RFC Europe playtesting feedback thread

[jessiecat]

I've just been looking at the research-generating religious buildings for each religion in our mod. The Catholics and Orthodox have six, three of them boosting beaker production by 25%+ 10% +25%. The Muslim civs have just five, only one of which, the Madrassah, boosting it by 25%. So instead of reflecting the historical tech advantage of Arabia and Cordoba in this mod we have been actually penalizing them from the start.
I propose leaving the generic tech rates as they are but adding the "Bayt" or House of Wisdom" that boosts research by 50%, is available on building a Mosque and Minaret but is obsoleted by the University. That might help in repairing the obvious early tech disadvantage for the Muslim civs in our mod.

 

[jessiecat]

A couple of quick questions.

I've started work on the tech quotations but I can't find the correct folder so I can edit them. Do you want me to edit them or do I post them to you and you change them yourself?
Also, which folder contains the tech rates and modifiers? Thanks.

 

[3Miro]

A couple of quick questions.

I've started work on the tech quotations but I can't find the correct folder so I can edit them. Do you want me to edit them or do I post them to you and you change them yourself?
Also, which folder contains the tech rates and modifiers? Thanks.

There are no quotations right now. To put them in, you need to go to either Assets\XML\Text\CIV4GameTextInfos_RFCE.xml, which contains the text keys for all the techs (names and such) and add new text keys to it corresponding to the tech quote, or make a new file (just follow one of the old text key files as template). In general we should also make sure to have quotes from "our" nations in the chronologically appropriate setting.

Tech rate Modifiers are in Assets\Python\RFCEBalance.py, you can see things in it like:
gc.setProductionModifiers(iByzantium, 300, 200, 200, 600 )
There are explanations on what gc.setProductionModifiers(...) does, the modifiers are: Unit construction rate, Building construction rate, Wonders construction rate and finally research. Higher numbers mean slower research.

You can scroll further down the file and see more info on the individual modifiers.

 

[jessiecat]

There are no quotations right now. To put them in, you need to go to either Assets\XML\Text\CIV4GameTextInfos_RFCE.xml, which contains the text keys for all the techs (names and such) and add new text keys to it corresponding to the tech quote, or make a new file (just follow one of the old text key files as template). In general we should also make sure to have quotes from "our" nations in the chronologically appropriate setting.

Sorry. I think you've misunderstood me. Most of our techs already have quotations from RFC and BTS.(see screenshots). They must appear somewhere in the code. If I find where they are I can edit them myself.
EDIT I just checked the folder you suggested and there's no quotations in it. It must be in another folder.

 

[sedna17]

Assets/XML/Technologies/CIV4TechInfos.xml is the file that describes techs. Each one of these techs has a line like

<Quote>TXT_KEY_TECH_CALENDAR_QUOTE</Quote>

This refers to a quote defined in some other XML file. Right now, all the tech quotes point to definitions which are NOT included in the mod because they are defined in basic Civ4.

What you should do is change the above variable names to something different. For instance, if you want to change the quote for Calendar (I'm not sure you need to change this one, it's just an example) change the above quoted line to

<Quote>TXT_KEY_TECH_EU_CALENDAR_QUOTE</Quote>

Then, you need to define this new variable. I've attached an XML file with all the current quotes. Put in the new TXT_KEY_TECH_EU's into the <Tags> and change the quotes follow them as in this example. This file should go in Assets/XML/Text/. Try changing a few and loading the mod to see the result.

Let me know if you need any more direction. We'll make a modder out of you yet!

 

[jessiecat]

Unfortunately it doesn't have any line like the first one saying QUOTE. There are others saying "description", Civilopedia etc. Can I change "description" to "Quote"? And the XML file only lists quotes for BTS techs. We changed some of them to RFC techs. But I can work it out from that I think.

EDIT. Found the right line. Never mind.

 

[Jet]

I tried a few games with the March 14th version. It's good to see the mod coming along, thanks and keep it up.

Notes:

Spoiler :

One general thing is that the Reference folder is awesome. Thanks.

