RFC Europe playtesting feedback thread

[jessiecat]

The UHV states to control 6 luxury resources in 1500.

Attached is a 1500 save with the latest version.


BTW, The only way to play Burgundy with their awful stability was to only use Djion and raze all the French and Germany cities, then found 2 cities in the Rhine at 1500 to get enough luxury resources. You definitely need to tune their stability up some.

I agree completely. Burgundy is just too unstable compared to France. When I did the UHV I never built more than 3 cities. As soon as you build a 4th. it declares independence. The luxuries are easy esp. if you trade for them. Razing or collapsing France and Germany is the key.

 

[sedna17]

@kbk: Thanks for the Burgundy save. The stability problem with Burgundy is that they have only a small settler map and most of the land on either side is in someone else's spawn zone. Both these factors will cause them to go unstable if they expand too much. In my opinion, this is good, because otherwise AI Burgundy goes off and ends up taking taking cities all over the map. Also, historically, Burgundy was sort of a marginally stable entity, breaking up into sections at many junctures. I will expand their settler map a bit to soften stability, but Jessiecat's description of a duchy limited to ~3 cities sounds about right to me.

@Verily: The Venice leaderhead is supposed to be blind, which is presumably why the eyes look odd. I agree there are other leaders who need to be better with high priority, but the Venice one I had lying around nicely packaged as an easy first test for myself.

@FuzzyRabbit: Arguably, Russia should be somewhat backwards, so I'm not sure I see a huge problem with your description. I am dedicated to maintaining the research penalty for large civs, as I think this is a crucial element to Rhye's and Fall's feel. Perhaps once I get around to playing a test game as Russia I'll get frustrated with its severity and relinquish a little...

@AnotherPacifist: I knew we could count on you to start trying to break history. To answer a few of your questions: Crusades only happen if the player controlling Jerusalem is not Catholic or Orthodox. I'm not totally sure why Alexandria is in swamp not flood plains -- though we don't have flood plains elsewhere on the map, so perhaps that was what our map designer was thinking. We could give Byzantium an increased bonus from recapturing cities. We don't want them to become to powerful/stable though.

 

[kbk]

@kbk: Thanks for the Burgundy save. The stability problem with Burgundy is that they have only a small settler map and most of the land on either side is in someone else's spawn zone. Both these factors will cause them to go unstable if they expand too much. In my opinion, this is good, because otherwise AI Burgundy goes off and ends up taking taking cities all over the map. Also, historically, Burgundy was sort of a marginally stable entity, breaking up into sections at many junctures. I will expand their settler map a bit to soften stability, but Jessiecat's description of a duchy limited to ~3 cities sounds about right to me.

Well, I had periods of collapsing with only 1 city as Burgundy, so I'll be happy to see them actually able to found ~3 cities in the Rhine valley, instead of having to raze everything in sight in order to meet their requirements. It will make it a lot more fun, and a lot less clicking "end turn."

 

[micbic]

Actually, Russia was backwards most of the time of its early history. It was Peter who modernized them, and from him and after Russia was counted as a power in Europe.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

Ottomans are way too weak to start with. One more settler, a few great bombards and trebuchets, and some horse archers would be useful.

 

[kbk]

I just managed to get the 3 UHV win from Kiev on Monarch. I had some instability when the Mongols were razing my lands, but easily pulled out of that.

On another note, I'm not sure if this is a bug or not, but I had Rome declare war on my when I got my 2nd UHV. I know the other civs can't declare war on rome, but apparently Rome can declare war on others. I've also seen Rome take on independents in other games.

 

[jessiecat]

I just managed to get the 3 UHV win from Kiev on Monarch. I had some instability when the Mongols were razing my lands, but easily pulled out of that.

On another note, I'm not sure if this is a bug or not, but I had Rome declare war on my when I got my 2nd UHV. I know the other civs can't declare war on rome, but apparently Rome can declare war on others. I've also seen Rome take on independents in other games.

Once you survive the Mongol hordes, the Kiev UHVs are pretty doable. I've also noticed this aggressive behaviour by Rome along with the constant demands for my cities. If Rome is not supposed to be playable then it shouldn't be declaring war and conquering either IMO.
On another note, I've just had another stuck game as Moscow. It autosaves at 1248 just before the Mongols arrive but when you hit next turn it just freezes saying "waiting for other civilizations" forever. I've tried several replays from the previous autosave but its the same every time. Anyone else had this?

