RFC Europe playtesting feedback thread

[The Turk]

Ok, well I'm happy to hear that the Mongols do in fact make in impact in Eastern Europe, its just that I have only played Western and Souther European Civilizations, and from there it seemed that only the Kieven Rus were being affected, which I hoped was not the case, I will play a game (most likely as Poland) as a Eastern European civ before I release my full analysis of the first beta version (which I have been having problems installing).

Also, I am still disappointed that Joan of Arc is a leader of France, even though she had a minimal affect in French History and her role is greatly exaggerated, although yes she did win a few battels for France, she effectively did not accomplish much, not to mention she did not live very long as a so called "leader of France" and although yes in Civ 4 there are leaders who were just Generals (ie. Hannibal, in fact he is the only one I think), these generals had significant political sway over there political leaders, and all of them, such as in the case of Hannibal were political elites in their respective countries. Joan of Arc did not command any of this respect and was a small time general who just won a few battels, and was eventually overturned, there are hunderds of other French Kings who would be better suited as a leader after Charlemange, here is a list of people who would be better:

Clovis I : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clovis_I (Before Charlesmange)
Francis I : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_I_of_France



Oh, and I was wondering, now that your first Beta Version is released, what are you guys planning for the next version?

 

[Opera]

Frankly I really like having Joan of Arc as a leader for a bit of time. Even if only because the art is quite well made and because her importance is more of a symbol

 

[sedna17]

I played a couple games as the Dutch. I was worried because I know the later stages of the game have been much less well tested, but both games were fun.

The first time was a good peaceful builders game. I settled Amsterdam and Gronigen (just east of the salt). No war on flip. I sent out my ships to meet everyone (this required going to war to get through indies in the Mediterranean). Getting 10 open borders was sort of challenging, and I ended up trading or giving away a lot of precious resources which my cities needed just to make the goal in time. I was able to build Torre Belem (which may be overpowered) by buying it. Then I was running a lot of merchants to generate the great people. I was pretty quickly running a surplus even at 100% science, but that was okay, because I could spend the money to buy buildings.

Can't buy colonies though. Amsterdam had decent production and I built the East India Trading company and then one of the Indian colonies. France and Spain were building a lot of the Western colonies, so I though the east was a better bet. Later, England built a few colonies too. Getting into India gave me a boost for some other ones, and I got the East Indies. I thought I was golden but then I was beat out for every other eastern colony I tried. Finally I completed Hudson Bay, and then I was able to get one of the Chinese Port as well.

So, a close game finished in ~1750. I was a little sad I couldn't build any privateers (no copper and I couldn't trade for it), because I had plans to delay Spain+French colony building with some pirate action. Not sure it that would have been a sensible strategy (but I could buy privateers with my huge cash reserves).

I had to give it another go. Second game Anvers (Burgundy) flipped to me. Great, I thought, I'll have more cities this time. Burgundy was pretty weak and divided into a norther and southern part, so I promptly took Luxembourg (their capitol and only other northern city). But then -- they got Germany and the Norse to declare war on me. There were some pretty epic battles. I bought muskets and pike as fast as I could. People had built forts in what became my territory, and combined with all the marsh in the Netherlands there were some chokepoints and the possibilities for actual border warfare.

It was going to be difficult to make enough friends to get 10 open borders... and then the Germans used a huge stack to take Gronigen. By that time I had cannon, and I smashed their large army retaking the city. I was sure that I had turned the tide, but then two pistoliers slipped into my heartland. I couldn't get back in time and they took Amsterdam (defended only by one troop). I was exiled to Genoa and gave up on that game. Well played Germany.

 

[kochman]

So, the thing where you can't found Groningen because the cultural boundaries of other areas... that was fixed? Or you just got lucky?

 

[The Turk]

God Damn Sedna 17, I which I could play such epic games like that!

 

[FakeShady]

A little bit insignificant, but since its already in the beta stage and i am very much a musical person i'm gonna say this. Why do Burgundy, France and Germany all have the same music? IMO music should be unique for each civilization. Besides i really liked the previous German music.

 

[The Turk]

Very true, there could be a greater diversification of music as a whole throughout the game.


@FakeShady
By the Way, on a different note, I'm doing a study of Singapore's Government and I was wondering what you think of the Singaporean government?

 

[FakeShady]

Very true, there could be a greater diversification of music as a whole throughout the game.


@FakeShady
By the Way, on a different note, I'm doing a study of Singapore's Government and I was wondering what you think of the Singaporean government?

Well as a Singaporean the general attitude towards our government is that we have a very good and capable government, and are generally very satisfied with our government for bringing safely and prosperity to us. But we as a whole also agree that there are some areas which our government can improve on, specifically money matters and foreigners. We feel that our government uses almost any opportunity they can to get money from us locals haha. And because of our entire country's over-reliance on foreign workers, many locals find it hard to find a good job. We feel the situation is getting pretty annoying, and i believe something has to be done about it eventually. Thats about the general attitude we have for our government

Ohh and back to the game, i posted previously that Venice should change its UHVs. i now realize many of the UHVs are pretty... well they all need improvement. If i'm not mistaken back in RFC, UHVs always has something to do with the UP of the civ. That's hardly even seen here. Another thing is many civ's UHVs end too early. I understand players dont like too long games, but i think its not too much to ask for Venice or Germany to last into the Baroque times, like 1650?

