RFC Europe playtesting feedback thread

[BurnEmDown]

Sorry I don't remember when it happened, and Trebuchets are fine for the Crusaders, I think that's what they and the Arabs used.
(Like in the movie "The Holy Land" starring Orlando Bloom, in the final battle for Jerusalem the Arabs used Trebuchets to take the city).

 

[jessiecat]

Sorry I don't remember when it happened, and Trebuchets are fine for the Crusaders, I think that's what they and the Arabs used.
(Like in the movie "The Holy Land" starring Orlando Bloom, in the final battle for Jerusalem the Arabs used Trebuchets to take the city).

Both sides used trebuchets of varying design, although the Arabs were first to use the more powerful counterweight version during Saladin's siege of Jerusalem rather than the traction trebuchet which dates
back to the 3rd.C Chinese and the late Romans. And I think the film was "Kingdom of Heaven", wasn't it?.

 

[BurnEmDown]

Ah yes, sorry it's hard to translate names from Hebrew to English (and also from English to Hebrew for some people, especially the ones who translate the movies' names!! You would be amazed to see "Terminator" called "Deadly Mission" and even more stupid names for movies)

 

[micbic]

Currently playtesting as Germany. Comments:

1) First UHV is way too easy. All you have to do is found Konstanz/Basel or whatever it is before the Burgundians. Chances of the French founding Namur or Harlem are very limited.
2) Byzantium is currently first at score, but I feel really sorry for them. They only have 5-6 core cities.
3) Crusading: I didn't want to get at imperialistic adventures, so I declined. Any pope modifier like -3: You didn't wanna crush the infidel Arabs? BTW: Are they enabled if Jerusalem is Byzantine?
4) Genoans have been captured by indies...overpowered Milan perhaps???
(angry thought: one vassal less)
5) Bugs: 1) What??? A spy has attempted sabotaging one of my cities!!!
Yes, sir...Actually the city of Germany

2) I am still having the empty screen bug with Tech and Resource
screens of Foreign Advisors...Is it just me???
EDIT: Second screenshot is wrong, will psot the right one on below

 

[micbic]

Had saved the 2nd screenie as a TGA file, can't post it.

 

[KaiserBenjamin]

The Genoans were captured by Indies in my game too.

 

[pan-slavist]

I am not sure if there are a lot of testers from central-eastern europe but as i am from slovakia and i am quite educated in history of this part of the world as well as russia i found several historical inaccuracies just seeing the initial screen of this mod - the one you choose your civ from.

1. Kievan Rus leader shouldnt be Jurij Dolgorukyj - actually it was him who founded Moskva/Moscow, so if you want to have different kievan and muscovy civs this is not a good choice even if he was a kievan ruler. there are other even more important rulers - you can choose from a wide range - Rurik, Jaroslav Mudry/The Wise, Sviatoslav... I would definitely choose Jaroslav Mudry/The Wise because under his rule Kievan Rus flourished the most. Rurik is also good as the founder of the Rurikovicej dynasty, but he actually ruled from Novgorod, and he was a Variag- a Viking.
2. Hungarian UP - Power of Tolerance - maybe some of you will acuse me of being anti-hungarian as i am a Slovak, but thats not true. I have nothing against modern Hungarians, actually my gf is partly of hungarian descent. But since the middle ages till the XX. century the non-hungarian parts of hungarian monarchy - such as Slovakia or Romania - was under heavy magyarization/hungarization, people were forced to speak and learn hungarian so the power of tolerance is mosty inaccurate. Again i am friends with hungarians today, but during the Hungarian monarchy its politics with the minorities were quite represive.
3. Russian city names - i would be able to extend the russian names to various prominent cities of historical europe, which were never under russian rule, however russians have their own names for them. As an example - Constantinople should become Carigrad/Tsarigrad after conquest by russia. Its an old russian name for the city, or maybe old slavic as it is still used in some proverbs even in my country.
4. Bulgaria - i dont remember exactly but i know the word khan and khanate is used with bulgaria in this mod, im not sure if they had a khanate sometimes in the history, but they definitely hed tsars for the most of history, so its not good to refer to bulghars as khanate - which would relate them to mongols or others steppe nations.

As I said I didnt even start playing so I may have more comments in the future, comments from the point of view of a slovak, central-eastern european, a slav, a russian history student. But if my comments are too late to incorporated in the game or are not very appreciated, just tell me and i will stop disturbing with such long comments

 

[jessiecat]

Just to report a UHV victory on Monarch as the Kievan Rus. Quite easy conditions once you survive the massive Mongol invasions. I must have killed a hundred of the pests. It seems to last nearly a hundred years too. Anyway its a win, if a little too easy in the end.
As for the observations above I leave any reply to 3Miro and others who have better knowledge of Eastern Europe than I. Although I agree that Yaroslav the Wise would be a better leader of the Kievans.