 

[AnotherPacifist]

I would love to have Rome declare war on me: it would be really nice to capture the city.
Maybe it should even give some diplomatic benefits, i.e. the AI gives you +3 attitude if you're Catholic ("You control the pope!") but -3 if you're not Catholic.
Then again, Rome was sacked no less than 2.5 times after 500AD:
# Sack of Rome (846) - The Arabs attack Rome and loot old St. Peter's Basilica, though the Roman City walls prevent further damage to the city itself
# Sack of Rome (1084) - Rome is sacked by the Normans of Robert Guiscard
# Sack of Rome (1527) - Rome is sacked by the mutinous troops of Emperor Charles V

The last sack being the much lamented one, of course.

 

[micbic]

Sacked, not captured. Better told as pillaged. You should be able to get to the city, loot gold, but not hold it. Now, is it codable or not?

 

[FuzzyRabbitLord]

I'm just wondering why you removed the hammer bonus in serfdom, that had bonus from serfdom, that had been the main reason I could still have decent production when playing eastern European civs? I'm guessing it wasn't balanced but it made me chose extremely conservative government forms which would be more realistic.

Also I played as burgundy recently and I never had the stability problems everyone is taking about, I was able to control 8 cities, without any revolting. I settled along the Rhine, and south to Marseilles and conquered tours Marseilles, Frankfurt, Rheims and Milan while only dipping into instability for brief periods of time. I had vassilized france and milan, and kept stability up with a vary strong economy, and lots of happiness + culture.

 

[sedna17]

Serfdom hammer is being restored. Don't worry, you can all go back to oppressing the peasants in the next version.

Do people have opinions on Merchant Republic? I'm guessing a lot less people play late enough games for it to be a factor, but in my test sample games the AI *loves* to pick this civic.

 

[civmademepoor]

I use Merchant Republic when I've taken the land I need and am strong enough that others will be less likely to bother me. Whenever I'm Spain or Cordoba once I eliminate the other and make sure France is being reasonable, MR is what I've been using. It's especially good the with Palacio del Pena, so I can switch back to something more militaristic if necessary. Later in the game with enough resources and hammer producing cities, it's fine even at war, usually.

 

[jessiecat]

Serfdom hammer is being restored. Don't worry, you can all go back to oppressing the peasants in the next version.

Do people have opinions on Merchant Republic? I'm guessing a lot less people play late enough games for it to be a factor, but in my test sample games the AI *loves* to pick this civic.

Any chance of looking at my stuck Moscow game, when you have a moment? (post 1187 above).

 

[sedna17]

I'll try to get a look at it tonight.

 

[sedna17]

Well, no luck diagnosing the "Waiting for other Civilizations" problem. It's almost certainly one of our Python functions not returning a proper value, but the automatic logging doesn't tell me where it dies (just what it did right before it, which narrows it down a bit, but still gives me a lot to look at). If other people get these freezes, please post them to give me any additional clues.

 

[FuzzyRabbitLord]

whenever I play as Genoa or Venice I use merchant republic, Great civic for those two, Ive also used it for Britain after I had conquered the UK + Cherburge (however you spell that)

I like it and I think its good to have, one problem I do have with the civics is that I often feel like theres nor real good middle ground civics, I'm always either running the most oppressive, or liberal gov possible.

 

[merijn_v1]

I think the Economy Civics should get a bouns for corporations like vanilla RFC. So I propose:

1. Decentralization: -
2. Manioralism: (i have no idea for a corporation power)
3. Guilds: - 25% corporation payments
4. Mercentialism: Foreign corporations have no effect
5. Merchant Republic: - 25% corporation payments

 

[Barak]

whenever I play as Genoa or Venice I use merchant republic, Great civic for those two, Ive also used it for Britain after I had conquered the UK + Cherburge (however you spell that)

I like it and I think its good to have, one problem I do have with the civics is that I often feel like theres nor real good middle ground civics, I'm always either running the most oppressive, or liberal gov possible.

I agree with you. Too often there are not good civic combinations I feel like running.

 

[Barak]

I think the Economy Civics should get a bouns for corporations like vanilla RFC. So I propose:

1. Decentralization: -
2. Manioralism: (i have no idea for a corporation power)
3. Guilds: - 25% corporation payments
4. Mercentialism: Foreign corporations have no effect
5. Merchant Republic: - 25% corporation payments

I like this idea. I feel that the corporations are great, but too many of them really do nothing. In my games the only 2 that I ever really find useful are Medici Banks for the gold and Bank of St George for the espionage points.

IMO Knights Hospitaler, which is the only cultural corporation is missing a resource. The other corps have 4 resources, Hospitalers have only 3, and 2 of them are not prevalent.

 

[Barak]

Whats the deal with Machine tools? It seems like a wasted late game tech as it provides nothing.