Game 1. Norse - played a little while, tons of barbs to the south, but otherwise seemed OK. Didn't understand dense forest resources, gave up and edited map.
Game 2. Cordoba (Emperor) - fun/balanced start, but fell too far behind, impossible to keep up in tech. Too hard? Gave up.
Game 3. Venice - was solidly ahead in tech. Generally it was too easy. Is there a special rule blocking me from attacking Rome? Got bored, gave up.
Game 4. England (Emperor) -
* The Welsh are too wimpy. Maybe you should add some Guerilla Archers. Then at least they would be harder to pick off.
* The Scots and Irish are too wimpy too.
* Speaking of wimpy independents, in a couple of games I've noticed that Spain gets and holds southern France. And not southern Spain. That's fine if it happens sometimes but I think it may be happening too consistently now.
* The only good cities in England (besides London and York) are Chester and Bristol. It might be interesting to edit the map so that the best city locations are also the best spots for historically large cities.
* With this scale of map, it seems like you might as well go back to 3-tile city spacing like in the unmodded game, unless you change the game mechanics so that spamming dense cities is strategically viable.
* Speaking of cities - I forget if I read this in the development notes, but if you have a research penalty for large empires, I suggest you remove it and change the mathematical function for city maintenance instead. I think it was a design flaw for Rhye not to have done that in the first place. (To be fair, I never saw an explanation from him for why he did it.)
* City maintenance in this England game was very low anyway, low enough to be a non-factor. I built almost every building but never bothered with Manor Houses.
* Forest improvements are interesting. Forest mines are kind of powerful.
* The tile governor AI is messed up and will work coast and immature cottages in favor of mature cottages
* when France collapsed around 1360, independent A??? and Paris were left with one Archer each, so I razed both on the same turn to relieve cultural pressure and deny them to any other player. (Since it was Emperor and I was unfamiliar, I didn't want to risk controlling cities inside the Frankish spawn area.) I guess that's something only a human would do, but it didn't quite seem right that I should have been able to do it so easily.
* English Longbows - meh advantage over regular Longbows. I'd rather that they cost the same and not lose the bonuses that regular Longbows get. They're supposed to be elite anyway.
* Windmills look great but it's a little funny to see them spammed early. How about a different early hill improvement, a pasture or something. Or just farms.
* Only saw one plague, in 1446 and not lasting long. Not strong or frequent enough.
* I couldn't tell what crusades are supposed to do. How about adding an entry in RFC Concepts in the pedia.
* The reformation wasn't very interesting. And I didn't see much reason to adopt Protestantism. Maybe you can build Catholic buildings, then switch and also build Protestant ones? But maybe Protestantism could do something different mechanically. Like if there were apostolic palace resolutions, adopting it would get you out of that. I would like to see the reformation have some kind of interesting strategic impact.
* Playing England got pretty boring. There weren't many wars going on and those that were weren't consequential, so I had no reason to join in. I could build every building. Maybe all turtling civ games are going to be boring like that... I don't know.

Units -
* Horse Archers - I think they were nearly absent from Western Europe. The skills were not developed. I would restrict Horse Archers to eastern barbs, eastern civs, and Cordoba. And give them a bonus against melee units.
* in general the units felt like they should be streamlined. Too many units that are too similar to each other, with rock-scissor-paper bonuses that are too small, and unit classes that aren't clearly distinct in a satisfying game design way.
* Mounted Infantry, Foot Knight - Something about these units doesn't quite feel right. The Mounted Infantry feels like it doesn't account for the expense of maintaining horses, and it makes you wonder why you can't add horses to other infantry units.
* I'm not sure but just looking at it on paper, you might need to make the later units stronger. Time-restricted mods often have the problem that late units are not sufficiently stronger than early units. The choice between research and production ends up not being balanced. It ends up that you only need to research some intermediate unit and spam it.

Bored with the England game, I switched to Sweden and saw a couple bugs one turn after switching:
1. Norway declared but Norse units stayed next to Vasteras rather than getting kicked out. Is that a bug? Seemed like it.
2. I met Burgundy. He was Protestant. I figured I was Sweden so maybe I would switch to Protetantism (although like with England, I wasn't sure why I should). So I tried to give him a first contact gift. I selected 40 in the diplo screen and clicked OK, but it didn't appear as a gift. There appeared to be no way to give him , at least in that dialog box.