 

[sedna17]

Sorry for the multi-post response.

So, the thing where you can't found Groningen because the cultural boundaries of other areas... that was fixed? Or you just got lucky?

Good question I think I just keep getting lucky -- unless some one else slipped in some code I haven't seen...

Very true, there could be a greater diversification of music as a whole throughout the game.

I agree. Someone (I forget who right now ) was kind enough to put together some Civ-specific music in an easy-to-integrate package and this provided a good start. Any volunteers to do the rest?

Ohh and back to the game, i posted previously that Venice should change its UHVs. i now realize many of the UHVs are pretty... well they all need improvement. If i'm not mistaken back in RFC, UHVs always has something to do with the UP of the civ. That's hardly even seen here. Another thing is many civ's UHVs end too early. I understand players dont like too long games, but i think its not too much to ask for Venice or Germany to last into the Baroque times, like 1650?

Getting better UHVs is a major goal going forward in beta testing. Your Venice ones are on the to-do list. If you have more ideas for UHV changes, try playing a game with those as your own mental goals. See if it makes a good game and is appropriately challenging. Then report on your results, and we'll see about including them.

Length of UHVs is a bit hard to decide. Of course we should have some nice long epic games and UHVs which encourage you to play through a civ's most important era.

It is sometimes nice to have an open-ended (i.e. no time limit) last goal which you can finish early or late. Of course, this normally means that the last goal is a bit easy. Our Norse are like this.

It is nice to have some relatively short-term UHVs just to provide a diversity or when people want to play a short game (Babylon in RFC was a good example).

 

[kochman]

I think you got lucky with the borders thing. I didn't.

It need to be fixed asap, because waiting 30-60 minutes for your Dutch to spawn, then getting the shaft has led me not to play this version... I am sure I am not alone in this.

 

[FakeShady]

Getting better UHVs is a major goal going forward in beta testing. Your Venice ones are on the to-do list. If you have more ideas for UHV changes, try playing a game with those as your own mental goals. See if it makes a good game and is appropriately challenging. Then report on your results, and we'll see about including them.

Well said. I never thought of that. I'll try that on Venice.

 

[Ronyboss]

First of all let me express my gratefulness for this mod, I've been waiting for something like this for a long time. I've played one game so far, won with Spain completing the UHVs in 1600 AD.

The game started up pretty interesting, with Cordoba in war right from the start. They didn't turn out to be a difficult enemy, although they managed to stock up around 10 units in Cordoba, other towns defended with 2-3 units. Only thing that bothered me was that they didn't use these units to attack me or at least pillage my borderline lands. I built an army of 12 units, including 3 suicidal trebuchets. The siege lasted two turns, lost 1 unit and 2 trebuchets, destroying the defence of Cordoba, causing them to collapse next turn. It only took a few turns to take over all the other weakly defended independent cities in Iberia.

The first UHV was almost completed, after Portugal spawned and founded a few cities on the little space that I and Cordoba left them, I vassalized them, living in peace and protecting their little empire forever and ever. Using two Inquisitors and a few Catholic Missionaries I spread Catholicism in every city of mine and got rid of every other religion (only two cities had different religion in them, although after the founding of protestantism I had to use Inquisitors in another two cities). The first UHV was completed later in 1600 AD, until that I controlled Iberia and Catholicism without any difficulties.

The second UHV was easy as well, I conquered Ceuta and Rabat in North Africa using 3 macemen and sent a galley with a settler to found Palermo in Sicily. I captured the 4th needed city later, the chosen one was Neapolis and finally it was a more difficult target than the North African cities. I took 3 bombards and 5 knights to capture it - and succeeded. 2nd UHV done.

From the 13-14th century until 1600 AD it was a simply and nice builders game, the strong side of Iberia is a huge number of cities with really strong productivity. Between 1400 and 1600 I managed to build almost every building in most of my towns, vassalized Venezia and Burgundy, built over 90 % of world wonders and build every single Colony that was possible so far (more than ten). Of course I was leading the score with around 1000 points difference and led the tech race. I have to admit it was a bit boring sometimes, too long time in peace. In the middle of 16th century Poland declared war on me, it was disappointing to see again that they didn't send any troops. I took the iniciative and sent 8 paladins to pillage a little bit around Poland, I razed one of their cities and made peace with them for a small reward, thousand coins.

