RFC Europe playtesting feedback thread

[jessiecat]

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.

I just looked at the saved game too and examined it in WB. Whatever version it is, it's definitely not the most recent one as none of the map changes have been implemented in it. I don't know if that helps at all.

 

[3Miro]

I just looked at the saved game too and examined it in WB. Whatever version it is, it's definitely not the most recent one as none of the map changes have been implemented in it. I don't know if that helps at all.

Other than the changes in the WB and possibly tech tree, we don't have a way to figure out which savegame comes from which version of the game. Thank for noting that jessiecat.

FuzzyRabbitLord, try starting the game from the file that says RFC Europe as opposed to RFC Europe_old (the new one worked for me and your savegames are showing crashes). If this does not help, completely erase the RFCEurope folder and then install the latest version. Start a new game (autoplay pass Kiev's spawn date).

Let me know if this doesn't help.

 

[FuzzyRabbitLord]

thank you.

I believe the old file was the problem, I was loading rfc off of a shortcut, and when the map changed it still went through the old map file so that when i brought the mod up that was the map that showed.

sorry for any inconvenience, in that case though the play testing I did both as Bulgaria and Venice has been completely fine up to this point

Kiev has been able to load and Ive played a few turns into it everything works fine again thank you.

 

[Jet]

In the March 14th version dense forest blocks some resources. I don't understand the reason to use dense forest instead of RFC tundra. But here's a version with regular forests on the resource tiles.

 

[jessiecat]

In the March 14th version dense forest blocks some resources. I don't understand the reason to use dense forest instead of RFC tundra. But here's a version with regular forests on the resource tiles.

I think dense forest should be unchoppable and usable for farms etc. but I thought it allowed mined resources and lumber mills with Replaceable Parts. We decided against the use of tundra as there are very few places far enough north on our map where tundra does occur in real life, except maybe in the Alps and Norway. The Northern Russian taiga forests are represented by dense forest and swampland, which is accurate I think.

 

[Jet]

I don't know. It's not documented.

 

[jessiecat]

Just tried a test game as Portugal for the first time. Got really lucky on the flip as Spain had already pre-built Braga, Coimbra, Huelva and Lagos. Very kind of them indeed. (see screenshot). Trouble is, I was at war with Cordoba from the start and had to defend 5 cities a bit thinly with all the troops I got from the flip. Once again, Toledo was still an indy. Why doesn't the AI try to capture it as either Spain or Cordoba? When I play as either, Toledo is always my first priority.
Anyway I managed to capture it then gave it to Spain which made Isabella very friendly, signing a defence agreement with me immediately. Got peace with Cordoba but it soon switched to espionage and bombarded my border cities with waves of spies, poisoning water, fomenting unrest etc. Very annoying and crippling to my research. Finally got round Cordoba's coastal waters and founded Casablanca. Everything gone quiet but still trying to catch up with Spain in techs well into the 1400s. Suddenly I get a crash in 1431. I try reloading the 1428 autosave several times but it crashes at the same point each time. I include the auto-save below for 3Miro to look at.

 

[jessiecat]

You've all heard of "spot the ball"? See if you can spot the difference between these two identical screenshots of my latest game as Genoa. The clue is AA.

In the 3rd. shot my intelligence reports on the AI's impressive Mediterranean fleet at Marseilles just before I captured it.

 

[3Miro]

Just tried a test game as Portugal for the first time. Got really lucky on the flip as Spain had already pre-built Braga, Coimbra, Huelva and Lagos. Very kind of them indeed. (see screenshot). Trouble is, I was at war with Cordoba from the start and had to defend 5 cities a bit thinly with all the troops I got from the flip. Once again, Toledo was still an indy. Why doesn't the AI try to capture it as either Spain or Cordoba? When I play as either, Toledo is always my first priority.
Anyway I managed to capture it then gave it to Spain which made Isabella very friendly, signing a defence agreement with me immediately. Got peace with Cordoba but it soon switched to espionage and bombarded my border cities with waves of spies, poisoning water, fomenting unrest etc. Very annoying and crippling to my research. Finally got round Cordoba's coastal waters and founded Casablanca. Everything gone quiet but still trying to catch up with Spain in techs well into the 1400s. Suddenly I get a crash in 1431. I try reloading the 1428 autosave several times but it crashes at the same point each time. I include the auto-save below for 3Miro to look at.

