RFC Europe playtesting feedback thread

[sedna17]

Lot's of good feedback. I'll try to respond more in detail re: Byzantium and expansion later. As for protestantism, here is the matrix that determines the probability that the AI will switch (they have to already be Catholic):

#Matrix determines how likely the AI is to switch to Protestantism
lReformationMatrix = [
50, #Burgundy
10, #Byzantium
40, #France
10, #Arabia
30, #Bulgaria
10, #Cordoba
10, #Spain
80, #Norse
30, #Venecia
20, #Kiev
50, #Hungary
90, #Germany
30, #Poland
10, #Moscow
30, #Genoa
80, #England
30, #Portugal
50, #Austria
10, #Turkey
90, #Sweden
90, #Dutch
0, #Rome
0, #Indies and Barbs
0,
0,
0,
0
]

The mechanism to have all civs switch at the same time is a little ahistorical, but without it, the first AI to switch to protestantism would always just convert back (as they were surrounded by Catholic civs asking them to switch). They way, though crude, at least tends to set up a divided Europe.

 

[Tigranes]

Austria 50 sounds kinda strange. Who is going to lead the Anti-Reformation? Spain and Austria could be 0 just like Rome. Don't you think that at any given moment we need each religion backed by at least one strong country? I would also love to see missionaries in action.

 

[Verily]

Austria 50 sounds kinda strange. Who is going to lead the Anti-Reformation? Spain and Austria could be 0 just like Rome. Don't you think that at any given moment we need each religion backed by at least one strong country? I would also love to see missionaries in action.

Austria was overwhelmingly Protestant in the early years of the Reformation. It was one of the first areas where the people (not the rulers) embraced the Reformation. But the Hapsburgs crushed the Protestants and had completely wiped out Protestantism in Austria by about 1650. Had the rulers of Austria been more amenable to Protestantism, it would have become a major Protestant power.

Ironically, three of the early strongholds of Protestantism were Bohemia, Austria and Bavaria, all three of which are now very Catholic.

 

[Tigranes]

You're right. Ferdinand II to be blamed. But still, in the game terms, we need some strong Catholic hardliners in this mod. Strong both in convictions and power.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

Lol, speaking of Catholic hardliners, I'm playing Arabia and I switch to Catholicism when Jerusalem flips to me. I'm going to be peaceful and spread it by missionaries...can't get my GA too early before 1700 comes around--the 3rd criteria does say control area 2 IN 1700, not BY 1700.
In 800, I've already captured all of Asia Minor except for Sinope and Constantinople, and got my 1st land requirement. I extorted Religious Art from the Byzantines in my 3rd war against them, and I'm going to crush them after I accumulate enough catapults (unless they're wise enough to capitulate). I'm chummy with the Pope. No crusades in my backyard.

 

[Tigranes]

I assume you still want to spread Islam to 25% even though you Catholic?
Masjid al-Ḥarām could make you rich! I think 20 cities cap could be changed for this mode. I wonder what would AI Rome do with all his gold do help Catholic cause....

 

[AnotherPacifist]

This version is unplayable if you want to expand even a little outside your core territory. You cannot have any of the Asia Minor cities because they will drag you down the road of independence/instability/collapse. I stopped at Constantinople but it was too late: I ended up with -23 stability and sure enough, one by one cities started declaring independence and even by letting go of Sivas (Caesarea), Karisa (Nicaea) and Iconium (I forget the Arab name), it's too late.

This really needs to be changed in the next mod, so that the mod won't be too deterministic.
No wonder nobody has reported a Hungary win yet (small spawn area and yet you need largest empire in Europe?!).

And yes, the plan was to use my Inquisitors to root out Catholicism and reinstall Islam AFTER I've opened borders with everybody.

Also, what about an anarchy-free change of religion in the beginning?

 

[Tigranes]

I think the next update is planned today, sedna17 usually does it over the weekend. While waiting for a new test version I relaxed with the normal RFC. What a nice feeling to be solid after being -100 in RFCE . Rhye really tuned Stability close to perfection. Where is he, by the way ? He said he will be semi-present starting Apr 17...

 

[sedna17]

Sadly, no update this weekend, too busy. Maybe midweek, but probably next weekend. Stability really is sort of a hard thing to balance -- I too admire Rhye for his fine-tuning. This particular issue is effectively how many "bad" tiles are allowed inside your empire before you start getting penalized. Obviously we had to increase it to allow for our bigger empires, but obviously it sounds like it needs to be increased more still, or simply make the penalty a less steep function...

 

[jessiecat]

I don't think that bigger empires is the only issue affecting stability. Some civs seem to have an in-built stabilty problem that stems from foriegn. Recently I had this with Burgundy. Three stars across the board but only 1 for foriegn (-30) even though I only had 2 cities, OBs with my neighbours and 3 wonders built. Completely unstable (-38), I gave up when my 2nd city declared its independence. What is with this anyway?

 

[AnotherPacifist]

There is no good early government option after merchant republic is chosen except for tribal law, because there's an inbuilt conflict with feudal law, and religious law isn't available early on, and larger empires don't like bureaucracy. I would favor discarding religious law (since there's already divine monarchy and theocracy) and replacing it with a more secular/liberal option like city charters (gives more money/science but high maintenance) which can be compatible with smaller republics like Venice and Genoa.

Also, if merchant republic has to be under a republic, it limits how much larger empires can use it. I would favor also allowing it to be compatible with electorate.

BTW, why is religious law incompatible with electorate?

