RFC Europe playtesting feedback thread

[AOS9001]

Plz help! What can I do to improve my stability? I only have pluses in expansion=((( It seems to me that I don't understand stability conception...

Hmm... Well, I usually build courthouses and manor houses in all my cities, each one is +1 stability. You also want civics that go well together. For example, I don't think Feudal Monarchy would go well with Free Peasantry. Don't expand too fast either, that's not good. And try to keep good relations with everyone and avoid large military defeats.

I'm not the most experienced in this mod, someone else can probably offer much better advice than me.

 

[civ_king]

Use Orthodoxy and build all of those buildings
Courthouses
Manor Houses
Night Watch
Dungeons

those all boost stability (Orthodoxy also lowers civic costs, as Byzantium I got civic cost to zero and +70 Stability)

IMO there are to many stability buildings


Orthodoxy is overpowered along with Protestantism, Islam and Catholicism are quite underpowered in comparison

Catholicism may be remedied by giving every civ a patron saint and they give unique bonuses

 

[Duke of Awesome]

a patron saint? how would that work? a free great prophet that spawns in a specific year?

 

[The Turk]

I find Islam to be very underpowered in this game, especially considering how much of their Empire is cut off. That's why I suggested in having the Silk Road ""resource"", which would be just like the Atlantic trade or any other colonial project. You would build a caravan on it, and it would give your resources, also the Arabs should start off with trade with the Indian Ocean, and get the necessary resources. They are very undercut in this respect.

 

[civ_king]

I find Islam to be very underpowered in this game, especially considering how much of their Empire is cut off. That's why I suggested in having the Silk Road ""resource"", which would be just like the Atlantic trade or any other colonial project. You would build a caravan on it, and it would give your resources, also the Arabs should start off with trade with the Indian Ocean, and get the necessary resources. They are very undercut in this respect.

IIRC this mod is called RFC Europe and Arabia is in Asia/Africa

a patron saint? how would that work? a free great prophet that spawns in a specific year?

each civ would get unique bonuses which get stronger based on how pious the civ is

 

[The Turk]

Yes I understand that this is called RFC "Europe", but I'm saying that if you want to have a realistic game, Arabia, needs to be all that powerful, and that doesn't justify not putting as much work into a particular civilization, that is why I said, to make up for most of their empire which is not represented, I said there should be a "colony" type project that the Arabs can make, and this can be taken over by the Byzantines or the Ottomans, or even the crusaders, and it can be destroyed by the invading barbarians. The reason I don't like how its presented now, is because its not very aesthetically pleasing to see random resources laying in the middle of the desert, they would be much better represented by a special type of road, or the "arrows" which represent a trade junction. Then the worker would have to build a "caravan" improvement on it, to get the possible national wonder from it, such as "Indian Ocean Trade Project" or "Silk Road Trade Project" etc.

 

[kochman]

I find Islam to be very underpowered in this game, especially considering how much of their Empire is cut off. That's why I suggested in having the Silk Road ""resource"", which would be just like the Atlantic trade or any other colonial project. You would build a caravan on it, and it would give your resources, also the Arabs should start off with trade with the Indian Ocean, and get the necessary resources. They are very undercut in this respect.

This is a bad idea because it was the Atlantic trade in particular which made the importance of the Silk Road less and less every year afterwards, dooming the Middle East to it's modern day obscurity economically speaking.
It also effected European powers that were mediterranean based, and led to those with atlantic access to become powerhouses... (Portugal and Holland for example, tiny places, became very powerful due to Atlantic trade... England, France and Spain also prospered greatly... while Venice and Genoa started to fade).

 

[AdrienIer]

well then, why not making those ressources and the wonders linked to it obsolete when the Atlantic ones are possible, or making them less usefull near the end (like giving a bonus of 1 coffee for a silk road wonder while the atlantic ones give 3).

 

[JediClemente]

The Levant is already packed with resources...

 

[AdrienIer]

yes but those ressources should then be deleted.

 

[kochman]

I think JediClemente's point is that it would be superfluous to make a change, because they already have a ton of resources in the area to boost the cities and reflect the presence of trade routes.

The argument that it isn't aesthetically pleasing is hardly a good reason to do a bunch of coding to add in something that is well balanced as is.

 

[civ_king]

Yes I understand that this is called RFC "Europe", but I'm saying that if you want to have a realistic game, Arabia, needs to be all that powerful, and that doesn't justify not putting as much work into a particular civilization, that is why I said, to make up for most of their empire which is not represented, I said there should be a "colony" type project that the Arabs can make, and this can be taken over by the Byzantines or the Ottomans, or even the crusaders, and it can be destroyed by the invading barbarians. The reason I don't like how its presented now, is because its not very aesthetically pleasing to see random resources laying in the middle of the desert, they would be much better represented by a special type of road, or the "arrows" which represent a trade junction. Then the worker would have to build a "caravan" improvement on it, to get the possible national wonder from it, such as "Indian Ocean Trade Project" or "Silk Road Trade Project" etc.

The still have plenty of arrows and a key feature is the Crusades for them

This is a bad idea because it was the Atlantic trade in particular which made the importance of the Silk Road less and less every year afterwards, dooming the Middle East to it's modern day obscurity economically speaking.
It also effected European powers that were mediterranean based, and led to those with atlantic access to become powerhouses... (Portugal and Holland for example, tiny places, became very powerful due to Atlantic trade... England, France and Spain also prospered greatly... while Venice and Genoa started to fade).

Basically this

 

[civ_king]

Too many stability buildings, I as the Byzantines control Portugal, Spain, Cordoba, Anatolia, Greece, Bulgaria, Burgundy, Italy, Hungary, Austria, Kiev...

