RFC Europe playtesting feedback thread

[youtien]

I was wrong! My emperor French game is lost to Saladin!

I let Cordoba grow too strong, after they conquered Portugal they boosted all the way. I was using limited monarchy + free peasantry and didn't have time to choke them, then they grew too strong (longbowmen). Two plagues hurt me hardly, although Spain vassalized to me, they are too weak.

And when I compete with Corodba in both war and colonial progress, Arabia took all their North Africa and Saladin won a historical victory in 1540.

Next time I'll choke Cordoba, never let anyone in Iberia grow strong nor die. And I'll take one city in Africa, maybe Alger, and hold it steadily.

In the first crusade, Arab already had longbowmen, making them invicible. I think longbowman is overpowered. Once they appear, it become so hard in city conquering. Maybe this is purposed. I'll switch my strategy to maintain a pillaging party.

 

[sedna17]

Re: Sweden. I don't think you can connect island diagonally to allow both land and sea travel. Flipping a city in Finland might work to provoke continental involvement.

Re: Burgundy. Moving Burgundy's start date was just a tad more complicated due to its unique position (the first civ in all the arrays). There were a couple places in the code where this involved some special cases. I have a test version running now where they spawn in 840 (Treaty of Verdun, basically). Things seem to be working okay, and you can anticipate seeing this in the next version (or on the SVN shortly).

Re: Poland. I had forgotten about the starting move, thanks for reminding me. To clarify -- spawn at Poznan, and flip Krakow. Eliminate Wroclaw/Breslau as an indy city, or just move it 1S and put it outside the flip zone? I will change the Winged Hussars. I agree the UP makes no sense. Anyone have a suggested replacement?

Re: Byzantium. Arabia spawning does give a stability hit. Stability can be tricky with Byzantium, and probably we don't yet document it well, but players with a lot of experience dealing with RFC stability don't have too much problem. Was Iconium seceding (due to instability), or flipping due to culture?

Re: Spain espionage UHV. Thanks for the bug report. Someone reported it before, but we never tracked it down...

 

[Panopticon]

Re: Poland. UP should be something to do with religious tolerance, so they can deal with Orthodox and Jewish citizens, who they ought to have if the game develops historically.

 

[JediClemente]

Something must surely be done for Sweden. If the Norse have built cities there and they flip, they have a good starting position. But if not, just with two settlers and empty space they're a disgrace.

 

[embryodead]

Re: Sweden
I think Jusos meant joining Finland at the edge of the map, straight way. On a side note, I was experimenting with the DLL to make straits that are passable by both land and sea - it has to be a hack since pathfinding is hardcoded. It works, but has some weird side-effects, like land units being able to enter sea through the strait... I'll try again later, I really miss that "feature" from Civ2 that has been gone since then, being able to connect Scandinavia, Spain+Africa and Dardanelles would be great for war dynamics IMO. Anyone heard if it was done/attempted before?

Re: Poland.
Assuming it's in the Polish settler map and will be sometimes founded at least, I'd recommend eliminating Breslau, 1 indy city in Poland is enough.

Religious Tolerance is good idea for an UP, but Hungary already has it. I'll try to resurrect the UHV discussion later and come up with something.

 

[AOS9001]

Re: Byzantium. Arabia spawning does give a stability hit. Stability can be tricky with Byzantium, and probably we don't yet document it well, but players with a lot of experience dealing with RFC stability don't have too much problem. Was Iconium seceding (due to instability), or flipping due to culture?

Probably instability. But after I hit that unstable marker, it seems impossible to recover, every city I take just declares independence after it is secured. Rather annoying, but I guess that's what's supposed to happen.

 

[Jusos2108]

Probably instability. But after I hit that unstable marker, it seems impossible to recover, every city I take just declares independence after it is secured. Rather annoying, but I guess that's what's supposed to happen.

