RFC Europe playtesting feedback thread

[3Miro]

Just as in RFC, research cost increases with the size of the Empire. That allows historically small nations to keep up scientifically with the big ones. So too many cities = very slow research. France is hardly supposed to keep northern Spain and Arabia, so you have to play a price for it (with the French UP, making an enormous empire is easy stability wise).

Turkey and Protestantism need more work.

For the characters: sedna uses Mac and I use Linux and everyone else uses Windows AFAIK. Linux in general has more problems with the fonts than Windows, however, I have not noticed the rendering of the special city names. I had some trouble with that initially, but now mimbic and sedna are the ones doing the city names. The problem might also be with a specific font not being installed on your machine, I honestly don't know.

 

[sk8er AG]

For Religion: Keep seeing islam sprouting up in random places, played as Kiev and 3 of my 5 cities had Islam spread to them at some point before the Turks even appeared, have seen this before happen to Hungary and the Norse seem to go islam on occasion too.

Plus Turks and Arabs seem to have a tendency to go with Orthodoxy. I think for the Arabs at least should be forced to be Islamic. For the Turks i think it depends, were the Turks following Islam before they arrived in the Anatolian peninsula? I would think so do to Arab conquests, however am not sure.

For Protestantism see it become founded in Venice a lot, where it usually doesn't spread much. When i played as Venice i made sure not to found it to see what would happen. It ended up being founded in Nantes and spread throughout North Western France, Into the Netherlands and Into England as Well. England and the Netherlands made it there state religion and prosecuted most catholic cities in addition. I think the requirement for founding Protestantism should be altered to increase the chances of it appearing in a larger land power.

For Austria: I think Prague should go to Austria on the outset and maybe get rid of Augsburg and put an inde city in Slovenia or Slovakia which would go to Austria as well. Plus up their troops received at spawning. This way Austria has a power base to take on a weak Hungria or any venetian cities in the Balkans

 

[FuzzyRabbitLord]

In that case I think that the civilopedia should say that maybe something such as vienna (wein) for the ottomon historical goal

 

[FuzzyRabbitLord]

Just as in RFC, research cost increases with the size of the Empire. That allows historically small nations to keep up scientifically with the big ones. So too many cities = very slow research. France is hardly supposed to keep northern Spain and Arabia, so you have to play a price for it (with the French UP, making an enormous empire is easy stability wise).

I get that I just feel that the large empire should stay competitive, I mean I had maxed out research in everyway possible and I was being grossly out-teched, I could see if the smaller countries where researching at the same speed, or maybe a little faster but getting a tech 5 times faster just seems to put the big civs out of the tech race

 

[sedna17]

For Religion: Keep seeing islam sprouting up in random places, played as Kiev and 3 of my 5 cities had Islam spread to them at some point before the Turks even appeared, have seen this before happen to Hungary and the Norse seem to go islam on occasion too.

Plus Turks and Arabs seem to have a tendency to go with Orthodoxy. I think for the Arabs at least should be forced to be Islamic. For the Turks i think it depends, were the Turks following Islam before they arrived in the Anatolian peninsula? I would think so do to Arab conquests, however am not sure.

For Protestantism see it become founded in Venice a lot, where it usually doesn't spread much. When i played as Venice i made sure not to found it to see what would happen. It ended up being founded in Nantes and spread throughout North Western France, Into the Netherlands and Into England as Well. England and the Netherlands made it there state religion and prosecuted most catholic cities in addition. I think the requirement for founding Protestantism should be altered to increase the chances of it appearing in a larger land power.

For Austria: I think Prague should go to Austria on the outset and maybe get rid of Augsburg and put an inde city in Slovenia or Slovakia which would go to Austria as well. Plus up their troops received at spawning. This way Austria has a power base to take on a weak Hungria or any venetian cities in the Balkans

What version are you playing? The Protestant Reformation now (as of a couple updates ago) routinely makes about half the catholic nations go Protestant. It actually doesn't matter much where it's founded.

The somewhat random spreading of religion should be fixed in the March 11 and later versions. I do still occasionally see the Arabs or Ottomans go Orthodox, but not commonly.

Finally, in the latest version (March 14), I put Prague back inside the Austrian spawn zone. I remain open to seeing if Austria needs more help.

 

[sedna17]

According to the most recent changelog, Lumbermills should still be buildable on Dense Forest. But they're not. (If this was intended, Lumber should be moved off of Dense Forests, such as near Milan.)