Either I am losing my mind or something very fishy is happening.

At first the thing was crashing whenever it was trying to update the Byzantine Espionage AI, I followed the bug until it was hitting a particular Turkish Arquebusier, but as I tried to make it spit out more information about it, the bug suddenly disappeared. Add code to give more information in one of the files = no bug, remove the code = return of the bug. That makes no sense, the write code should not change anything.

I decided to try and add extra error checking into the code (even thought there was no sign of error). Sure enough Byzantine Espionage cleared OK, but then the thing crashed on the death of Burgundy. WTH!!!!!

The bug might be due to the fact that there are asynchronous things in the game. Graphics and the stuff that is happening in Python and C++ are not sequential. The problem might be there, in which case I don't think I would be able to fix it. I will try more, but for now there is no fix.

If anyone else is experiencing anything like it, please let me know.

 

[JediClemente]

As it has been said, dense forests now don't allow anything on them (not mining, nor lumbermills).

And I saw a Spanish-founded city in Sicily. It seems their settlermap doesn't cover the island, as it was named Murcia...

 

[jessiecat]

As it has been said, dense forests now don't allow anything on them (not mining, nor lumbermills).

And I saw a Spanish-founded city in Sicily. It seems their settlermap doesn't cover the island, as it was named Murcia...

Interesting point. I thought you could work a mine in dense forest. About that Spanish city in Sicily. I don't think its on Spain's AI War map and definitely isn't on it's CityName map. I don't know why the AI would settle there. Maybe the indys settled it and the Spanish conquered it?

Did you get my little puzzle on the Genoa screenshot? Atlantic Access points are revealed with Ship Building but you can't use your workboat to develop it until you get Astronomy. Definitely a glitch in the code.

The other thing I noticed in that game is that Rome was conquered by indys (not supposed to happen) yet the Pope kept calling for a Crusade. Either he's operating from another city or this is a phantom Pope who doesn't need a city. Must be the Holy Ghost.

 

[3Miro]

Yep, I think the Pope's code is broken. I saw a bug that I fixed in the .dll. I will post a new .dll to be included in the next version.

 

[JediClemente]

Sicily and southern Italy are in Spain's settlermap, and that's accurate, but I think they haven't got names for those cities.

Atlantic access should only be revealed with Astronomy, that's quite logical.

 

[jessiecat]

Sicily and southern Italy are in Spain's settlermap, and that's accurate, but I think they haven't got names for those cities.

Atlantic access should only be revealed with Astronomy, that's quite logical.

Except that Sedna changed it to Ship Building but didn't enable the tile to be developed by a work boat until you reach Astronomy. That's not logical, is it?

 

[belamoor]

I play RFC europe for around a month now and im happy with it, but...
Well i've just finished playing as spain and i'm really dissapointed with new changes, it just didnt feel like any challange. With mercs, starting units and some barbs wich flipped to me i managed to get Cordoba (city) and Valencia while they were defended only with one or two archers. After that Cordoba wasn't much of an opponent. Portugal wasn't a problem too. I had one really cool production city as my capitol that i feared could try to flip (Porto) but it didn't (isn't Portugal named after Porto anyway ?), they had to settle south east of iberia some city - Beja so they had one of the slowest tech speed and were the last on the score screen. I captured Beja for atlantic access (btw why the hell spain doesnt have one ?!) after 15-20 turns or something like that, waited for good moment and it came as plague leaving Beja with guess what ? - 2 archers agane. So most of the time i devoted to improving cities and managed to get to the most advanced nation and build all the colonies and companies (giving that generally i'm not that good of a civ player)

Btw i never seen franks so agressive, they managed to conquare Germany (wich flipped back later though) Netherlands and Kiel. Mother Russian had Bulgaria and Kiev as vassals and was in the middle of score list, sometimes and the top (2-3 place) which is historicly accurate i guess just not very common giving previous versions.