 

[FloridaSunShine]

Just downloaded RFCE. Feb 14 09 zip, haven't applied Feb 16 patch. Playing England on viceroy. UHV get to ind era first - good. UHV get 3 colonial project - not good. Maybe I don't understand. Got Cape Town, Far Eastern Treaty Port, Ivory Coast, Malaya, Virginia. Didn't give me 2nd UHV. Also I have finished Tech Tree and just got the plegue in 6 of my 10 cities and how do ships die of the plegue(they are in my game.) If the answers are posted somewhere please direct me to them. THANKS

 

[jessiecat]

Just downloaded RFCE. Feb 14 09 zip, haven't applied Feb 16 patch. Playing England on viceroy. UHV get to ind era first - good. UHV get 3 colonial project - not good. Maybe I don't understand. Got Cape Town, Far Eastern Treaty Port, Ivory Coast, Malaya, Virginia. Didn't give me 2nd UHV. Also I have finished Tech Tree and just got the plegue in 6 of my 10 cities and how do ships die of the plegue(they are in my game.) If the answers are posted somewhere please direct me to them. THANKS

The colonies seem to be working OK. Maybe there's a bug with the England UHV. Do you have a saved game just before you built your 3rd. colony? If so, post it here so one of us can look at it. Yes. Unfortunately plague kills ships and seige engines too, just like in RFC I think. Sorry. BTW Welcome to the project. Your playtesting reports are appreciated, esp. on Monarch if that's OK.

 

[BurnEmDown]

I played England as well and didn't get the Colonial UHV, but I'd also like to give feedback on another issue: It seems Frankia is willing to trade techs for really cheap prices. I also had this issue playing as Frankia, nobody wanted to trade techs fairly*!
Here's a screenshot showing how Frankia is willing to give so much for so little.

*I know the AI often doesn't trade fairly and will ask for more than he gives, but the trade offers I was given as Frankia were absurd!

 

[3Miro]

I am not sure if there are a lot of testers from central-eastern europe but as i am from slovakia and i am quite educated in history of this part of the world as well as russia i found several historical inaccuracies just seeing the initial screen of this mod - the one you choose your civ from.

1. Kievan Rus leader shouldnt be Jurij Dolgorukyj - actually it was him who founded Moskva/Moscow, so if you want to have different kievan and muscovy civs this is not a good choice even if he was a kievan ruler. there are other even more important rulers - you can choose from a wide range - Rurik, Jaroslav Mudry/The Wise, Sviatoslav... I would definitely choose Jaroslav Mudry/The Wise because under his rule Kievan Rus flourished the most. Rurik is also good as the founder of the Rurikovicej dynasty, but he actually ruled from Novgorod, and he was a Variag- a Viking.
2. Hungarian UP - Power of Tolerance - maybe some of you will acuse me of being anti-hungarian as i am a Slovak, but thats not true. I have nothing against modern Hungarians, actually my gf is partly of hungarian descent. But since the middle ages till the XX. century the non-hungarian parts of hungarian monarchy - such as Slovakia or Romania - was under heavy magyarization/hungarization, people were forced to speak and learn hungarian so the power of tolerance is mosty inaccurate. Again i am friends with hungarians today, but during the Hungarian monarchy its politics with the minorities were quite represive.
3. Russian city names - i would be able to extend the russian names to various prominent cities of historical europe, which were never under russian rule, however russians have their own names for them. As an example - Constantinople should become Carigrad/Tsarigrad after conquest by russia. Its an old russian name for the city, or maybe old slavic as it is still used in some proverbs even in my country.
4. Bulgaria - i dont remember exactly but i know the word khan and khanate is used with bulgaria in this mod, im not sure if they had a khanate sometimes in the history, but they definitely hed tsars for the most of history, so its not good to refer to bulghars as khanate - which would relate them to mongols or others steppe nations.

As I said I didnt even start playing so I may have more comments in the future, comments from the point of view of a slovak, central-eastern european, a slav, a russian history student. But if my comments are too late to incorporated in the game or are not very appreciated, just tell me and i will stop disturbing with such long comments

Somebody had proposed Yuri as the Kiev's leader and had put it in the wiki. I just copied the name without researching it. Changing the name of the leader is easy, as long as we don't have to change some custom graphics.

The Hungarian UP refers more to religious tolerance than to ethnic one. And then even that is only relative compared to other nations in the Europe at that time. It is up for debate with everything else in the mod.

We just had the Tsarigrad discussion on one of the other threads. The odds of Russia actually making it to Constantinople are so slim that it makes little difference.

In pre-Christian Bulgaria the title of the ruler was Khan, therefore the name should be Bulgarian Khanate. Tsars were all Christians (except one Muslim one that hardly counts). The dynamic civ name changed have not been implemented yet, eventually nations would changed the official name depending on the civics and religion that they choose.

