RFC Europe playtesting feedback thread

[AdrienIer]

Actually I've never understood why you couldn't trade cities for money. For example, if you conquer a city you don't want you can give it away but not ask for a payment in exchange. It was not uncommon for kingdoms to accept paying high amounts of money in exchange for a city they considered theirs.
IMO it should at least be possible to buy cities in stable (core) provinces, so that civs can expand realistically without necessarily fighting wars. It's really annoying when your ally conquers a city you want and you can't ask him to exchange it with one of your cities.

It was also a sign of good will in the middle ages to make exchanges along with a peace treaty, which would mean in civ terms that both civs could give something to the other (your ennemy might not want to give you one of his cities to make peace since you're not winning the war that much, but he might think it over if you propose a technology in exchange).

 

[3Miro]

Actually I've never understood why you couldn't trade cities for money. For example, if you conquer a city you don't want you can give it away but not ask for a payment in exchange. It was not uncommon for kingdoms to accept paying high amounts of money in exchange for a city they considered theirs.
IMO it should at least be possible to buy cities in stable (core) provinces, so that civs can expand realistically without necessarily fighting wars. It's really annoying when your ally conquers a city you want and you can't ask him to exchange it with one of your cities.

It was also a sign of good will in the middle ages to make exchanges along with a peace treaty, which would mean in civ terms that both civs could give something to the other (your ennemy might not want to give you one of his cities to make peace since you're not winning the war that much, but he might think it over if you propose a technology in exchange).

You can trade cities for peace. Justinian always wants Adrianopolis back when I conquer it with the initial Bulgarian stack. I am not sure if you can trade cities for gold though. I am a bit worried about possible abuses, think about the amount of gold that you can get from a large city over the next 100 truns, the AI should ask about enormous amounts of gold for a single city.

 

[AdrienIer]

I know you can trade them away, but the question would be about trading them against something : I'm winning a war against Germany, I could take a couple of cities from them but I have a plan for an invasion of Spain. I'm winning the war but not to the point where they would trade away cities for peace, and I would like to give them a technology for, let's say, the city of Augsburg.
I understand your point about trading them for money, but I suppose a city couldn't really be bought with money only since the AI would probably value it very much. It would only be a complement to other trading materials.

 

[amrod]

You can trade cities for peace.

Really? I must be lame then I don't remember exactly what I wanted in exchange for peace, only that when I clicked on the peace in the diplo screen, it didn't let me add anything else before signing the peace. (I think when I've almost killed a civ, I should be able to ask something, like tech in exchange for peace).

Also, back to another earlier suggestion: what about the ability to grant cities independence? I know it has surfaced often here, but don't remember anything by the veteran modders. Eg. when Hungary has to defeat the Ottomans in the Balkans, they might not want to keep all those cities (though I didn't have stab issues, but still it might be a problem in another game). Giving away the cities in diplo is most often not an option, as noone will want them (so the AI does know its core regions, does it?). Also, when capturing cities, sometimes I get the choice to give them back to another civ, but I'm not exactly sure when it happens. For example, I was offered to give back a city in the Balkans to the Lithuanians (who were very far away from there) - how come?

Maybe the civ resurrection engine could be used in some cases - such as resurrecting the Bulgarians in the Balkans after driving out the Turks etc. This could also help with vassal UHVs if done in the old civ4 way of creating vassals - or if it makes that too easy, they wouldn't start as vassals, only with huge positive relation.

 

[AbsintheRed]

The AI is only willing to trade (or ask for) cities during peace negotiations
Also, any deals within those have to be one-sided. If you conquer a city you don't need, you cannot give it back to the original owner for gold or technology. Only as a gift
The game assumes there always have to be a winning side on the war, thus there can only be a winning side in the peace too
So no, you cannot really trade cities in RFCE
AFAIK all these things are vanilla Civ IV behaviour, neither Rhye nor the RFCE team changed anything regarding these

 

[The Turk]

I really like the new background, but out of curiosity, it seems that my background is deformed, is it because of my computer, or is it just because its not 100% finished yet?

 

[AbsintheRed]

I really like the new background, but out of curiosity, it seems that my background is deformed, is it because of my computer, or is it just because its not 100% finished yet?

Can you post a screenshot of it?

 

[The Turk]

Can you post a screenshot of it?

Sure, I'll post a picture tomorrow. Are you hinting that, thats not supposed to happen?

 

[ezzlar]

I like the idea of making the Temple Mount the holy shrine of judaism in Jerusalem. That will also ease up the cultural battle of the area once captured by the crusaders, its easy to get locked in.

Thinking about making Jerusalem "Ok" stability wise for all civs? Just for gameplay reasons (it´s more realistic as unstable).

