RFC Europe playtesting feedback thread

[kochman]

@FakeShady:
1. Please stop suggesting all the time that the creator or the players of SoI are Muslim or have a Muslim or anti-Christian bias or whatnot. That's simply ridiculous.
2. If you don't like SoI and it's so bad you even can write this review, why don't you have the balls to post it in, I don't know, an actual SoI thread so edead can read your opinion and react to it, instead of posting it here where it has really absolutely no relevance to RFC Europe playtesting?

1) Please stop "suggesting" the truth? That is the truth after all, I don't think the Turk would deny it. Though he and I disagree on a lot, he certainly seems to be honest.

2) I don't think it takes balls to post the review anywhere... it came up in this thread, so though it was certainly out of place here, it isn't like he did it here because he was scared he would get his head cut off (the deserved fate of infidels).

 

[Ekolite]

REALLY?!?!

With what, research at 0%? With ONE ARCHER per city and ONE MORE SUPER SPEARMAN in my capital??! With barbarians razing every single improvement i have instead of attacking my cities straight?? All this with crap production and zero commerce?
LMAO?!

No seriously, that mod makes me sick

Im not usually a whiner, so i cant understand why people whine. But now that you brought up the topic of SoI, i cant stop. Very well. I wont stop. I shall show everyone my amazing 30 minutes journey through SoI

9:30am So i download SoI. This mod has Byzantium! I thought. Should be fun
9:35 Er wow, you actually have to install it! Cool!!! Its like a brand new game in itself!!! Thumbs up!
9:45 Installation complete.
9:46 Select Civilisations. Er what, they changed Justinian's face?!? Now i get some funny Cyrus face leading Byzantium. Well... as long as he has good music. What... is... with the new UP??? +1 espionage in all cities?! WTH is that?? Espionage themed Byzantium? Oh well. Lets try this... Basel II guy.

9:48 Game start

Thumbs down 1: Select difficulty, Emir, Sultan, or Caliph? Er.. what? LMAO! WHAT DOES THAT MEAN? Errr if i have to choose what i wanna be, of cos i wanna be Caliph, becos a Caliph has more power than a Sultan, right? No but really, if these guys even have to change such simple NAMES that doesnt even have any impact of gameplay to suit their own tastes... i sense a biased mod already. Whatever, the one in the middle should be "Monarch", so i pressed Sultan and continue.

Thumbs down 2: I have ONE archer per city, and one archer and one spearman in my capital. Cool beans. Oh well, im okay with that if there are no barbs... OH THERE ARE BARBS! OMGWTH, this barb called "peasant" has the same combat strength as my sppearman?!?!? Oh well, no big deal barbs die when they attack my cities so... OH NO NO NO DONT RAZE!!! DO ANYTHING BUT RAZE MY IMPROVMENTS!1 Guess what, thats all the barbs did. Raze and march on. Raze and march on. And theres a lotta them. With one archer per city, you cant do nuts against that. Oh, and your gold will be -10 per turn even with research at 0%. Yes thats right

Thumbs down 3: Open civilopedia. I wanna familiarize myself to this world. Okay lets see... some cool civics! Techonologies are foreign to me but... seems like a well thought of mod. Oh cool, a whole new concept... Titles!!! Ohh lets see... WTH.
The muslim title, "Leader of the Faithful", gives you +25% base piety, a lollipop, a mercedes benz, and many, many more bonuses!!! Seriously, a lot of bonuses. I cant remember what they are. And thats only a fraction of the Muslim titles!! There are still many more other muslim titles... all that requires islam as state religion Only fair i guess, this is a middle east mod... no but wait, The christian title, "Owner of the Holy Sepulchre", (notice how they avoid the words "faithful", or "leader". No, you just own it ) gives you +20% base peity. THATS IT. No lollipop, no candy floss, nothing else. THATS IT! Its not even enough to match the +25%, hello?! And the title is not any easier to get!

Thumbs down 4: The naming of everything. Yes of cos, Palestine is used. The word Israel came out a grand total of -123854395 times in the game. Everything in the game was carefully named to ensure they suit the tastes of their... main group of players

Thumbs down 5: Have i mentioned spread of Jews in your cities causes UNHAPPINESS? Yes, go figure that one yourself. Ohhh yes, and one more thing. As Byzantium, some Arabian Caliphate had a -7 relation to me for "You are an infidel" In my society, thats a taboo word. Besides, is it really that important that you must change "We are upset you have fallen under the sway of a heathen religion" to that?? At this point i lost respect for the mod

FINAL STRAW: As Byzantium, they changed my beloved Justinian's music to some... Orthodox chanting. Trust me, its nowhere as awesome at all. The other orthodox civ, Armenia i think, had awful music too. Just when i thought everyone's music in the game is boring... yet another arabian nation spawned. And guess what... They had some awesome, heroic Prince of Persia styled music i am serious. It sounded disney-like. I am a musician. I. Cannot. Tolerate. People. Who. Manipulate. Using. Music.