Yeah, sorry, I got lost in the forest of booleans in the XML. I will fix it. The intent is to have lumbermills be pretty much the only thing allowed in dense forests.

 

[3Miro]

I get that I just feel that the large empire should stay competitive, I mean I had maxed out research in everyway possible and I was being grossly out-teched, I could see if the smaller countries where researching at the same speed, or maybe a little faster but getting a tech 5 times faster just seems to put the big civs out of the tech race

Are in a test version of the mod. For example Venice is in general is scientifically overpowered. We would fix that eventually, but it takes time and we do things one step at a time.

Have you played RFC? This mod derives from it and has many of the game dynamics in it. If you have not, I suggest that you play it. It is a great mod and unlike ours is in a complete form (we are not even in a beta yet).

By all means the empire that you had was HUGE. In RFC 8 cities and fewer do not incur a penalty, in our mod 12 cities are "penalty free". Then the penalty starts to increase. You controlled the territory of two superpowers, stability is currently decreased, but if you try to do that in RFC you would have collapsed long time before you manage such an empire. You can expand, but only within "reason". Some would say that this damages gameplay, others would say that it makes it better, it is a question of personal preference.

In the same manner, do some research about the city names. I found this to be a fun part of RFC, see something in the UHVs or city names and then research it and learn something new. There is also a reference folder in the RFCEurope folder that contains details (overall up to date) about the UHVs and such.

 

[3Miro]

What version are you playing? The Protestant Reformation now (as of a couple updates ago) routinely makes about half the catholic nations go Protestant. It actually doesn't matter much where it's founded.

The somewhat random spreading of religion should be fixed in the March 11 and later versions. I do still occasionally see the Arabs or Ottomans go Orthodox, but not commonly.

Finally, in the latest version (March 14), I put Prague back inside the Austrian spawn zone. I remain open to seeing if Austria needs more help.

Orthodoxy starts pre-spread in most of the Arab cities and that is causing some trouble. Note the religion spread array, one can tweak individual religion spread for individual civs. Because orthodoxy is pre-spread, this might not be enough to ensure Islamic Arabia. (pre March 11, religions would spread randomly indeed, so please make sure to update the version)

 

[Wessel V1]

Probably you have too many cities.

I think most people who start playtesting RFC aren't used to this feature, and other features as well. Maybe the first post should be edited, showing some things to watch out for. Someone who isn't used to the RFC rules needs some time to discover them and adapt them in their playing style, in my case some weeks. The full integration part has taken almost a year. In my opininion, this isn't bad at all if you want to play the game, but it might be a little slowing down the playtesting.

Major changes from Civ 4 (Vanilla)

- Research penalties for having more than X (10 IIRC) cities. Don't expand too much. If you have to, it's all right but try to switch to espionage. Some people in the main RFC forum can explain how to do this.
- More resources, so it sometimes could be better to found cities on resources.
- Plague lasts longer in unhealthy cities. Don't grow them too far beyond the limit. Also, make sure there are some cheap troops in all cities, they get killed first.
- At this point, don't worry too much about stability unless you play Burgundy.
- Spawn maps and dates can be found in the Reference folder. If you're not sure about something, it can be found there. Use it like a dictionary: any doubt has to be gone before making the decision
- I'm very sure there are more things, but I can't remember them. Probably it's too long ago, and I've never read any guides on civfanatics. Somebody could update the list if he wants to.
- Emperor isn't the same as in Vanilla BtS, it's a monster, designed to destroy the fools who were brave enough to try it. Monarch is the way to go.

EDIT: Haven't seen the new page. However, I think this is still approtiate.

 

[JediClemente]

Started a game as Sweden.

Looking at the WorldBuilder, Spain is now powerful enough to have taken most Iberia except Portugal (that's how it's supposed to be), but now they have A LOT of wonders (probably it can be programmed for them to be less interested in building them?).

And, the most interesting thing, they didn't conquer Toledo (remains independent!!). Can the AIWars map be set to guarantee they attack it as soon as they can? And Barcelona also.

 

[FuzzyRabbitLord]

I was running a version that was a week or so old in my recent posts so I apologize if some of the things I had said were already addressed.