 

[Wessel V1]

* The Welsh are too wimpy. Maybe you should add some Guerilla Archers. Then at least they would be harder to pick off.
* The Scots and Irish are too wimpy too.
* Speaking of wimpy independents, in a couple of games I've noticed that Spain gets and holds southern France. And not southern Spain. That's fine if it happens sometimes but I think it may be happening too consistently now.
* The only good cities in England (besides London and York) are Chester and Bristol. It might be interesting to edit the map so that the best city locations are also the best spots for historically large cities.
* With this scale of map, it seems like you might as well go back to 3-tile city spacing like in the unmodded game, unless you change the game mechanics so that spamming dense cities is strategically viable.
* Speaking of cities - I forget if I read this in the development notes, but if you have a research penalty for large empires, I suggest you remove it and change the mathematical function for city maintenance instead. I think it was a design flaw for Rhye not to have done that in the first place. (To be fair, I never saw an explanation from him for why he did it.)
* City maintenance in this England game was very low anyway, low enough to be a non-factor. I built almost every building but never bothered with Manor Houses.
* Forest improvements are interesting. Forest mines are kind of powerful.
* Playing England got pretty boring. There weren't many wars going on and those that were weren't consequential, so I had no reason to join in. I could build every building. Maybe all turtling civ games are going to be boring like that... I don't know.

I agree with all of them except 3 and 6. Scotland has some interesting city spots (Edingburgh, Inverness was with the previous patches also nice, I don't know if the new patch has made much difference), and all the resources in Wales and Western England can be covered by 2 cities. I partially disagree with 6, because it does make a difference with corporations. About 8: I don't know how to respond to that but I tend to agree. The progress in years is quite slow (it takes some time to play an entire century) compared to RFC. Especially with civs that have to last very long (France, Arabia) the game can become a little straightforward at a point.

I'm sorry that I haven't been able to report new things, I haven't been playing Civ for some weeks now. Probably I'll restart sooner or later next month. Good luck guys!

 

[merijn_v1]

The Art of the Catholic thing is to big. Just look the picture.

 

[merijn_v1]

I'm playing Poland now and I noticed the golden age doens't start after the second goal. (I don't have a savegame if you gonna ask that, sorry)

(edit) A little later the game crashed, (not a bug I think) so I had to reload it and now I do have a savegame.

 

[merijn_v1]

Forget what I've said the last post. Its works fine.

 

[phil20]

hi - i played the rfc mod for a long time, so i found this forum and am really interested in the rfc europe mod. i installed and tried to play, but the game crashed. so i updated bts in the hope that it will work. but now i can only choose portugal and there are a lot of bugs, for example there is no text - units, buttons, technologies, countries and menus - only empty space. are there some files missing, or cant i play because of my german version of bts? thank you for help, sorry for bad english.

p.s. maybe someone already posted this problem, but i was unable to find.

EDIT:

works now!! changed language to english

 

[belamoor]

I ve just had an interesting Bulgar game. After conquaring byzanties cities with my starting Konniks i moved west killing off venetians, genoans, 3-4 indy city along the way and managed to collapse franks by destroying 2 of their cities (i felt like european Chingis Khan lol). The hard part was keeping byzantines cities. Before 1360 they declined independance for 3 times (!!) (i gave up the game after 3 time). I know that without this i would be unstopable and undefeatable but byzantines bloody strugle for independence just feels strange, in contrast my Genoan and Venetian cities never declined at all.

Here is a screenshot before the fall (Turks get Constantinople, Barbs easily destroy Preslav due to plague, austrians suddenly attack Venetia and few turns later byzantines decline independence agane ... epic fail yeah?)
http://img27.imageshack.us/img27/4133/85391023.png

 

[merijn_v1]

IMO the Cordoban UB is a little to weak. I think we should upgrade the +5% to +10%.

 

[jessiecat]

I agree. ( 10% or even 20% IMO). Since we boosted Spain's resources so much, Cordoba has a big disadvantage as far as production.
And as I pointed out earlier (post 1001), Cordoba has a big research disadvantage too, as it has only one beaker-producing building (The madrassah +25%) to Spain's 3 religious buildings.(+25%+25%+10%). This happened when we dropped the library, which had originally given the Arabs and the Cordobans an early research boost. While the Christian civs got 2 extra buildings giving +35% beakers, The Muslim civs got nothing at all to replace the library.
I have suggested another building, the "Bayt" or "House of Wisdom" for both Muslim civs. with a 50% increase in beakers which could help redress this imbalance. The Muslim civs should be tech leaders in the early game, not falling behind from the start as quickly as they do now.

