RFC Europe playtesting feedback thread

[youtien]

Iceland isn't supposed to be useful territory; settling it is just an added challenge to make the UHV a bit harder. It was an isolated, barren, impoverished country on the fringe of relevance to European history. Maintaining a presence there should be costly, with few benefits, especially before true ocean-worthy ships can be built.

So can we grant Iceland independence after founded, instead of gift to Spain?

By the way, Iceland should have some fish. Also, if player has sheep, make one sheep appear on Iceland some turns later.

 

[merijn_v1]

Not only Iceland, but also some Atlantic islands on middle of the map.

As every civ, I'll settle Puerto de la Cruz whenever possible -- settle on sugar hill (+1), hook banana (+1 health) and nice seafood (2 whale and 1 clam/crab), and one plain hill and AA. It provides +1 happy and health in early game, and later we can get AA and buy Belem Tower there.

I doubted about that area. But I don't mind that you can trade with cities in that area and Iceland from the beginning of the game. It reduces the (little) drawback that those areas (especially Iceland) aren't very strong.

BTW, it's much more easier to code that all civs can trade over oceans from the beginning of the game than to make it only possible for the Norse.

 

[yogiebere]

I doubted about that area. But I don't mind that you can trade with cities in that area and Iceland from the beginning of the game. It reduces the (little) drawback that those areas (especially Iceland) aren't very strong.

BTW, it's much more easier to code that all civs can trade over oceans from the beginning of the game than to make it only possible for the Norse.

I agree with many here, Iceland is just rather useless, why not just make the norse UHV a little harder in a different way, and a way that actually benefits them. (A good example is the Call of Duty people aren't going to want to go after hard things just because theyre hard, like get a 5 kill streak with pistol whips or something stupid like that)

As stated, it would make it easier to code, and perhaps give the norse a decent unique power.

Isn't it just awful to have Europe and then the western quarter of the map be useless ocean with some islands that really dont serve much of a purpose (except to a human player who settles them)

 

[BipedTheGreat]

After playing several times as the Ottomans, I have come to the conclusion that thier playstyle conflicts with their historical strengths. The conquest of Byzantium is straightforward enough, though the prerequisite conquest of Greece seems to be missing, and it is easier to conquer them heading straight for Constantinople with a few seige weapons. However, the expansions into Bulgaria, Hungary, Southern Kievan territories and Arabian Syria destabilizes my empire irrevocably, where these were actually the keys to the early and middle presence of the Ottoman. As such, the resitance to Ottoman expansion should be relatively weak early on, and strengthens as they move North and West.