Playing with Byzantine is tricky, but it is possible to get your stability level back up again. Here are few hints.
-At the beginning, start building courthouses in every city, hurry with chopping, don't change civics yet, workers also harvest every possible resource. Meanwhile, rest of your troops in Egypt and Greece pillage towns and villages (for example NW from Greece) for income
-Research manor house tech ASAP
-When you've got it, start building manor house in every city that completes manor house faster than the current courthouse
-Make sure that Alexandria completes both ASAP (with micromanagement and mines), after completing those Alexandria makes two workboats
-Empty Tyre and Jerusalem (they build research), pillage every resource improvement around those cities and Damascus
-After manor house tech research the tech which allows you to build fishing nets
-After completing Courthouses and Manor houses cities build orthodox monasteries and churches; and after plague workers
-Plaugue will come soon, collect your troops to Antioch, Aleppo, Alexandria, Constantinople and Greece, empty rest of Anatolia. Whatch out for barbs in Greece.
-Also make sure that you have every possible health resource connected
-Bulgarians and Arabs will spawn, kill bulgarian Kommiks and finish them with mercenaries (make sure that you have cash!), at this point you should be able to keep their capital, raze every other city
-Kill Arabian horse archers and harass their workers, make peace, but don't conquer any cities from them, if possible keep them from spreading west of Alexandria
-Constantinople builds only cultural stuff and wonders after courthouse and workboat

If you follow these steps you should be fine, or perhaps Barca will filp during the plague, but you don't need it anyway.Eventually you can change civics during your first golden age.

 

[JediClemente]

A few very minor things:

Milan should be in Spain's settlermaps. It doesn't even change name when conquering.

There are still no city names for some tiles in those settlermaps. Which file were they in?

 

[Opera]

Re: Sweden
I think Jusos meant joining Finland at the edge of the map, straight way. On a side note, I was experimenting with the DLL to make straits that are passable by both land and sea - it has to be a hack since pathfinding is hardcoded. It works, but has some weird side-effects, like land units being able to enter sea through the strait... I'll try again later, I really miss that "feature" from Civ2 that has been gone since then, being able to connect Scandinavia, Spain+Africa and Dardanelles would be great for war dynamics IMO. Anyone heard if it was done/attempted before?

Can't you just use a fort?

 

[embryodead]

Can't you just use a fort?

No, forts are only passable by whoever has them in their borders + his friendlies, e.g. if no one owns Gibraltar, no one can pass from Mediterranean to Atlantic... you wouldn't be even able to sail from Denmark to Sicily as the Norse.

The hack uses the city/fort mechanics though, it's a land tile that looks like water and whenever a unit tries to enter it, it pretends to be a city/fort friendly to everyone.

 

[Krschtschn]

I encountered some strange AI behaviour or maybe a bug this weekend when playing as Byzantine. In 1500 AD Genoa had about 81000 Gold making my UHV harder than i expected. I have no idea why anyone would save that much money or how the AI got so much while being 4th or 5th on the techtree. Is that a bug, wacky AI or intended? (Please tell me it's not)

 

[sedna17]

I encountered some strange AI behaviour or maybe a bug this weekend when playing as Byzantine. In 1500 AD Genoa had about 81000 Gold making my UHV harder than i expected. I have no idea why anyone would save that much money or how the AI got so much while being 4th or 5th on the techtree. Is that a bug, wacky AI or intended? (Please tell me it's not)

Certainly not intended. It could be bug... probably too late to ask if you still have a save, right? I'm interested to hear from anyone else who encounters this sort of behavior.

 

[3Miro]

81000 gold is too much. Usually the AI does that if they spawn many Great Merchants, but 81000 is about 20 GM (considering about 4000 per merchant, unless we have changed that I don't think we can get this much). This is a bug, but more info is needed to determine the problem exactly.

 

[Krschtschn]

Certainly not intended. It could be bug... probably too late to ask if you still have a save, right?

I still have all the saves from the game. If saves from alpha 10 work with your version you sure can have a look.

The save attached is my second try, after which I decided to check the WB and discovered the problem. If you want any other saves i can upload them to my rapidshare account so you can download them all at once.

 

[Opera]

Seeing how you guys are saying it's hard to playtest to the endgame... do you intend to create a secondary scenario, maybe starting later, like the 600 AD start from RFC?

 

[micbic]

Not sure if this is the right place to post it (most probably not) but I will not be much around for a while-my laptop has broken down (temporarliy) and my sister's desktop is not good enough to run civ (in graphic card terms). So until either laptop is fixed or the desktop is upgraded....no serious contributions (I do not know to what extent it is possible, but I am thinking of installing Civ to a portable USB disk and do some fuss while at internet cafes)

 

[3Miro]

Seeing how you guys are saying it's hard to playtest to the endgame... do you intend to create a secondary scenario, maybe starting later, like the 600 AD start from RFC?

