RFC Europe playtesting feedback thread

[Kalimakhus]

I started a game as Al-Andalus (Cordoba). I failed the first UHV but I might continue with the game anyway just for fun.

Remarks:

- Isbiliah or however it is spelled should be Ishbilliah. Same with Barsalona it should be Barshellona.

- Allsakandariah should be Al-Eskandariah or Al-Askandariah both are used in arabic but the first is better as it derives from Al-Eskandar = Alexander.

- Syroz (north of Jerusalem) is not a recognizable city name for me. If it is supposed to be Tyre then the Arabic name is Sour.

Haven't gone far with the game yet so I've got no real balance notes. In general West Europeans seem to do rather too bad. While Burgundy and Frankia didn't collapse they were quite weak provided that they had quite a lot of time to expand and build-up. Spain is weak as well and the only thing that keeps me from crushing it is that I am too squeezed money-wise so I am not able to build a large army. Almost since the beginning I am confined to research level of 20-40%. In fact I lost the first UHV because I built cottages around Qurtobah trying to get as much gold as I can. I reached 11 pop but with farms instead I would have gotten a larger pop.

 

[jessiecat]

I started a game as Al-Andalus (Cordoba). I failed the first UHV but I might continue with the game anyway just for fun.

Remarks:

- Isbiliah or however it is spelled should be Ishbilliah. Same with Barsalona it should be Barshellona.

- Allsakandariah should be Al-Eskandariah or Al-Askandariah both are used in arabic but the first is better as it derives from Al-Eskandar = Alexander.

- Syroz (north of Jerusalem) is not a recognizable city name for me. If it is supposed to be Tyre then the Arabic name is Sour.

Haven't gone far with the game yet so I've got no real balance notes. In general West Europeans seem to do rather too bad. While Burgundy and Frankia didn't collapse they were quite weak provided that they had quite a lot of time to expand and build-up. Spain is weak as well and the only thing that keeps me from crushing it is that I am too squeezed money-wise so I am not able to build a large army. Almost since the beginning I am confined to research level of 20-40%. In fact I lost the first UHV because I built cottages around Qurtobah trying to get as much gold as I can. I reached 11 pop but with farms instead I would have gotten a larger pop.

A couple of comments on your suggestions. I was the one who provided the Arabic names for cities in Spain, based mainly on a very good Wiki site which gives alternate names for cities in many languages. Maybe we are just using slightly different sources. According the source I've got;
Seville translates to "Isibiliyah" but if you prefer "Ishbilliah" that's fine with me.
Barcelona is called "Barsaluna". I've never seen "Barshellona". I agree with you on Syroz though. It should be Sour.
As far as the UHVs go, the first two are easy. If you build farms and attack Spain early, that is. I've only ever reached Scientific Method first once. With all your military efforts against Spain and Portugal you can never be the tech leader. Venice and England will always beat you to S.M. Anyway, in my present game I'm just empire-building and teching for a score though I'll have to invade France soon.

 

[Kalimakhus]

@jessiecat

I don't use a specific resource. I am Egyptian i.e. Arab so it is actually how I pronounce the names of these cities.

I agree that the first two UHVs are easy. I failed the first because I didn't pay attention and built cottages where I should have built farms. While I haven't tried it yet but I can see that the third UHV is almost impossible. You never have the chance to tech effectively enough. I am not sure what raises expenses that high from the very start. Even with Manor houses, Courthouses, Markets and so I still can't tech over 40% without losing money.

 

[jessiecat]

@jessiecat

I don't use a specific resource. I am Egyptian i.e. Arab so it is actually how I pronounce the names of these cities.

I agree that the first two UHVs are easy. I failed the first because I didn't pay attention and built cottages where I should have built farms. While I haven't tried it yet but I can see that the third UHV is almost impossible. You never have the chance to tech effectively enough. I am not sure what raises expenses that high from the very start. Even with Manor houses, Courthouses, Markets and so I still can't tech over 40% without losing money.

OK. Thanks for the explanation. Maybe Arabic has slight regional variations in spelling. Like English does in Britain and America for example. Though I defer to your experience of course.

 

[3Miro]

Pronunciation vs Spelling vs Alphabet is a problem for all of the cities. Cities in Bulgaria have fixed spelling in Cyrillic and fixed pronunciation in Bulgarian. Then comes the translation of those in Latin (i.e. English) Alphabet. There are at least three schemes that one can follow and unfortunately those could result in different pronunciations in English.

Then come slight differences between different Slavic languages. No Russian would ever pronounce my last name correctly even if I spell it in Cyrillic. I believe Serbians spell their capital Beograde or Belgrade, and while Bulgarians pronaunce it and spell it identically in Cyrillic, in Bulgaria we would spell it Belgrad if we have to spell it in Latin.