So there you have it, FakeShady's official review of SoI

EDIT: So conclusion, no Jusos i will not be giving SoI another chance unless they fix these problems, something i believe i will never see

SOI is biased towards the Islamic world in the same way the RFCE is biased towards Europe.. I mean come on, it's called Sword of Islam, you should know what to expect. I didn't really like it either, but I think you should remember that regardless of this, it's the product of somebody's hard work and you should respect that.

 

[kochman]

SOI is biased towards the Islamic world in the same way the RFCE is biased towards Europe.. I mean come on, it's called Sword of Islam, you should know what to expect.

While you make a great point... according to Leoreth, this is not the case, and it is "ridiculous" to suggest there is a bias...

 

[3Miro]

While you make a great point... according to Leoreth, this is not the case, and it is "ridiculous" to suggest there is a bias...

I don't think edead is Muslim at all, in fact I would guess that he is a Catholic (although I don't know for sure).

As for bias, there is a difference between bias as in focused attention and bias as ignoring/twisting history. Obviously RFCE and SoI are both focused-biased towards specific regions/religions, however, I don't think either one is twisted-biased beyond what you get from the limitations of the game engine.

 

[The Turk]

I'm kind of confused how Edead is biased towards Islamic factions in a mod that is centered around the Middle East? I think he's very fair to all factions. Its not as if the Christian or Hindu factions are underpowered compared to the Muslim Factions. And if your talking about the fact that they all get eventually crushed in the Late Game, thats because historically they did. SoI creates a historically accurate Middle East, but at the same time keeps it open for gameplay, therefore allowing a huge Georgian Empire or an unhistorically large Chauchun Empire.
And yes, please don't be so disrespectful to people who have spent a very long time creating a mod. If you don't like it, don't play it. And if you really didn't like it, then I pray that you can openly admit your feelings.

@3Miro
Didn't read your post; but I could not agree with you more

 

[FakeShady]

While you make a great point... according to Leoreth, this is not the case, and it is "ridiculous" to suggest there is a bias...

Agree

As for bias, there is a difference between bias as in focused attention and bias as ignoring/twisting history. Obviously RFCE and SoI are both focused-biased towards specific regions/religions, however, I don't think either one is twisted-biased beyond what you get from the limitations of the game engine.

Agree!

SOI is biased towards the Islamic world in the same way the RFCE is biased towards Europe.. I mean come on, it's called Sword of Islam, you should know what to expect. I didn't really like it either, but I think you should remember that regardless of this, it's the product of somebody's hard work and you should respect that.

Agree too! But i didnt disrespect it. I simply said why i didnt like it.

And if you really didn't like it, then I pray that you can openly admit your feelings.

And isn't that what i did?

I would like to take this opportunity to clarify something. I never once said the mod is bad. To edead, if you can hear this, your mod is good, and to an extent quite historical too I just really, really didnt like it. Yes, the mod makes me sick and it still does. But thats my problem. Im not complaining. Whats wrong with that?

Now now, lets get back to topic. Some people cant wait to warn me

 

[kochman]

I don't think edead is Muslim at all, in fact I would guess that he is a Catholic (although I don't know for sure).

I didn't say everyone involved was a Muslim, but the Turk is... and he was the driving power behind it. I have no problem with his bias in his mod, but to deny that it exists, as Leoreth did, is completely illogical.

 

[The Turk]

Fakeshady, although I agree with you in that we should get back on task, I would like to remind you to look back at the comments you are about to post, and think if thats:
a. Possibly hurtful to someone
b. Really neccessary for the continuation of X thread your on
So the moderators won't have to kick you out. Just a friendly suggestion before something dramatic happens

Anyway........
What are the plans for the next version of RFC Europe?


EDIT:

I didn't say everyone involved was a Muslim, but the Turk is...

And your a Protestant Christian, does that make you illegible to talk about Catholic and Muslim civs? Although I would like to say yes, the answer is no.

 

[merijn_v1]

Anyway........
What are the plans for the next version of RFC Europe?

Most changes are the usual stuff. You can see the things we want to do in the changelog. The most important things for the next version we have now (it will be more when released) are:

- New civic system
- Some changes on the map
- Some bugfixes
- Many other little things

You can allways keep track of the progress here.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/rfceurope/develop

 

[hoplitejoe]

could you change the Viking UHV about reviling all the ocean tiles by a certain date as it's more of an exercise in patients than skill. maybe one about getting a certain amount of ships by a date would be a good replacement.