Can we give either manor house, dungeon and night watch some stability benefits when built, and give courthouse 2 stability instead of 1?

Finally, it would really be useful for occupation to have no instability when razing a city.

 

[kbk]

My Spanish game is hanging on end of turn. The globe for your mouse curser just rotates and it simply continues to wait for AI.

Save attached.

 

[sedna17]

I don't think that bigger empires is the only issue affecting stability. Some civs seem to have an in-built stabilty problem that stems from foriegn. Recently I had this with Burgundy. Three stars across the board but only 1 for foriegn (-30) even though I only had 2 cities, OBs with my neighbours and 3 wonders built. Completely unstable (-38), I gave up when my 2nd city declared its independence. What is with this anyway?

Foreign stability is impacted by:

Unstable neighbors, vassal-stability, ratio of wars/open-borders, losing cities and a large number of units killed in one turn. There's no civ-specific penalties at all in foreign.

The easiest way to get to -30 in this category is if your neighbors are unstable.

 

[kbk]

Foreign stability is impacted by:

Unstable neighbors, vassal-stability, ratio of wars/open-borders, losing cities and a large number of units killed in one turn. There's no civ-specific penalties at all in foreign.

The easiest way to get to -30 in this category is if your neighbors are unstable.

As I recall, certain civs in RFC had very poor foreign stability as well, especially Egypt. Are some of these factors at play here?

 

[sedna17]

Thanks, kbk, I stand corrected. Civs also take stability hits when certain new civs rise. They are called "OlderNeighbors". In RFC, there are lots of civs that "hit" Egypt's stability when they spawn: Greece, Persia, Carthage, Rome, Ethiopia, Arabia... these hits accumulate to give Egypt bad "foreign" stability.

We have a lot fewer of these in our mod. Burgundy, for instance, currently does not have any of these hits. Cordoba is hit by just the rise of Spain and the rise of Portugal -- Germany is hit by the most civs in our mod: Poland, Genoa, Austria, and the Dutch.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

But I often get 2 star foreign stability when playing early civs like Byzantines and Arabia, especially after I wipe my neighbors off the map (or the barbs do it for me) and haven't had any neighbors because none of them have spawned yet! Are you telling me that having neighbors spawn AND having no neighbors (other than Rome) is bad for foreign? So should that change for early civs?

Japan and China are the only civs that I know that can be isolated and do well with foreign, what's their secret (i.e. what did Rhye do in Python)?

 

[kbk]

But I often get 2 star foreign stability when playing early civs like Byzantines and Arabia, especially after I wipe my neighbors off the map (or the barbs do it for me) and haven't had any neighbors because none of them have spawned yet! Are you telling me that having neighbors spawn AND having no neighbors (other than Rome) is bad for foreign? So should that change for early civs?

Japan and China are the only civs that I know that can be isolated and do well with foreign, what's their secret (i.e. what did Rhye do in Python)?

I suspect Byzantium has poor foreign stability based on poor relations with Catholic Europe and because their fellow Orthodox neighbors (Moscow, Kiev, Bulgaria and sometimes Hungary) collapse due to the Mongols, or otherwise spend a large amount of time unstable/collapsing. Never mind the horrible relations with Islamic Arabia and Turkey.

Does a collapsed neighboring civ (as opposed to one that has not yet arrived) have a penalty on stability? Maybe a hidden effect where their negative stability modifier was never removed?

 

[AnotherPacifist]

Does a collapsed neighboring civ (as opposed to one that has not yet arrived) have a penalty on stability? Maybe a hidden effect where their negative stability modifier was never removed?

That is probably the case, since from my various conquest games my foreign is inevitably severely negative, even if everybody is my vassal and nice to me (after multiple liberations to them). This should be changed...or do enslaved civs harbor a subterranean grudge until they respawn like in a revolution? But what if the barbs trash them instead of me, and they were stuck hating me--I won't have the chance to "improve" (read: vassalize) our relationship?

 

[jessiecat]

Foreign stability is impacted by:

Unstable neighbors, vassal-stability, ratio of wars/open-borders, losing cities and a large number of units killed in one turn. There's no civ-specific penalties at all in foreign.

The easiest way to get to -30 in this category is if your neighbors are unstable.

Sorry. But that explanation doesn't wash in this case. As Burgundy, I had one neighbour, France, which was very stable. Germany had just spawned and was very stable. But every time I change civics (twice) I lost stability on foriegn only. Everything else remained at 3 stars each. Yet I kept going down in foriegn even though I opened borders with everyone. And still my second city went indy. A few
months ago, 3Miro said he'd spotted a foriegn stability modifier imported from RFC that might have caused the problem, Any idea about that?
BTW. I'm currently playing as France and had no problems with stability despite wars with Burgundy, Germany and Spain. Yet France remains solid at at least 20+. Why shouldn't Burgundy be the same? I've never had any such problem with stability in any other civ I've played in over a hundred test games. And I'm not the first person to point this out.

 

[sedna17]

Thanks for helping me debug this stuff guys.

Burgundy was accidentally taking stability hits from _all_ spawning civs (a bug due to them being ID #0). No wonder their foreign stability was in fact bad. This is fixed now.

There doesn't seem to be any specific code in RFC to help Japan or China foreign stability (there get a boost in economy stability to "counteract isolation" though). Dead civs shouldn't contribute to negative foreign stability (there's an "alive" check), but I'll double-check to make sure that's working properly.

EDIT: Cross-post with you Jessiecat -- sorry I doubted you!