 

[merijn_v1]

I agree. ( 10% or even 20% IMO).

I think 20% is a little to much. In the early turns its good, but when you play longer (and you have to because of the UHV) its too strong IMO. So 10% or maybe 15% is enough.

 

[Jet]

If you want it strong early and not later you could give it a flat bonus like 1.

 

[sedna17]

A fine idea Jet. I also wanted to solicit a few more thoughts from you re:Units, since I thought your brief comments were quite on the mark.

* Horse Archers - I think they were nearly absent from Western Europe. The skills were not developed. I would restrict Horse Archers to eastern barbs, eastern civs, and Cordoba. And give them a bonus against melee units.
* in general the units felt like they should be streamlined. Too many units that are too similar to each other, with rock-scissor-paper bonuses that are too small, and unit classes that aren't clearly distinct in a satisfying game design way.
* Mounted Infantry, Foot Knight - Something about these units doesn't quite feel right. The Mounted Infantry feels like it doesn't account for the expense of maintaining horses, and it makes you wonder why you can't add horses to other infantry units.
* I'm not sure but just looking at it on paper, you might need to make the later units stronger. Time-restricted mods often have the problem that late units are not sufficiently stronger than early units. The choice between research and production ends up not being balanced. It ends up that you only need to research some intermediate unit and spam it.

I agree that Horse Archers are a bit awkward as they are -- there will be changes in this regard. Mounted Infantry are also an odd unit. Thanks to that description of why they are odd I will definitely re-examine their role.

Points 2 & 4 are probably related. It was important to us to have relatively small gradations between units, rather than dramatic jumps. This, we felt, reflected the historical period of our mod, where the development of military technologies really didn't obsolete pre-existing ones (things change a bit with the introduction of gunpowder, but we have a lot less tests from late game for obvious reasons). Your point is well taken though -- research needs to remain important.

I feel that medieval warfare in base Civ is not that exciting, which is why I tried to mix things up a bit. The broadest paper-rock-scissors design (at least in my head) is:

Horse > Infantry > Polearms > Horse

With the added twist that unit costs go like:

Horse > Infantry > Polearm

So that polearms are at least the cost-effective counter to horse. The nature of combat in Civ (1. Strongest defender fights and 2. City attack is so important) makes hard-counters very tricky to get right in my opinion. But it is very satisfying in-game to have predicted the enemy attack units and built the right response.

There's basically another layer of rps tucked away, which is:

Armor Piercing > Armored > Non-armored > Armor Piercing

where any unit could be Horse or Infantry (although a lot of the Armor Piercing units are archers). Interleaving these two trees effectively is difficult to get right.

Do you have any further thoughts? Would you care to try re-plotting a portion of the unit tree (at least on paper)?

 

[FuzzyRabbitLord]

Just played as Austria

(Edit) the last version (the one before the march 22nd version) was used

A few things that came up.
upon start of the game Spain had a hug tech lead and had built all of the wonders available for some time. (this was extremely annoying, mainly because its fun to try to go for a wonder as well as it took me until the 1500's to even cut spains lead down to where we were close.)

UHV were extremely easy. Plague hit Hungary right at the time of the barbarian invasion and I let the barbs collapse Hungary then I took all of it (Carpathian basin complete). I then became technically the most powerful (spain had a score lead due to wonders) due to my power Venice, Genoa and Germany all asked to be my vassal soon after (2nd UHV 3 vassels) and then thereafter anyone would be willing to sign a military pact with me (3rd UHV). I think the arrival of plaque and barbarians made getting the carpathian basin way to easy, from there I was able to quickly dominate.

I founded protestantism.

rome called for a crusade of ellepo? in south western turkey, and genoa took financial control of it (could someone explain what this is)

in the end I controlled All of the Carpathian basin, Eastern Germany, southern Germany, Constantinople, some of the Dalmatian coast, and my vassals controlled the rest of the balkans, western turkey, northern Italy, and western Germany

 

[Verily]

rome called for a crusade of ellepo? in south western turkey, and genoa took financial control of it (could someone explain what this is)

Fourth Crusade. Venice or Genoa will sometimes take control of a crusade through bribery and turn the Crusaders against the Byzantines instead of the Arabs.