RFC Europe playtesting feedback thread

[BurnEmDown]

3Miro, I think what Merijn meant was that it is good the AI builds colonies.
Operafantom, I don't think the AI knows about UHVs, perhaps it's a small bug with his settling judgments.

 

[merijn_v1]

The year in the Kiev UHV is wrong (it says 1300, but it is 1400). That would be fixed for the next version.

There is nothing wrong with Bulgaria or anyone else for that matter to found a colony. Colonial powers (England, Spain, Netherlands) simply have Atlantic access and hence can build colonies faster.

Is that also for the 2nd and 3rd UHV? I'm in 1420 or something and the 2nd UHV says in 1400.

I know their is nothing wrong. I just thought is was funny that they also have colonies, because they had none AFAIK.

 

[youtien]

Is that also for the 2nd and 3rd UHV? I'm in 1420 or something and the 2nd UHV says in 1400.

I know their is nothing wrong. I just thought is was funny that they also have colonies, because they had none AFAIK.

Kiev's 2nd UHV is in 1500. I easily won.

Get military tradition/professional army before Mongols come, get Teutonics Knight at all cost, you'll easily overcome Keshiks. Just build some workers to rework the grains.

 

[3Miro]

I just finished a Kievan game. Here are some notes:

- The early spread of Orthodoxy is not a problem if one quickly builds a city close to Bulgaria and OB with Bulgaria and Byzantium. Religion spreads trough the trade roads. I had the first Orthodox city 10 turns after spawn and all others within 10 turns of founding. I never build missionaries.

- Mongols are tough, but manageable. The Keshik starts with strength of 12, however, all Barbs start without any promotions. A Kievan Drijina with strength 11 and combat 1 promotion has slight advantage. A Drujina with both Barracks and Stables gets combat 2 and between 70 and 80% chance vs a Keshik. I even managed to get Knights with strength 13. I had total of 18 Knights + Drijinas and I lost maybe 9 of them (+4 workers). I never lost a city, however, it came close. If it was too easy I wouldn't have felt like fighting the Mongolian Horde.

- The rest was fairly easy. I was one of the leaders in techs and in score I only trailed the Arabs (Spain was close). I never build any wonders, so all my score from land and population.

The UHV timing has to be fixed, otherwise it all works fine.

Proposal:

- Lets increase the number of resources needed for the UHV from 8 to at least 10. 8 is far too easy.

 

[merijn_v1]

I just finished a Kievan game. Here are some notes:

- The early spread of Orthodoxy is not a problem if one quickly builds a city close to Bulgaria and OB with Bulgaria and Byzantium. Religion spreads trough the trade roads. I had the first Orthodox city 10 turns after spawn and all others within 10 turns of founding. I never build missionaries.

- Mongols are tough, but manageable. The Keshik starts with strength of 12, however, all Barbs start without any promotions. A Kievan Drijina with strength 11 and combat 1 promotion has slight advantage. A Drujina with both Barracks and Stables gets combat 2 and between 70 and 80% chance vs a Keshik. I even managed to get Knights with strength 13. I had total of 18 Knights + Drijinas and I lost maybe 9 of them (+4 workers). I never lost a city, however, it came close. If it was too easy I wouldn't have felt like fighting the Mongolian Horde.

- The rest was fairly easy. I was one of the leaders in techs and in score I only trailed the Arabs (Spain was close). I never build any wonders, so all my score from land and population.

The UHV timing has to be fixed, otherwise it all works fine.

Proposal:

- Lets increase the number of resources needed for the UHV from 8 to at least 10. 8 is far too easy.

I also just finished my Kievan game.

In my game Orthodoxism also came very early, and I also didn't have to build missionaries.

I didn't installed the Barb-Patch yet. So the Mongols were very easy.

I like the Idea of the 10 resources. I had 8 with farms and 2 without (in 1300) so it's doable if I built the farms.