I think Imperialism+Orthodoxy+Stability Buildings is extreme synergy since I have all that stuff and am very solid

On Monarch BTW

 

[AOS9001]

Too many stability buildings, I as the Byzantines control Portugal, Spain, Cordoba, Anatolia, Greece, Bulgaria, Burgundy, Italy, Hungary, Austria, Kiev...

I think Imperialism+Orthodoxy+Stability Buildings is extreme synergy since I have all that stuff and am very solid

On Monarch BTW

Gee... That's a lot better than I can do. But I'm still a n00b after all these years in the game, so that's probably why.

 

[civ_king]

Gee... That's a lot better than I can do. But I'm still a n00b after all these years in the game, so that's probably why.

I bet with France I could hijack all of Europe, I'll try right after I finish my France UHV game

 

[The Turk]

@civ_king, and others...

No, The Middle East does not have any of those "arrows" which represent the Atlantic trade route,(I don't know what version your playing) thats why I'm saying they should have a "Silk Road" trade route, which is activated by building a "caravan" improvement on it. Then there is a "Silk Road", "Indian Ocean Trade" or "Sub-Saharan Africa Trade" national wonder, which the Arabs and Byzantines at first can build (since they are the closest), which allows them to access the far away resources, (such as silk, tea*, ivory, bananas, spices etc.). What this would effectively do, is that it would allow us to clean up all the resources which are randomly scattered there. And yes Kochman, I think removing them for aesthetic and game play reasons, is a good reason, to add in these new trade links. Not to mention, the coding as already been done for the Western Civ's, it should now be easy to do the same for the East.

But what would happen is that the barbarians would spawn and try and destroy the "caravan" improvements, which would force the player to try and protect them. When the Crusaders come, they should try and capture, and take hold of these trade routes, and the same for when a crusading army comes to invade Byzantium, the Byzantines would be forced to protect this precious trade resource. And later when the Ottomans come, they can benefit from these as well, but after a while, once a certain tech is finished, the national wonder would go obsolete, (actually perhaps even BEFORE the Ottomans spawn this should happen). But overall this would allow different civilizations to capture and take hold of these VERY important trade routes, especially considering that the Silk Road itself, stretched all the way to Italy. Not to mention this would also help the Europeans, during the Crusades.

I don't know how I can make myself more clear, but since you guys didn't decide to make random resources begin to spawn in Western Europe, why should you allow this to happen in the Middle East? These civ's should get the same respect as the other civs in the game, and I think adding trade routes, (the ones I mentioned), would add a new dimension to playing as a Middle Eastern Civilization.

For reference, here are the trade routes I mentioned and hope will get implemented:

Silk Road Transit (Silk, Spices, Tea) x2 OR x3 of these
Sub-Saharan Transit (ie. Gold and Salt** from Mali and Ivory and Bananas from the African jungle) x2
Indian Ocean Transit (Spices, Ivory etc) x1

*tea should be added as a resource, if it already is not; and should be available to the Western Nations through another national wonder as well
**Same as above, salt was VERY important, and should be added as a "out of the map" resource, and of course for both Tea and Salt you can find textures from Rise of Mankind, which Zappara has already added to his mod

 

[Duke of Awesome]

dont we already have tea? and i know we already have salt. also im a little confused. are you saying the actual improvements (caravans) themselves would give those resources or would new wonders be put into the game?

 

[AOS9001]

@civ_king, and others...

"caravan" improvements

...


**Same as above, salt was VERY important, and should be added as a "out of the map" resource, and of course for both Tea and Salt you can find textures from Rise of Mankind, which Zappara has already added to his mod

Caravan improvements, that would certainly be interesting.

And we already have salt. I know there's some on Crete, and by Cyrene/Barca. I'm pretty sure there's some on the islands off of Africa, and around North Africa too.

 

[civ_king]

@The Turk, I'm sorry I meant resources, IMO as Arabia you should go and conquer the traitorous Umayyad scum the Andalusians to unite the Islamic world

 

[The Turk]

@civ_king
no problem, I was a bit confused at first lol
To tell you the truth, when I first started playing this mod, I thought the same thing, that the Arabs should take over Al-Andalus, but I realized it would have been too hard for them to do something like that , the AI wouldn't be able to do it, I don't think*

@Others who recently posted
LOL, my bad, OF COURSE their is salt, but I didn't know there was tea, but since they are already present in the game, there should be no problem implementing this, it should be easy!

For those who did not understand my idea, here it is again (this time I will explain better):
So you have these transit routes, which are just arrows in the ground, their like a resource, and to collect this resource, you would need to build a Caravan (camp) , improvement on it (which would be unlocked for the Arabs at the start). Then, to build the "Silk Road Trade", "Sub-Saharan Africa Trade" or the "Indian Ocean Trade" National Wonder, you would need that "Transit" resource with the Caravan (camp)** improvement built on it.
Basically its the same as building a chariot, you need a pasture on the horse resource to build a chariot, the same logic, except your building a National Wonder which gives you these resources. Note: The Caravan Stop DOES NOT give you the resources, you need to build the National Wonder to get the resources.
And the same logic goes for the Byzantines, and everyone else.

Hope that is clearer for everyone

*I actually had an idea recently, that once the Cordobans collapse into warring independent city-states, a few years later, there should be a respawn, but they should respawn in Morocco (with their capital in Morocco as well), with a few galleys and some units, and they could be renamed the Almoravids or Almohads. Just an idea, but I thought it would be nice, so that Morocco dosen't stay empty, and they could reconquer a few cities in Southern Spain. How about that? (I'll develop the idea later on)

**I couldn't agree on a name for the improvement, should it be:
Caravan Camp
Caravan Stop
OR just
Caravan