Overall I really enjoyed the game, I love the tech tree, the units and the choice of civilizations. Of course some tweaking is more than necessary, my concerns are mostly the same as the ones already heard before:
- fixing the Germany bug (they didnt survive in my game)
- making the AI much more agressive - in classic RFC or any other games I see a lot of enemy troops when they declare war on me, this game was not the case
- making the UHVs more difficult
- making the independent cities more difficult to capture as well

About other concerns I read in this thread and my opinions:
- plague was not a problem in my game, it was realistic, it didnt degrade my population to 1, the affected cities shrinked to 70-80 procent of their original size (maybe the issue was already fixed in Beta, or it is just that I had really healthy cities, most of health improving buildings were built and I controlled many of health resources)
- although Austria and Hungary turned out to be strong, there were lot of tensions and wars between them and Poland - maybe just making the AI more aggressive would make a bigger impact on their development, slowing it down a bit. The Ottomans became strong and captured Anatolia and Middle East, maybe forcing them to proceed more aggressively to the Balkan territory would help
- I liked the pretty big number of pirates, it forced me to build a strong navy and protect every one sea/ocean resource with at least one ship.
- Switching to Protestantism turned out to be alright, half of the Catholic countries changed their state religion to Protestantism. I would like to see more impact of this change on relations between the catholic and protestant countries. More negative points could cause some tensions and wars in western europe as well. I believe this would help the gameplay, as this area is way too peaceful.

Well, if any other ideas come to my mind, I will post it. Right now I am going to playtest the Emperor difficulty level, this was too easy

 

[Wessel V1]

- making the independent cities more difficult to capture as well

First, welcome to civfanatics! It's always nice to see someone joining the site to make a first post in our subforum

I tend to agree with this. In a really early version civilizations collapsed rather quickly and there were lots of independents. To compensate that, a 3rd and a 4th independent civilization were created, to weaken the independent civs. However, there have been many updates and I rarely see lots of independent cities on the map, because not so many civilizations collapse anymore. Possibly we should reduce the number of independent civs to 3 or 2. Of course the AI should still be able to conquer the indies, but a little more action wouldn't hurt.

Also, please fix the civ colours (if the number isn't reduced to 2). Independent civ 1 and 3; 2 and 4 still share the same grey colour, so they are indistinguishable. It is weird to see 2 seemingly connected independent cities, one you are at war with, and one you are in peace with.

 

[keli]

Well I played with Hungary and the barbarian activity is pretty high. It is nearly impossible to keep the stability up (tho i played in emperor).
+ I don't understand why "Pozsony" wants to flip to the Austrians o_O Oh and its pretty hard to keep the towns happy and healthy ^^
oh and I lost most of the battles where I had 70%+ chance

 

[micbic]

Because Pozsony--->Pressburg--->Bratislava, which was...(well okay Hungarian, but in terms of gameplay, we need to make Austria more than a sack of box, don't we?)

 

[keli]

Okay, I gave up. If you can do the Hungarian UHV on Emperor then i give you a cookie. Otherwise if You don't succeed please reduce the number of 7strength lancers who always destroy the improvements around the cities.

 

[Ronyboss]

Okay, I gave up. If you can do the Hungarian UHV on Emperor then i give you a cookie. Otherwise if You don't succeed please reduce the number of 7strength lancers who always destroy the improvements around the cities.

I was just going to try an emperor game, and well, I am hungarian myself, so... I accept the challenge!

...and I hope your cookies are worth it

 

[sedna17]

The cookie is a lie.

 

[birdboy2000]

Having played this for the better part of... last week or so, the UHV's are definitely easier than the original Rhye's. I don't need anything like a strategy guide to tell me what order to work tiles in, at least for the civs I've tried. I'm not a very skilled player, mind you - I usually play on Noble for vanilla. (And the middle difficulty for this.)

Cordoba was the hardest I played - I micromanaged workers and still wound up size 12 to a size 13 Constantinople on my first try. Haven't tried again since.

Venice was especially easy - it was a matter of sending settlers for the first condition and building Marco Polo's Embassy for the luxury resources. (Rhodes revolted from Byzantium and I snapped it up easily.)

The Norse seemed comically difficult before I tried, but exploring the ocean isn't quite as hard as I thought if you rush galleys/cogs like crazy, and even the settlers I managed to pull off - after that, I had to go on a warmongering/razing spree. Quite a fun game, though maybe the difficulty could be pushed up a notch.

Sweden I think came down to luck. I didn't have much trouble sweeping up Poland with Karolins and getting those five cities, but Poland won't always be independent when Sweden spawns.

Bulgaria was fun, too. Reloaded a few times. Rushed religious buildings like crazy for the faith points, seized Constantinople after dragging out the initial war to the 10th century... and pretty much coasted from there until the Turks spawned, after which I had to try a couple times to keep myself from losing a city. (The Theodosian walls held off Turkey after the initial attack, but they had a huge army spawn in my territory and took Adrianople or whatever it's called in Bulgarian the first time I tried.)

OTOH, by capturing Adrianople first the Turks are no challenge at all, Kiev insulates you from the Mongols pretty well, and the Byzantines are dead after the first war if you take Constantinople. I think the "never lose a city" victory condition needs changing.

Also, thanks to the team for making this. I've had a lot of fun, even if it's easier than you had intended.

 

[General Toad]

Seda17!

I'm not sure if it's me who you were talking about, but I was the one who put together the music for Ukraine, Venice, and a few other civs without unique music earlier back. I've still been lurking around the forums, and am very pleased with the Beta!

But back on topic, would you like me to hunt down some more music for France, Germany, and other civs who needed it? It would be my pleasure!