 

[Jusos2108]

- Many other little things

Does many other little things include rework on the UHVs?

...the Turk is... and he was the driving power behind it. I have no problem with his bias in his mod...

No. Embryodead was the driving force behind it and he did it pretty much by himself and it is definetly Edead's mod!

 

[kochman]

Rather than split hairs... does it matter? Are you saying there is no bias also? Haha, you guys are HILARIOUS!

The point is, the SoI is understandably biased... It isn't like it is the whole world you are playing in, and Islam is disproportionately powerful...
It is focused on that region, and just as Islam is generally whooped up in the RFC:E because it is fringe, non-Islamic regions are fringe in SoI and understandably get whooped up in that area, reflected history in both cases.

 

[merijn_v1]

Does many other little things include rework on the UHVs?

No. What I mean with little things are like typos, deleting unneccessary lines of code. I the reworked UHV was done already, I would have mentioned it.

BTW, it is a list of what already is done for the next version. There will be many more changes until the next version. (And maybe the rework of the UHV will be one of them)

 

[3Miro]

The only thing done so far for Beta 9 is merijn_v1's Civic code. The little time that I have during the week, so far I spend on chasing strange bugs. I will work more on it this weekend.

 

[Leoreth]

You guys should look up the definition of bias.

Representing things correctly as they were = NOT bias.

 

[The_J]

Moderator Action: Every post after this warning, which doesn#t have anything to do with this mod here, will get deleted.

 

[The Flame8]

Played as Norse, and two things have to be changed.
1. The stupid loss of stability for razing citys... thanks for correcting this 3miro but please use it in the next beta too.
2. Providence stabilities HAVE to be able to change. This is killing any chance of expansion and preventing me from winning the game.

 

[Daffy]

I've always noticed a somewhat odd city placement(or lack of cities) by Germany around the Dutch spawn area(it's outside Germany's settler map)(1 tile overlap i think)

Why exclude it anymore or at all?
Let germany build within the dutch area if they want to, more competition with Burgundy, France, England in that case.

If germany had built near the dutch spawn point that city would be erased, so no problem for the dutch there. Elsewise they get flips.
The flipping of cities from Germany to the Netherlands would be after the win date for the German UHV anyway(no problem for the player, I build Amsterdam when I play Germany).
This would also weaken Germany (AI wise) (cities flipping, might even collapse)

Another thing.. I know people don't like instability
but.. during the most of the timeframe of this mod the area we know as Germany today was quite fragmented.The best comparision I can think of is the Japaneese middle ages (shogun vs tenno), less warlike though.
the first German UHV ist to control the east bank of the rhine in 1300 (which isn't really a challenge imo, at least not right now)
why not have it be a battle about being able to keep your cities together, instability would nicely represent the fragmentation imo
maybe something like the byzanitines have in small, that they cant lose a few core areas(say swabia and franconia) as long as they have their capitol, but it more likely for cities to declare independance (not as a UP though, maybe increase the stability output of the rathaus to 2)
iirc currently it only gets really dangerous around -5 stabilty, set that number for germany to -2 (just i.e.)

and maybe more provinces? saxony could be cut into 5 provinces or so imo (lower saxony i.e.) (I could help out with some maps or so)


and btw. @ 3miro

I think I recall having read you mentioning that Germany should conquer Groningen more often.

Well it's not within their warmap

 

[Veshta]

Having German flippers in Dutch territory may not impact a German player much since UHV has come and gone, but a for a Dutch player ..
Have you seen the hardware/tech in Frederick's hands in the late 16th century? Imagine a flip declaration from that monster .. he is a dog-pile all on his own
And I have never seen him be anything but solid after 1400 or so when he has all the land he goes for and spends his time building up the cities.

He does have a lot of stability issues early on with barbarians and expansion, I have seen him collapse several times and still come back to be among the top 2-3 ..

 

[3Miro]

We should add more of the Netherlands to the German map.

I had similar idea for Germany, lower their initial stability, so that one would have to be even more careful in expanding (or expand, then lose some cities, then expand again), until they can get their stability high enough. This would delay the growth of Germany and add another challenge.

For the UHV: Historic ones
- Have the most Catholic Faith Points in XXXXAD (Holy Roman Empire)
- Be the first to discover the Printing Press.

Suggestions for the ahistoric one?
- reach X Stability in XXXXAD
or
- win a Crusade (change the French UHV to what? something about the Western Schism perhaps)
or
- conquer Austria and/or Poland