There are many issues associated with the late start. In terms of Python and C++ it is almost as hard as creating a separate scenario altogether. We will go with one game, maybe give savegames for the last nations to make sure they are doable in terms of UHV.

 

[KaiserKevin]

My first time playing, did it as Spain and felt really easy to get the UHV. Cordobans had 2 archers/city and were easy kills with upgrades units. Think if they had walls woulda been more difficult and forced siege construction.

When I got new civics the texts appeared wrong, showing the name of the text file rather than the civic.

Those my 2 main issues, otherwise was very fun, gonna try as different civs.

 

[Opera]

Hmmm, I have the feeling that some civs are never surprising. I mean, most collapsing are from the same civs, Kiev (because of the barbarians usually), Cordoba (because of Spain/portugal, I guess), Arabia (Jerusalem), Bulgaria (rarely stands against Hungary/Kiev/Turkey). Other civs rarely collapse at all, meaning that essentially the game stay the same in most playthroughs. Just take a look at sedna17's playthroughs (or maybe it was somebody else's?).

I'd say the most interesting part of the map is south-east, with Hungary, Byzantium, Bulgaria, Arabia, Turkey, etc. Very dynamic and changing, whether you see a powerful Bulgaria, Byzantium falling, Turkey and Hungary fighting, ...

All the 'central' europe is kinda boring, Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Poland, Venezia, Genoa... The Iberian peninsula is rather interesting too because of the dynamics of the three civs spawning there.

England, France and Burgundy don't get much action either.

I'm not sure how it could be improved except by adding more civilizations but you seem set about not doing that. Perhaps splitting Germany in two (it wasn't unified before a long time after all), adding Scotland, giving the English a spawn in Aquitaine, giving Sweden a spawn in northern Poland or so; or even a spawn in Scotland for the Norses.

As an end note, don't take it wrong: I love RFCE, it is a great source of inspiration for my personal mod, but I just feel like history is perhaps a bit too much repeating in it

 

[3Miro]

Hmmm, I have the feeling that some civs are never surprising. I mean, most collapsing are from the same civs, Kiev (because of the barbarians usually), Cordoba (because of Spain/portugal, I guess), Arabia (Jerusalem), Bulgaria (rarely stands against Hungary/Kiev/Turkey). Other civs rarely collapse at all, meaning that essentially the game stay the same in most playthroughs. Just take a look at sedna17's playthroughs (or maybe it was somebody else's?).

I'd say the most interesting part of the map is south-east, with Hungary, Byzantium, Bulgaria, Arabia, Turkey, etc. Very dynamic and changing, whether you see a powerful Bulgaria, Byzantium falling, Turkey and Hungary fighting, ...

All the 'central' europe is kinda boring, Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Poland, Venezia, Genoa... The Iberian peninsula is rather interesting too because of the dynamics of the three civs spawning there.

England, France and Burgundy don't get much action either.

I'm not sure how it could be improved except by adding more civilizations but you seem set about not doing that. Perhaps splitting Germany in two (it wasn't unified before a long time after all), adding Scotland, giving the English a spawn in Aquitaine, giving Sweden a spawn in northern Poland or so; or even a spawn in Scotland for the Norses.

As an end note, don't take it wrong: I love RFCE, it is a great source of inspiration for my personal mod, but I just feel like history is perhaps a bit too much repeating in it

Player A: I played as Moscow and Kiev did not collapse, I had to fight a strong opponent and failed the UHV. This is a-historical Moscow is broken.

Player B: I played as Poland and since Kiev had collapsed, Moscow got very strong and mowed over me. Moscow is broken.

Player C: The development of the Moscow ares is too a-historical.

Player D: The development of the Moscow area is too historical.

And so on.

I totally see your point, however, we can never make a single mod that everyone absolutely agrees with. And for the historical effects, I wold rather take too much historical events (such as Kiev collapsing) before constant a-historical events.

Good point on central Europe as well. I think the problem is that not enough effort was given to make the are work. We have people knit-pick England and Iberia and I have done a lot of work on eastern Europe, but no one seems to have been trying to improve the center.