RFC Europe playtesting feedback thread

[jessiecat]

Well, Valencia (or an extra settler) will make it back in at some point.

As for House of Wisdom. It seemed (from a couple test games) that the AI just avoided Education, and because it's not really required for any military techs they were able to do just fine and hold off the Spanish attack.

So the way I have it now, you can become quite technologically advanced as Cordoba, but only at the expense of your military. This still isn't resulting in Spain taking over Cordoba at all regularly, so...

Perhaps a better option would be to keep the obsolescence at Education, but make Education required for some key (defensive) military units.

Or maybe just stop trying so hard to make Spain take over Cordoba. As you have it now neither can get the upper hand very easily. Although I've done it once myself as Spain at the expense of other UHV goals. Which does make the other UHVs for both of them pretty pointless now, doesn't it?

 

[FuzzyRabbitLord]

Notes: I had huge tech lead throughout game finished the tech tree by 1630's

Poland actually won a UHV victory which was the first time I'd seen an AI due it, which was two bad because if the game lasted 4 more turns I would have won it.

Arabia was Huge
Cordoba stayed around
Kievan hungaria and bulgars were all collapsed or did collapse (hungary)
Moscow never expanded more than 4 cities

I had a huge score lead and dominated the med.
was able to take down and vassalize 5 of the countries in a six player alliance that tried to defeat me after 2nd UHV, with only 1 ally, that being the ottomans who mainly just distracted Arabia.

Some thoughts:
It was two easy to decimate the 6 player alliance.
I think you should code it so the barbarians don't raise all of the cities in Bulgaria / kiev because every game I play where I don't play as one of them they are both completely raised so there is no chance for them to come back.

Other thoughts. Genoa was very fun to play with and I didnt get bored late game like I normally do.

 

[FuzzyRabbitLord]

Im playing as sweden heres what its looking like at the start of my spawn.

Only Civ that Is missing is Genoa Bulgaria and Kiev are both still alive and very strong (first time i've seen this)

Portugal has been taken over by spain and resides only in one city (balojaz) I prob butchered the name there

Cordoba is still alive and strong in southern spain.

Major powers are spain england and poland (i can only report on the ones I have contact with, It looks like kiev and vienna are very strong tho

 

[Barak]

Strange hang up playing as Austria.

In turn 212 (1236AD), i get stuck in a perpetual "waiting for other civilizations" rotating globe situation. Was able to recreate it a few times. Kind of annoying actually.

 

[sedna17]

Thanks for the reports FuzzyRabbitLord

@Barak: I've had similar later hangs/crashes. If you can post an auto-save + zip of your log files (right after a crash) that will help give me more clues. I think it might be a problem with the collapse code.

 

[Barak]

Thanks for the reports FuzzyRabbitLord

@Barak: I've had similar later hangs/crashes. If you can post an auto-save + zip of your log files (right after a crash) that will help give me more clues. I think it might be a problem with the collapse code.

i never had an actual crash. Simply a perpetual hang. Unfortunatley, I no longer have the save, and since have updated to the March 30 test version (happened on March22)

 

[jessiecat]

Thanks for the reports FuzzyRabbitLord

@Barak: I've had similar later hangs/crashes. If you can post an auto-save + zip of your log files (right after a crash) that will help give me more clues. I think it might be a problem with the collapse code.

I've had that hanging thing a couple of times in the 1200's. Sorry I don't have the saves now.

 

[sedna17]

The problem is this hang-up is intermittent (I've run some test games safely through to 1700+), which makes it harder to isolate.

 

[Barak]

Yeah, i had played several successful test games with no trouble till that one.

In other news, playing now as Burgundy, it seems my research is severly hampered in relation to what the AI can do. Germany, Genoa, Poland is majorly out researching me.

 

[sedna17]

I've been looking at stability recently. I feel that (most) civs are too stable currently, but in order to understand the knobs on this code I'm ending up reworking some of it.

3Miro made some changes to make it more understandable, and I'm planning to go the rest of the way. Rhye (I believe) planned the mechanism to be somewhat obfuscated or hidden, but I think it's better to lay it out in the open. If you object to this philosophy, now is the time to make your case.

The current system breaks down stability into 13 factors, and displays them like (E | 3 | 1), where E = permanent numbers, 3 = modifiable numbers, 1 = temporary numbers.

The easiest example is civics:
Each turn of anarchy gives -3 to CivicsE, this accumulates for all time (unless a civs dies is is reborn)
Civics3 is simply how good your current civics "mesh" (i.e. Feudalism + Manorialism is good)
Civics1 is set to some large negative number during and shortly after a revolution

Anyway, when I'm done, your total stability number will ALWAYS be simply the sum of the 13 components, so you can see exactly what is dragging you down or holding you up.

 

[jessiecat]

I agree that the factors governing stability as in RFC have been too remote from the intervention of the human player. Often this inability of the player to affect conditions has made gameplay unwieldy and innacurate, esp. with the alt. history flavour we are trying to impose on outcomes in RFCE. Better to understand the player's necessary basic strategy choices in order to succeed in advance than depend on an unseen set of regulatory factors completely beyond the player's influence or control.

 

[Arkaeyn]

I'm unsure about the proper level of transparency in stability. I do think that in RFC, it's especially difficult for new players to understand how it's supposed to work, or more importantly, what to do when it's plummeting.

On the other hand, I admire the feeling of "the empire is collapsing and I'm not entirely sure why." It's fairly historically accurate. I wouldn't want the stability aspect of the game to be something that the player mechanically does - "I'm in a war so I build crossbows" versus "Economic stability is low because I don't have enough exports, so I go trading."