Having said that, I am not sure Isibiliyah and Ishbilliah can really have a "correct" and "incorrect" version. I think it is more important to keep consistency, that is for each language follow the same scheme for converting all city names into English.

Having said that, you guys figure it out, I don't speak Arabic.

 

[Kalimakhus]

First of all, we all know that this is a game meant for having fun. It is not meant to be educational. Any effort to reflect the accurate historical setting is however quite appreciable especially on the part of people with native languages and backgrounds different from English. It just feels nice to see the names of cities written on the map somewhat close to what we call them in our language.

While we do have a lot of accents for Arabic language used in about 22 different countries, we still have a standard Arabic language that is used in books, newspapers, official mails and even in Radio, and TV. So while I can find a great difficulty in following a conversation between two Algerians I will be able to fully understand a letter written by any of them. My previous name suggestions were based on how the mentioned city names are spelled in Arabic as in our history books. Adapting them to Latin alphabet is another story because Arabic is quite different from any language that uses Latin letters. To say the least we have many letters that don't exist in the Latin alphabet and some of them can never be represented by any combination of letters.

Once again it is a game and I am quite pleased with what you guys have done with this mod so far.

@jessiecat

Thanks for the advice. I started a new game with the Cordobbans (I installed the latest release so I had to do so anyway). This time I went to war early and eliminated Spain. When I finish my current game I plan to play the next as Spain to see if I can counter the advantages of Cordoba. I think however that the AI is doing badly in general based on the status of other civs compared to what would be the case if played by a human. When I played Frankia I eliminated Burgundy quite early and took every single city that indys and barbs had in France and northern Spain. The AI seems never able to come close to this. I think you may differ starting free units and even techs gifted to player on spawn based on whether it is human or an AI to give the AI some push.

 

[Wessel V1]

To reach SM first, it's important to have no more than 10, maybe 12 cities. Any more cities greatly increases research costs. Personally I'd like this feature to be removed or weakened, as I've said before but I understand there are other priorities. Also, Iberia has so much production with Serfdom, that most cities can build all buildings available and then build wealth. This should keep research at 100%, I think.

 

[Wessel V1]

I might have found what causes global warming: In the Globaldefines.xml there is a tag

<Define>
<DefineName>GLOBAL_WARMING_UNHEALTH_WEIGHT</DefineName>
<iDefineIntVal>20</iDefineIntVal>
</Define>

In RFCE there is a lot of unhealth (as it should be), so I guess that's it.
Also, cottages don't grow, fixed it.

It's going very well I see. We're almost there! Keep up the good work.

 

[Wessel V1]

Double post

 

[3Miro]

Sorry for not fixing the cottages, normally sedna17 deals with the XML and I was busy figuring the C++ doing the UHVs. If I am doing the next version, I will make sure to fix that.

 

[jessiecat]

Sorry for not fixing the cottages, normally sedna17 deals with the XML and I was busy figuring the C++ doing the UHVs. If I am doing the next version, I will make sure to fix that.

Just noticed a problem with the Moscow UHV. No. 1 is not losing a city to barbarians (Mongols) before 1400. I'm in 1450 and haven't lost a city to barbarians or anyone else but the first condition says "not yet".

 

[3Miro]

Just noticed a problem with the Moscow UHV. No. 1 is not losing a city to barbarians (Mongols) before 1400. I'm in 1450 and haven't lost a city to barbarians or anyone else but the first condition says "not yet".

I think there is a problem with the Russian UHVs in general. I will look into it.

 

[jessiecat]

Thanks for fixing that. I replayed my game from before 1400 and got the first UHV condition. Now for the second one, having the most culture of any Slavic civ in 1600. I've got the 12 cities already so the 3rd. one's in the bag.
I figure I've got a chance as the Kievans and Bulgaria have been knocked out earlier. Just Poland to beat though they're getting pretty big and have blocked my push to the west. Still, if I consolidate and build lots of culture buildings I might do it. An unfortunate war with Hungary and a few pesky barbarians keep me busy but I'm doing OK. As 1600 approaches I realize I won't get all 3 conditions but I play on. Suddenly, in 1600;
POLAND WINS A HISTORICAL VICTORY!!!
I don't believe it. I've seen the AI do it in RFC a few times but never in this mod. It's a first for me.
How about anybody else? WTH!

 

[merijn_v1]

The first UHV of the Franks doesn't work either. I'm 1504 AD and it says: "not yet". I was playing the feb 13 version so maybe its already fixed in the feb
14th version but I haven't looked at it.

