already in 1310), but it would be nice to have no barbs spawn inside your territory (i.e. east of Samara). The looting is destabilizing me even though I have a good medieval economy.

 

[kbk]

So, here's my Hungarian game.

The Bulgars were gone when I spawned, so I inherited a lot of space to work with. Austria vasalized to me early. I gained my territorial goal by conquering Venetian colonies, and settling Bulgar lands.

I fought off some halfhearted Spanish and Turkish wars, and budied up to Poland, Germany, and the Byzantines. Kiev and Moscow were conquered by the the Mongol horde, but I weathered their storm. So I claimed a few of the Kievian towns on my borders, and Kiev respawned! They declared war on my a little later so I took the towns back, but liberated them to them after 1500. So I had the land goal in 1500 with 7% of the land (Arabia had 6%).

For the 2nd, UHV I converted to free religion in the 1500s and nearly collapsed before that golden age pulled me out of it. I used that golden age to buffer a switch to a pacifistic republic/merchant civics.

Then, Lo and behold, Poland won a historical victory while I was waiting to win mine in 1650!

 

[Tigranes]

Can anyone tell until when (which year) are those nasty barb horsemen will harass Byzantines? On Emperor game feels very unbalanced; penalties for Byzantium are too harsh IMHO, took me 100 turns to discover 2 techs! Playing Venezia or Bulgaria on Emperor I was researching much faster. Does the code adjust penalties in case I loose cities?

Also trading techs is just crazy -- unless you offer 10 times more no one will trade with you. And stability modifiers need to be adjusted as well, maybe halfway from the previous values and the current ones. Half of the civs are dead ...

P.S. Which cities are in my core area that never become independent due to my UP? Caesaria is one of them?

 

[AnotherPacifist]

I think that in general, since the map is so much bigger, the research penalty should be reduced by 25% per city. Even after losing far away cities in Africa and Asia Minor, in monarch you can't research anything with the Byzantines because of the number of cities.

 

[JediClemente]

A word on the Mongol hordes: I see why the AI inevitably collapses. I'm well protected with arbalests and mounted lancers (and I'm starting to build boyars). I'm about to conquer me some former Kievian and Bulgar cities (even though I have 18 cities already in 1310), but it would be nice to have no barbs spawn inside your territory (i.e. east of Samara). The looting is destabilizing me even though I have a good medieval economy.

Last time I played as Russia, no barbs spawned inside my territory. And that was an advantage, because my culture had grown a lot.

I think Kievan AI is supposed to collapse when the mongols arrive. It happened, anyway. Russian AI shouldn't fall so quickly, problem is they probably won't get to build boyars and kremlins before 1300 (too late).

The key is to build boyars ASAP. Trade techs if you need to. Arbalests are a waste, and with a correctly promoted boyar no keshik will be able to loot any terrain.

Edit: and not just get to boyars, but produce them as crazy, even better with National Epic in Moskva.

 

[jessiecat]

Last time I played as Russia, no barbs spawned inside my territory. And that was an advantage, because my culture had grown a lot.

I think Kievan AI is supposed to collapse when the mongols arrive. It happened, anyway. Russian AI shouldn't fall so quickly, problem is they probably won't get to build boyars and kremlins before 1300 (too late).

The key is to build boyars ASAP. Trade techs if you need to. Arbalests are a waste, and with a correctly promoted boyar no keshik will be able to loot any terrain.

Edit: and not just get to boyars, but produce them as crazy, even better with National Epic in Moskva.

I've done it without boyars. Kremlins are essential but a few guisarmes and arbalests in each city are usually enough as long as you don't expand too fast and build too many cities. I've made that mistake before, to my cost.

 

[Barak]

Has anyone else noticed the imbalance in the tech rate? Somehow England could research Scientific Method in 8 turns, while it took me (Cordoba) 40

 

[Barak]

Another example....

IN the same game, I reloaded and managed to keep England from researching SM this time. Cordoba is the first to found it achieving a 3/3 UHV (yeah)

So in the one turn i can still play, and I try to sell Scientific Method, i gt some strange results. The Austrians who are researching Naval Architecture, have Renaissance Art (which I need) at a value of 21000 beakers. I offer SM at 35000 beakers and Arabic Medicine at 9500 beakers, and they refuse.

In other words I offered 45000 beakers for 21000 and they refused the offer! Considering that the AI trades amongst itself so often, i don't think this adds up! Naturally everyone has this perspective towards me even though I have adopted free religion.

Also, why is it that I can't trade certain techs to certain civs?

 

[Barak]

Just noticed something else... Since rfceurope is all lower case where in the past is was upper case (partly) the hall of fame has been wiped out...interesting.

 

[sedna17]

Okay, here's the deal on tech rates.

Early civs have research penalties relative to later ones. These penalties, which are present in vanilla RFC, are generally larger in our mod. Byzantium, for instance, starts out with a huge number of techs which no one else has, as well as a large empire. They have to be strongly penalized in research or they would always dominate the game. Similarly, we want the Arabs to fall behind in tech around the renaissance, so they start out with extra techs but have a slower research rate. The details can be adjusted in RFCEBalance.py, which is reasonably easy to understand. I encourage anyone who is interested to play with some of those parameters. If you come up with some changes that seem to preserve balance and realism and make it more fun, let us know.

I believe that when the AI evaluates the "value" of a tech in a trade, there is an asymmetry. If you offer the AI tech A in exchange for tech B, the AI (cheating a bit) looks at how much if would cost you to research tech B, and how much it would cost them to research tech A.

Tech A might cost you 1000 , and Tech B might cost you 750 , so you think it's a good deal for the AI and they should take it. But if your Civ has tech costs which are twice as much as those of this particular AI Civ, then the AI decides that Tech A would only cost them 500 to research, while Tech B would cost you 750 to research, so they're not going to do it. This mechanism, incidentally, is why it's hard to make "fair" tech trades in vanilla Civ at Monarch+ levels.

Anyhow, I agree that this sets up a confusing and frustrating situation for the human player. I will play around with narrowing the tech cost gap (handicapping early civs in other ways).

 

[jessiecat]

I think the best way to handle the tech rate problem for the Byzantines/Arabs/Cordobans is not for them to have a lower tech rate from the start (which makes no sense historically) but to have them research at a normal rate until 1200 then be hit by a modifier that kicks in and halves their research after that. If that is possible to do, as an event, say, it would make the balance much more realistic IMO.

 

[Wessel V1]

And it would solve the "cheat" that Byzantium happily sells all their techs to the human player at the cost of only one (cheap) tech.

 

[Barak]

I hear what you guys are saying, but I think the penalty is way too much. By the 16th century, i found that England, Germany and Poland were way ahead of my in techs, even though I had had a substantial lead earlier. Also I found that the French seemed to out tech me even though they should have been just as handicapped as I (Cordoba) was.

To me the trouble is not so much the handicap, as the fact that the AI trades so freely amongst itself, and Vassals are worthless as they dont trade with their lord civ.

Also, I noticed that the espionage level was way out of wack. Astronomy required 16000 espionage points (or some ridiculous number like that).

 

[Wessel V1]

It should have the same penalty with an equal number of cities, but if you're going for the UHV you have more than I believe 12 cities, which slows down research even further. This also applies to trading, so the handicap is large.

 

[Barak]

Actually, I had vassalized Portugal, and i forced Spain into collapse, giving many of the western cities to my vassal. I only had 10 cities I believe.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

I'm about to get my Triumphal Arch when it crashes. And I've got the biggest empire ever (me plus Kiev's territory)...maybe that was why since I was unstable.