 

[merijn_v1]

I started the Byzantians and they haven´t got pre-know area. IMO this should be good. (Sorry for the bad drawing)

 

[3Miro]

I started the Byzantians and they haven´t got pre-know area. IMO this should be good. (Sorry for the bad drawing)

Only the Normal area as defines in Const.py is visible. For most civs this area will have to be expanded.

It makes little difference for the Byzantines since they do not build settlers anyway.

 

[BurnEmDown]

Still, Byzantium should know about Italy and the Dalmatian coast, no?

 

[merijn_v1]

The reason I said it was to have Cyrene the bonussus of the resources, otherwise the will be unhealthy and unhappy. And it's why should they don't know their inland sea?

 

[jessiecat]

I also just finished my Kievan game.

In my game Orthodoxism also came very early, and I also didn't have to build missionaries.

I didn't installed the Barb-Patch yet. So the Mongols were very easy.

I like the Idea of the 10 resources. I had 8 with farms and 2 without (in 1300) so it's doable if I built the farms.

I agree that 10 would be better than 8 which will mean building more cities earlier to link up the grains. I've just completed all 3 UHVs in 1510 without getting the victory so the conditions must be 1400/1500/1600 instead of what it says in the description. 1300 might be fairly hard for 10 grains as the Mongols turn up about 1240 and trash every farm and they last past 1280. Would you be able to restore all 10 farms in time? I don't think so.
The other two can be completed by 1500 easily enough of course if you've built enough cities.

 

[3Miro]

I don't think farms are needed for the UHV. Jessiecat, if you have a save right before the grain UHV was acknowledged, load it, go to WB and erase the farms. See if it makes a difference.

 

[jessiecat]

I don't think farms are needed for the UHV. Jessiecat, if you have a save right before the grain UHV was acknowledged, load it, go to WB and erase the farms. See if it makes a difference.

I'm not sure about that. In my last game the grains didn't count in my total until I built a farm on them.
I checked that by toggling to show resources and they weren't counted until they had a farm..

 

[Feyaria]

I just played a game with Russia.

Starting position is the worst of all civs: 3 cities with pop 3 and 6 cities with pop 1, and only 3 workers, no improved tiles, too many units, will still loose money at 100% gold. Thats like byzantium, but byzanz has a tech advantage and a lot of time to build up, russia has neither. You are backwards about 10 to 15 techs to ALL other civs at this time. Moscow starts with knights and arbalests, but lacks the tech to build these units. At least Plate Armour should be known, maybe 1 or 2 techs more. Civic Service is desperatley needed for faster workers.

The start was realy a pain, building workers in size 1 cities is a work for a century (~20 turns). Religion spreads also very slow, and 1 got 1 katholic and 2 islamic cities before the first orthodox, although i had open borders with byzanz early on. Maybe Moscow should start with missionaries like most other civs.

1 UHV: dont loose city to barbarin by 1400.
Its a joke, the only barbarians i saw where the 2 crossbows guarding Riga. This UHV was for the earlier start, but in 1323 all Keshiks are already history.

2 UHV: most cultured slavic nation in 1600
Mongol invasion seems to be a lot weaker, Kiev was strong in both of my tries. (Aborted the first one because Kiev had founded the culture corp....) In the second try, Kiev had still 18k culture (10k from buildings + 2 Great Artists). I only got 4k building culture and also 2 Great Artist (~12k culture total). Kiev is too strong now, it was score leader in 1600.
Maybe with apprenticeship i could have gotten 1 or 2 more artists, but there is not enough time for 5 Great Artists.

3 UHV: 12 cities in 1650
With 9 cities at the start, its cheap. I had 12 cities in ~1550.

I never played Russia in previous versions, so i cant say how different it is to the earlier start, but it needs some changes, especialy the 1st UHV and the starting position.
It was still fun to come back from so far behind in tech, in 1600 the tech leaders were only 3 tech in front compared to the 15 techs at the start. I was at WFYABTA before i got to Renaissance.