 

[Kalimakhus]

I've gone with my Cordoba game till I was beaten to SM by Venice. While it was mentioned before that this UHV is quite difficult if not impossible I still can't understand why? I lost the race by some 16 turns. When Venetians started researching SM they needed 12 turns while I needed 28 turns. I was first in gold income and second in production. Most of my cities were building research so much of my production was going to research as well as all my gold (I set research to 100% regardless the money lost as I had enough in my treasury). Is there any hidden factor here. I know techs are a little more expensive if you are the first to research them but this works against both me and Venice. Also more (or prereq techs) makes a tech less expensive and as I was beelining to SM since long it was inevitable that I missed some of these however this shouldn't make such a great difference.

Anyway my next game with the latest release will be with Venice

 

[Wessel V1]

I've gone with my Cordoba game till I was beaten to SM by Venice. While it was mentioned before that this UHV is quite difficult if not impossible I still can't understand why? I lost the race by some 16 turns. When Venetians started researching SM they needed 12 turns while I needed 28 turns. I was first in gold income and second in production. Most of my cities were building research so much of my production was going to research as well as all my gold (I set research to 100% regardless the money lost as I had enough in my treasury). Is there any hidden factor here. I know techs are a little more expensive if you are the first to research them but this works against both me and Venice. Also more (or prereq techs) makes a tech less expensive and as I was beelining to SM since long it was inevitable that I missed some of these however this shouldn't make such a great difference.

Anyway my next game with the latest release will be with Venice

In RFCE (and in RFC for that matter) there are coded research and construction rates. In RFCE, you can find them in RFCEBalance.py. For example, construction and research times are much higher for Byzantium, to simulate the fall of the Empire. It also says that Cordoba needs 255% the research points for a tech.

Could you please post a save game? I'm not such an experienced player like some of the main RFC players but I've played enough to understand what might be good and bad compared to vanilla Civ 4 games.

 

[3Miro]

The first UHV of the Franks doesn't work either. I'm 1504 AD and it says: "not yet". I was playing the feb 13 version so maybe its already fixed in the feb
14th version but I haven't looked at it.

The Franks' UHV should be working, it is possible that the Kiev and Moscow bugs in Feb 13 interfere with the Franks, or maybe there is something wrong with Burgundy.

 

[jessiecat]

The Franks' UHV should be working, it is possible that the Kiev and Moscow bugs in Feb 13 interfere with the Franks, or maybe there is something wrong with Burgundy.

I can confirm that the first UHV for the Franks is not working. I played as far as 1520 and it still said "not yet".

 

[Kalimakhus]

@Wessel V1

Thanks for the explanation. It is what I meant by asking about a hidden factor. I haven't looked into python files. It has been a long time since I played RFC in general so I've forgotten a lot about its mechanics.

I would like however to know the rationale behind this large handicap for Cordoba? For the most part of the Middle Ages Arabs in general and those of Andalusia in particular were more advanced than most Europeans except maybe for Byzantines. This only started to change slowly with the dawn of Renaissance era. It however took a couple of centuries before Europeans gained a considerable tech lead around the beginnings of the 19th century evident in the comparative ease with which Napoleon was able to conquer Egypt.

I attached a save if you like to inspect my Cordoba game. It was played with the 6th Feb release however so I don't think it would work with the latest release. You will notice that I abandoned the game even before 1500 AD so I didn't wait to see if I accomplished the 2nd UHV though it seems to be OK. I have even managed to take 2 cities from Frankia because Lewis decided to dow me some turns ago. I will appreciate any insight into the good and bad about the game especially why my stability went down so much with the end of the game. It seems to be mostly my civic choices so I'd like to know what I did wrong there.

 

[3Miro]

Victory with Cordoba is doable, just hard. You should give it another try, I for one have never managed a RFC UHV on the first try.

The key is to beeline to Scientific Method without any delays. Get some techs to allow better growth in the beginning and then go for SM. On the way, emphasize techs that would boost Science and Wealth (Education + Guilds), use the enormous production of Iberia to build Wealth and Research. Get some wonders, +2 beakers from Islamic buildings is good, the Leaning Tower of Cordoba is good for some extra Scientist and some light-bulbs. OB with as many nations as you can and build Castles, made early contact with Arabia (use a Berber Horseman and go over land in Africa), if Arabia is Islamic you will OB and get massive cash (in my game they were Orthodox). Then comes the Venetian problem, as soon as possible get a fleet of Pirates and blockade their cities. Get a lot of Pirates in a single stack (I did not did not do that, they were only single ships and were taken out one by one, but still managed to slow down Venice), use some Spies to destroy improvements and poison water (why not).

Other possibilities are a full blown war with Venice, but that is hardly justified the trouble.

Spain and Portugal are best handled with Armored Lancers early on.

Now comes the waiting for 1500AD to get the third UHV.

For the Frank's UHV problem, can anyone confirm it on the Feb 14 version of the game. Does anyone have a savegame right before the date of the UHV. If the condition does not register on the specified date, it will never register, I need a savegame right on the moment of the problem.