 

[ZachScape]

Do you think you will add DCM (Dale's Combat Mod) to the game before the Beta? I think it would really enhance game-play, wars, and make borders more dynamic.
And if you have already thought about adding it but wanted to wait till the mod is practically done, can you tell me why? I want to add it to Antiquity, along with other modcomps, and I wanted to know if you purposely don't add mods early on.

 

[jessiecat]

Do you think you will add DCM (Dale's Combat Mod) to the game before the Beta? I think it would really enhance game-play, wars, and make borders more dynamic.
And if you have already thought about adding it but wanted to wait till the mod is practically done, can you tell me why? I want to add it to Antiquity, along with other modcomps, and I wanted to know if you purposely don't add mods early on.

Maybe you should first explain what DCM is and what you think it might add to this mod. Then we would be able to make an informed decision. A link would help.

(And why is your last line in white?)

 

[Jaja]

This is working out quite well for you guys ain't it. =)
Mod runs well mostly and you've gotten way further than I thought.

Anyway, I played a few fun games as Moscow, Sweden and then Austria. There are of course a few problems of which you seem to be very aware. Things like the fact that civs don't seem to collapse ever, France fielding an army of over 40 knights easily and Poland being badly OP. I mean they are up there almost in the tech lead and it's really hard to touch them + they can actually do their UHVs as AIs. Guess you'll cover that eventually.
Swedens UHVs dont seem to work, the kievans always get wiped by the mongols and the AIs refuse to build colonial projects. These things have been mentioned I'm sure.

Anyway once you've balanced and polished this it'll be really great. Very neat.

 

[Barak]

The Bulgarian UHV still says Build 8 libraries, shouldn't that read scriptorium?

 

[sedna17]

@Zachscape and Jessiecat: Dale's Combat mod is here. I've not played with it myself, so I guess I just never really thought of adding it to the mod. It looks like a lot of it deals with modern warfare. Archer bombardment and combined stack arms might be nice to add, and some of the artillery bombardment stuff would be appropriate for late in the mod (siege weapons up through our Bombard should not be important factors in non-siege battles).

Our design goal was to stick to Rhye's and Fall mechanics where possible, to reduce the learning curve for new players coming from that mod. Of course we have to add a not of new features, and we are putting in some new mechanics, but I think at this time we have enough balance issues to address without attempting to add another layer of complexity. As a technical matter, I haven't looked at DCM to see if there would be any technical problems integrating it into the RFC dll.

@Jaja and Barak
Glad you're enjoying it so far. Yes, the Bulgarian UHV description needs to be changed.

 

[jessiecat]

@Zachscape and Jessiecat: Dale's Combat mod is here. I've not played with it myself, so I guess I just never really thought of adding it to the mod. It looks like a lot of it deals with modern warfare. Archer bombardment and combined stack arms might be nice to add, and some of the artillery bombardment stuff would be appropriate for late in the mod (siege weapons up through our Bombard should not be important factors in non-siege battles).

Our design goal was to stick to Rhye's and Fall mechanics where possible, to reduce the learning curve for new players coming from that mod. Of course we have to add a not of new features, and we are putting in some new mechanics, but I think at this time we have enough balance issues to address without attempting to add another layer of complexity. As a technical matter, I haven't looked at DCM to see if there would be any technical problems integrating it into the RFC dll.

I've had a quick look at its features and I agree that most of it is only really applicable to the post-1800 period. I like the archer bombardment and the opportunity fire though. The one thing its version of stack-attacking might be able to address though is one problem I find a lot in RFCE. When you're attacking a city with a mixed stack of knights, foot knights and guisarmes, for some reason the least appropriate unit, the guisarme seems to go in first and always get wiped out. With units of strength 13, 9 and 6 available, why should the AI choose the weakest one first? The same happens if you attack a knight in the field. There the arbelest attacks first instead of the guisarme which is the logical counter to mtd. units. I just doesn't make sense to me.

Edit: And just when I was thinking "some things are truly impossible", it happened. I've seen the AI as Poland win a couple of UHV victories, but considering how hard it is for the human player, I never thought I'd ever see this. The AI has just won a UHV victory on Monarch in 1500 as Burgundy!!!
If you don't believe me, here is the proof.

 

[ZachScape]

My favorite features in DCM are the battle terrains and cultural influence on the tile you defeat another unit or destroy an improvement. I think that wars would be more appealing if the human player could take land on it's border. So Germany could take Alsace-Lorraine (even though that happened in the late 1800s) without taking a city or have a higher culture than France, for example.
The battle terrains only raise the movement cost, but they are very fun. A huge smoke stack appears and dwindles away after several turns. If you zoom into the terrain, you hear the sound of metal clashing as well as shouting.
I play DCM in RevDCM, and I always turn off Archer Bombardment and Stack Attack. I don't see them too necessary.

The reason I put that line in white was because it was like a spoiler, and I was too lazy to go to advanced or type out spoiler. I thought it was necessary because it didn't have to do with RFCE, and this is a RFCE thread.

 

[sedna17]

@Zachscape: I think the cultural influence component (aka Influence Driven War) in RevDCM is separate from DCM. Again, I don't have much experience with IDW. It sounds like a good mechanism in general though.

@Jessiecat: I think I've noticed similar problems in the game choosing which attacker goes in when you use a big stack. I always just assumed maybe the addition of first-strikes and withdrawal odds was confusing ME about which the best attacker was. I'll have to investigate further.