 

[AbsintheRed]

I like the idea of making the Temple Mount the holy shrine of judaism in Jerusalem. That will also ease up the cultural battle of the area once captured by the crusaders, its easy to get locked in.

Yep, that was my main reason for adding a jewish holy shrine

Thinking about making Jerusalem "Ok" stability wise for all civs? Just for gameplay reasons (it´s more realistic as unstable).

I'm against this, the goal is that Jerusalem is unstable
There is even a minor nation (revolt) mechanics that makes the city much harder to keep

 

[ezzlar]

The revolt mechanic is fine, but I see the problem as following with unstable:

1. AI has a hard time to compensate for unstable regions and may collapse, this is not realistic and does not improve the mod game play wise.
2. The Arabs culturally crush since they have solid vs unstable.
3. Even the Arabs would be better of if Jerusalem was "ok" to prevent stability loss when Crusaders show up

 

[3Miro]

The revolt mechanic is fine, but I see the problem as following with unstable:

1. AI has a hard time to compensate for unstable regions and may collapse, this is not realistic and does not improve the mod game play wise.
2. The Arabs culturally crush since they have solid vs unstable.
3. Even the Arabs would be better of if Jerusalem was "ok" to prevent stability loss when Crusaders show up

1. With the revolts, the AI would just lose Jerusalem. One city in Unstable province cannot collapse a player. It may tip them over the edge, but this is only if they have been doing pretty bad already.

2. Jerusalem should be incredibly hard to keep and yes the Arabs should culturally crush anyone in this region.

3. Arabia is supposed to collapse due to the Crusades and then respawn with Saladin.

 

[amrod]

1. With the revolts, the AI would just lose Jerusalem. One city in Unstable province cannot collapse a player. It may tip them over the edge, but this is only if they have been doing pretty bad already.

2. Jerusalem should be incredibly hard to keep and yes the Arabs should culturally crush anyone in this region.

3. Arabia is supposed to collapse due to the Crusades and then respawn with Saladin.

Exactly, as mentioned eeearlier, it is now too easy to capture and hold Jerusalem. (Though I'd still like to see Kingdom of Jerusalem imported from SoI. That would kind of solve part of the problem.)

 

[amrod]

By the way, I'd like to ask the wise guys here: how much is the AI capable of and how much of the AI can be changed in modding?

I know there are settler maps and war maps in rfc, though don't know too much about them. Like how much does the war map influence the AI? (Ie Turks attacking Hungary etc).
It seems to me that other than these maps, the AI doesn't really know about its UHV goals. (Or is it on purpose? I mean I wouldn't like to see an AI win a UHV before me). I've never seen AI have more than 1 goals accomplished, and even that less than one out of ten.

 

[3Miro]

By the way, I'd like to ask the wise guys here: how much is the AI capable of and how much of the AI can be changed in modding?

I know there are settler maps and war maps in rfc, though don't know too much about them. Like how much does the war map influence the AI? (Ie Turks attacking Hungary etc).
It seems to me that other than these maps, the AI doesn't really know about its UHV goals. (Or is it on purpose? I mean I wouldn't like to see an AI win a UHV before me). I've never seen AI have more than 1 goals accomplished, and even that less than one out of ten.

The Jerusalem issue has been fixed for the next version. The AI in general has also been greatly improved.

For the UHV, the AI can have general modifiers, like conquer this or that territory, or emphasize culture, or steal a Crusade, however, in general the AI is incompetent and any UHV that is achievable by the AI would be trivial for the Human. We don't expect to have the AI achieve one or in rare occasions two UHV conditions. This is actually good for the gameplay, because I don't think it would be much fun to wait an hour to start a game with the Dutch, then spawn and realize that Spain is 2 turns away from winning UHV and there is nothing that you can do about it (unless you cheat with the WB).

 

[Tigranes]

There is a general issue with a number of units which look different (a la vanila BTS) when they still and inactive but when you click on them -- they suddenly change appearance and look like they were supposed to look. Am I the only one who is experiencing this?
P.S. Plus Teutonic Knight now looks Purple even at medium graphic setting (used to be bad with low only).

 

[Opera]

Do you have Frozen Animations enabled?

 

[Tigranes]

Oh, now I see...

 

[ezzlar]

This thing about independence... I went down to -1 stability as the Venetians and immediately had Milano flip. I dont believe that the risk is that small, I´ve experienced it in several games. -1 stability should be minimal, specially when its on the same turn as the stability goes down.

 

[The Turk]

Can anyone please explain to me what the historical basis for an independent Jerusalem faction does exactly? IMO the Crusade function should be radically revamped, with a Kingdom of Jerusalem faction that spawn after the First Crusade is called, with the amount of units that it is given. That would be A LOT more interesting then having Germany, France, Burgundy, Poland, Venice etc... controlling the Levant ahistorically.