 

[pan-slavist]

Yaroslav the Wise(if you want to have it in english) would be a much better choice as he is recongnised as the best ruler of kievan rus widely.
For the Constantinople issue acually I conquered it playing as russia in RFC, thats why I realised the possibility of it turning to Carigrad. But i guess it wont be so easy in Rhyes of Europe.
As for the Hungarian UP at least call it something else - Power of multiculturalism for example. to represent that it was a multinational kingdom, without saying it was so tolerant to minorities which it wasnt.
As for Bulgaria - the thing is that the UP is called Power of the Khan - and that doesnt change with the religion changes. and for the time period of rhyes of europe, bulgaria was christian at least for most of it, so tsar is definitely more acurate than khan. you can call it power of domination or st like that, but not power of khan.
I ve read somewhere that the russian city names needs a lot of work, if thats still true just tell me how and i can help to make it historically acurate, i can also try for the hungarian, bulgarian, polish and so. another thing - have you considered adding transylvanian civ to represent romania? if there is place in there on the map.

 

[jessiecat]

@panslavist. I think that micbic is already dealing with the city names. A better job for you might be helping compile the Great People lists esp. for Russia, Poland, Hungary etc. See the wonders thread for details. Same goes for anyone else interested with helping with that.

 

[Andrrew]

Yaroslav the Wise(if you want to have it in english) would be a much better choice as he is recongnised as the best ruler of kievan rus widely.
For the Constantinople issue acually I conquered it playing as russia in RFC, thats why I realised the possibility of it turning to Carigrad. But i guess it wont be so easy in Rhyes of Europe.
As for the Hungarian UP at least call it something else - Power of multiculturalism for example. to represent that it was a multinational kingdom, without saying it was so tolerant to minorities which it wasnt.
As for Bulgaria - the thing is that the UP is called Power of the Khan - and that doesnt change with the religion changes. and for the time period of rhyes of europe, bulgaria was christian at least for most of it, so tsar is definitely more acurate than khan. you can call it power of domination or st like that, but not power of khan.
I ve read somewhere that the russian city names needs a lot of work, if thats still true just tell me how and i can help to make it historically acurate, i can also try for the hungarian, bulgarian, polish and so. another thing - have you considered adding transylvanian civ to represent romania? if there is place in there on the map.

I agree with you in the Yaroslav I the Wise issue, but not in the hungarian thing. The mod takes place beetween 500-1800, and the Hungarians' anti-minority policy only started in the era of nationalism ~1848. From 900-1800, no ethnic, nationality, religion or other wars were fought beetween the various dependents of the King. I sent you a PM with furter explanation. I don't want to be off topic any further.

As for my playtesting experiences:
1. Hungarian UHV is not quite easy, but definately doable for a medium-experienced player. Done it at first try. (with several reloads, BTW) The only hard condition is the first one (Control the most territory in Europe in 1500.
2. Norse UHV is far too easy. I won in 1200, with 10 cities, first in science, food, population, GNP, second in land area, production and score. Capturing indie and barb cities, and killing off the english was really really easy for me. The norse situation should be hardened.

Suggestions:
-Ottomans are way too weak to play their historical role. Something should be done with them.
-The tech rate is generally too fast, IMHO. Everybody's tech rate should be slowed down by 8-9%.
-The units' hammer costs are becoming really really low as we progress in time. With the farm's +1 Production bonus with Serfdom, and mine's implicit +1 prod. bonus of not autocutting the forest if built, every city gets a huge production bonus. You're worst cities will make 20-30 prod. in 1200 if properly placed. With Hungary, I was able to build like 100 knights, without becoming obsolete, and beaten Kiev, Bulgaria, Germany a little, and even Russia. (to be 1st in land area)
Every unit's cost should be rised by at least ~15%.

 

[pan-slavist]

Actually you are right, i didnt realize this mod ends so soon. The anti-minority policy really started after 1800s. Havent you considered extending the mod till 1900? I am now working on the russian GP list and i realized most of their greatest people were born after 1800. I was considering putting pushkin on the list but then I found out he was born 1799, so a 1 year old Alexander Sergejevic wont be a good choice. I would also really like to put Rasputin as Great prophet beu he was also born after 1800. hmmmm...

But I think Yaroslav the Wise is a consensus so it should be changed.

 

[Hitti-Litti]

Havent you considered extending the mod till 1900?

I think they don't want to include the effects of industrialism in RFCE, would make things more complicated, I think they'll focus on getting the mod as playable as possible before extending the timeline.

 

[merijn_v1]

I think Andrrew is right on the tech-rate. It's way too fast. I'm playing the English right now and Protestantism is doscovered before 1270 (or something like that) And in my last game (the Turks) almost everybody had almost completed the tech-tree.

 

[jessiecat]

Personally, I wouldn't want it to extend any further than the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution (1780s?). as it marks a clear watershed in European development. There's been talk of a post-1800 mod/mod but not before this one's nearly finished.
I agree about the tech rate. It should be really hard on Monarch to finish the tech tree before the end of the game. That will have to be altered as will some of the UHV conditions. Its far too easy ATM to win a UHV with most civs before 1600. That's why play-testing is so important. Once we see how its unbalanced then it can be changed for the beta version.

 

[merijn_v1]

I also think the MOD should be end around 1800 AD. The loading time for the late countries is already so long and then we will have to implent a few more civs I think. And I don't want to wait that long. (And my computer will crash if it's will be so long)