Anyway i don't know what need to be done (besides that spain obviusly need an atlantic access, why cant they have one since they are one of the top colonising nation ?) but i never had any problems with stability, happiness, health, historical goal or getting to the top score. It felt too easy and boring.

 

[sedna17]

Except that Sedna changed it to Ship Building but didn't enable the tile to be developed by a work boat until you reach Astronomy. That's not logical, is it?

Honestly I made the change because the tech box for "Astronomy" got too full to display all the icons. However, there are several examples in vanilla Civ where a resource is revealed before it can be worked (Uranium and Oil). In addition, having some advanced warning about where these squares are seemed like it would be a good thing for new players. That way, they can plan a bit more in advance if they will need to take over another city in order to build their colonial empire.

 

[sedna17]

Anyway i don't know what need to be done (besides that spain obviusly need an atlantic access, why cant they have one since they are one of the top colonising nation ?) but i never had any problems with stability, happiness, health, historical goal or getting to the top score. It felt too easy and boring.

Thanks for the report. We are aware that the dynamics in Iberia need to be significantly improved. Yeah, that's pretty much all I have to say. We're working on it.

 

[jessiecat]

I agree that Spain is much too easy now and Cordoba much weaker. We need to restore the balance so that Cordoba has the early tech advantage and Spain has to work hard to catch up. As happened in history of course.
I don't agree that Spain needs Atlantic Access though. Historically it took them 500 years before they captured Cadiz and over 700 years before they started exploring. In our game, if they want Atlantic Access they have to conquer to get it. That is right.

 

[sedna17]

Okay, maybe I do have more to say.

3Miro suggested that an early Muslim building ("House of Wisdom" available with Arabic Knowledge?) which gave a big science boost but became obsolete in the high middle ages could be coupled with a generic tech disadvantage for Cordoba/Arabia and nicely reproduce the appropriate tech rates. This seems like a good plan.

The other important factor is Portugal. If we encourage Cordoba (as an AI) to settle in land that will flip to Portugal on spawn, that helps ensure that Portugal contributes (properly) to the re-conquest. It's a good dynamic to have Spain + Portugal destroy Cordoba, because that means neither individually must be too strong. I think Portugal is (still) a bit too weak on spawn.

 

[jessiecat]

Okay, maybe I do have more to say.

3Miro suggested that an early Muslim building ("House of Wisdom" available with Arabic Knowledge?) which gave a big science boost but became obsolete in the high middle ages could be coupled with a generic tech disadvantage for Cordoba/Arabia and nicely reproduce the appropriate tech rates. This seems like a good plan.

The other important factor is Portugal. If we encourage Cordoba (as an AI) to settle in land that will flip to Portugal on spawn, that helps ensure that Portugal contributes (properly) to the re-conquest. It's a good dynamic to have Spain + Portugal destroy Cordoba, because that means neither individually must be too strong. I think Portugal is (still) a bit too weak on spawn.

I think that's a good plan but we need to make sure the generic tech disadvantage doesn't just negate any research gain from the House of Wisdom. I'd leave the tech rate the same as the rest for now. Ideally both the Arabs and Cordoba should be the tech leaders up to about 1200 but be caught by some of the others after that. The House of Wisdom could be obsoleted by the University I think. What about that?

As for Portugal. In my experience, Spain likes to settle in the Portugese spawn area a lot. In my last game as Portugal I got 3 Spanish and 1 Cordoban city on the flip. But nobody wanted indy Toledo. That seems weird. I'll try Portugal again, but I think its pretty OK now.