In the new version I downloaded last night I keep getting a crash somewhere around 20 turns after Venice spawns, It always happens on the same date and for reasons unexplained to me. this has happened as I play with Venice (3 times same spot) as well as when I tried to start as Austria (game crashed while going through autoplay, around the time that it crashed when it crashed for me as Venice (I believe same exact time not sure though)

I dont think this is a ram or hardware problem, my computer is pretty fast though I have had crashes with rfce before. Is this a problem for anyone else?

 

[jessiecat]

Started a game as Sweden.

Looking at the WorldBuilder, Spain is now powerful enough to have taken most Iberia except Portugal (that's how it's supposed to be), but now they have A LOT of wonders (probably it can be programmed for them to be less interested in building them?).

And, the most interesting thing, they didn't conquer Toledo (remains independent!!). Can the AIWars map be set to guarantee they attack it as soon as they can? And Barcelona also.

I agree that Spain is much stronger now. I've just got the UHV Victory as Spain on Monarch again today. I controlled all of Iberia by 1350. In fact Spain is now far too easy. But there is no "how its supposed to be" as such in this mod. Its more alt-history than historical simulation. We want Cordoba to have just as much chance of victory as Spain or any of the other civs in this mod. I've seen the AI win a UHV Victory as Poland and as the Kievan Rus. Which is great! Ideally we'd like to achieve a level playing field for all the civs in this mod. Or at least make it possible for the player or the AI to triumph whoever they are. Hard to achieve that balance but we should at least try.

 

[3Miro]

I was running a version that was a week or so old in my recent posts so I apologize if some of the things I had said were already addressed.

In the new version I downloaded last night I keep getting a crash somewhere around 20 turns after Venice spawns, It always happens on the same date and for reasons unexplained to me. this has happened as I play with Venice (3 times same spot) as well as when I tried to start as Austria (game crashed while going through autoplay, around the time that it crashed when it crashed for me as Venice (I believe same exact time not sure though)

I dont think this is a ram or hardware problem, my computer is pretty fast though I have had crashes with rfce before. Is this a problem for anyone else?

Do you have a savegame couple of turns before the crash? Post it and I will try to fix it.

 

[FuzzyRabbitLord]

Hopefully you will be able to see the problem, I'm still wondering if its a system specific error though due to the fact that I've heard of no-one else reporting this.

 

[FuzzyRabbitLord]

the main problem I have with this mod is the German kingdom civ, I find it annoying that I constantly deal with a large nation encompassing western German often late into the game when in reality it was just a collection of independent states, of the German kingdoms none ever really branched out of there corner of Germany (excluding austria and later Prussia) and on that note those that did never really lasted long. the holy roman empire itself was also a joke in that it never showed solidarity in rare cases and excepting its rule under otto was merely a collection of states that had defensive pacts and and they weren't to good at keeping them at that.

I think that Germany should be relabeled as Prussia and not start until late game, or be replaced by a hamburg or something that could function as that regions Venice surrounded by strong independent states

I'm sure theres been a lot of thought already put into this so feel free to look into or ignore my suggestion

 

[sk8er AG]

sorry, where could i find latest verson?

 

[FuzzyRabbitLord]

go back to the main rfc mod page and click on rfce files then go down to the second post

***Crash happened again, this time I was playing as Bulgaria and it happened at around the same date if not the exact same
Error report sum:
AppName: civ4beyondsword.exe AppVer: 3.1.3.1 ModName: civ4beyondsword.exe
ModVer: 3.1.3.1 Offset: 0022c

File attached

 

[3Miro]

go back to the main rfc mod page and click on rfce files then go down to the second post

***Crash happened again, this time I was playing as Bulgaria and it happened at around the same date if not the exact same
Error report sum:
AppName: civ4beyondsword.exe AppVer: 3.1.3.1 ModName: civ4beyondsword.exe
ModVer: 3.1.3.1 Offset: 0022c

File attached

Crashed with me too and I am trying to figure it out. It cannot create the first Kievan archer, which makes no sense (and it is always Kiev). I am tired and I will probably call it the night and try again tomorrow.

 

[3Miro]

FuzzyRabbitLord, could you just make sure you are selecting RFC Europe and not RFC Europe_old. If the bug is still there, I will try again tomorrow.

 

[3Miro]

Sedna,

the bug that FuzzyRabbitLord reported is associated with the graphics. The game crashes when it tries to initialize the graphics for Kiev's first unit (Archer or otherwise). Could you check the XML, I don't know if you have made changes to it or not, but something might be off there. I tried to follow the bug, but I get stuck at a virtual function implemented outside the .dll.