 

[jessiecat]

1. I agree. I don't know why the flip zone is so big. It wasn't before. Having 6 cities flip to you at the start cripples your development and your science. This needs to be changed to 2 or 3 on the flip as it was before.
2. The lack of workable river tiles at the start makes building commerce very hard. The late start means it is virtually impossible to catch up with the culture lead enjoyed by Poland and Kiev. I think this UHV should be changed to some thing else.

 

[3Miro]

Do you have the patch installed? If the Mongols are peaceful, then Kiev will not fall to them.

The idea for Russia is the in the first several turns, they will "liberate" Kiev (which will be conquered by the Mongols). Early on, one should try to get Plate Armor, build workers all over the place and then Russia gets quite strong. (That is Kiev + Moscow).

For the religion, one should always seek early contact and develop trade network.

Having said that, I will increase the Russian city requirement to 15 and how about for the other UHV: Make sure there are no barbarian cities in Russia (that is Moscow + Kiev territory). The few weak barb cities on the edge of the map will not count.

 

[jessiecat]

Do you have the patch installed? If the Mongols are peaceful, then Kiev will not fall to them.

The idea for Russia is the in the first several turns, they will "liberate" Kiev (which will be conquered by the Mongols). Early on, one should try to get Plate Armor, build workers all over the place and then Russia gets quite strong. (That is Kiev + Moscow).

For the religion, one should always seek early contact and develop trade network.

Having said that, I will increase the Russian city requirement to 15 and how about for the other UHV: Make sure there are no barbarian cities in Russia (that is Moscow + Kiev territory). The few weak barb cities on the edge of the map will not count.

That still doesn't address the issue of starting with 9 cities, no infrastructure and few workable river tiles. Research becomes painfully slow as your money rapidly disappears. The only way I survived at all was to raze every barb and indy city as well as every worked tile. Just to get enough gold. Can we not return to a start with only a couple of flips? Then you have the option of capturing or razing the barb cities as you like.

 

[3Miro]

That still doesn't address the issue of starting with 9 cities, no infrastructure and few workable river tiles. Research becomes painfully slow as your money rapidly disappears. The only way I survived at all was to raze every barb and indy city as well as every worked tile. Just to get enough gold. Can we not return to a start with only a couple of flips? Then you have the option of capturing or razing the barb cities as you like.

I will try another Moscow game, having many cities shouldn't be so bad, after all that's why they have their UP. We may give them Plate Armor from the start so that they can chop immediately.

If you can hold for 20 to 40 turns (and loot from Mongolian Kiev should be enough), one can get workers in all cities and then chop + cottages gives a rather fast growth. I will try it again with a different start to see how it works.

The only thing that I cam afraid of is that the initial army is supposed to liberate Kiev and not necessarily to capture other indies in the region.

 

[3Miro]

Here is the problem. It is not the cities themselves, but the effect they have on the civic upkeep. Right now the Russian UP gives lower cost for number of cities and cities distance, I will update it to cover civic cost as well.

Also I will remove Kazan/Bulgar (those are actually different cities, it is a case of misaligned name map), and Samara from the spawn area.

For the new Russian UHV I propose to make it: ensure that there are no Barbarian (Mongolian) cities west of the Carpathians (basically Moscow and Kiev land) in 1481.

 

[jessiecat]

Here is the problem. It is not the cities themselves, but the effect they have on the civic upkeep. Right now the Russian UP gives lower cost for number of cities and cities distance, I will update it to cover civic cost as well.

Also I will remove Kazan/Bulgar (those are actually different cities, it is a case of misaligned name map), and Samara from the spawn area.

For the new Russian UHV I propose to make it: ensure that there are no Barbarian (Mongolian) cities west of the Carpathians (basically Moscow and Kiev land) in 1481.

I think you mean "East of the Carpathians"?:

 

[3Miro]

I think you mean "East of the Carpathians"?:

Cone on, west is more challenging. Now a good player is the one who controls that part

If you guys think EAST is a good idea I will go ahead and code it.