Upon reflection, I offer these suggestions:
1-a collapsing state that submits itself to vassalage cannot lose its capital due to instability, player or not. At the very least, this could be a unique attribute for the Ottomans, who relied heavily on European subjects and Janissaries.
2-Hungary, Bulgaria and Kievan Rus become more prone to vassalize after losing cities, and switch to Islam upon this political change.
3-The Khazars, I think, should be implemented, as they were a very influential force in influencing the Byzantine Romans, and were responsible for stopping the spread of Islam into the Urals, and were the only European state in the middle ages to adopt Judaism as a state religion. This would bring the Kievan into a larger sphere of political influence, and not relegate them to some bushwacking fringe state that only exists to be destroyed by Mongols. After all, the Kievan is not able to successfully occupy foriegn lands, so the concept of Kievan Hegemony will lead eventually to collapse. Also, the Khazars themselves could become the Mongols if no state religion is adopted by 1100.
4-A Kingdom of Jerusalem should be established after a Catholic power occupies the city for X turns. The idea behind this is that the Crusades seem to bring about such instability that it is more useful to vote your enemies into positions of leadership, so they collapse soon afterwards. The frequency of the Crusades often leads to all of France, Germany and Burgundy as independants for large portions of the game.
5-The English should get +25vsMounted for Longbowman.
6-Mercenary nationality needs to change. I'm tired of seeing Ligurians in 1440. >_>
7-Venice and Genoa should have more initiative in destroying each other, and razing/capturing the other Italian cities.
8-France and Spain should have a stronger drive in capturing Italian cities. Naples for France, Milan for France.
9-The Islamic religious bonus should be scrapped. A common feature among Muslim nations was the Mamluk social caste. Perhaps a special Mamluk promotion (Start with March for unmounted, +1 movement for heavy mounted, maybe?) or a limited number of special Mamluk units available to Muslim nations, who go Barb when you switch? It seems the more I spread Islam currently, the harder it is to get my cities to plateau. There have even been a few Ottoman games where my largest cities grew too large, starved but continued to grow, got unhappy, revolted, and destroyed all my progress.
10-Castile and Leon should be seperate civilizations. Spain either grows too fast or too small currently, and I often have to resort to WB to ensure they dominate Iberia, because I get tired of shooing the Muslims out of Burgundy.
11-Catholic States that achieve a super-power status (Most often France, Germany, Spain and Austria) should have a new option to coerce weaker neighbor states into doing this or that, depending on the relationship. Burgundy to France, Poland to Germany, Portugal to Spain (Initially) and Hungary to Austria. Small things, like demanding unit renationalization (gifting) from vassals, cash or resource extortion through RFC choice menu instead of diplo, or giving up cities, regardless of whether the civ is a vassal or not. If the civ refuses, the Pope could issue a vote for war declarations, as the Papal state would be acting in a subservient manner, as a puppet diplo state.
12-The Netherlands should be able to spring up out of the instability of other civs in the region after 1150.
13-Resource placement needs to be changed. Why is there rice in Spain? As a tradeable, viable commodity, they should be placed as far east as possible, along with all silk, to establish the value of connecting to and maintaining a Silk Road.

Those SUGGESTIONS having been said, I would like to say that RFC europe has become my favorite mod, and I have stopped playing nearly all other mods/play styles. I am already flirting with the idea of using micromanaged saved CIV4 games to teach my classes when I'm teaching college in a couple years. Keep up the good work, and thanks guys!

 

[yogiebere]

hmm there are some pretty good suggestions here:

I agree that the Netherlands comes a little too late. Honestly I think they don't exactly belong in this mod (well they do sort of) because their strength was not territorial acquisition but trade and colonial empires, which are somewhat represented in colonies, but the colonies dont generate income or anything like that. Not that I'm suggesting we reform that, that's better put in a colonial empires mod or something

Yes, France sometimes conquers milano and florence, but often Genoa gets it (which works for balancing purposes) and Spain never leaves Iberia. Also I was just thinking of this. I think Venezia and Genoa should both have a drive to conquer Napoli and Sicily (not florence or milano or else Venezia would win everytime due to earlier start)

There are some things in here that are already being worked on in one way or another: revamp of catholicism, crusades

And the rest are often the way they are to have balancing.
Rice I usually just think of as oats, cus there are only 2 grains, and Western Europe only gets wheat usually. There needs to be some health bonuses for these disastrously unhealthy empires
Islam's bonus works well, it may not be historically accurate but it allows Ottomans and Arabs to conquer territories more easily and makes up for some of the bad territories they are stuck with (north africa)
1 Spain is simpler.
Khazars are too complicated, and this mod focuses more on post 1000. I would characterize the Khazars as barbarian or independent, maybe they could have a greater presence in the northern black sea, but most of the empire isnt even on the map

I'm not sure on what difficulty you played, but I had no trouble expanding from north africa to kiev to wien. For this to be historically accurate, the Ottomans would have to basically take out 4 civs, which isn't really going to happen in the balancing. I think the Ottomans work well currently (the AI), they often destroy Byzantines and Bulgaria, and usually push up almost to Budapest

 

[merijn_v1]

After playing several times as the Ottomans, I have come to the conclusion that thier playstyle conflicts with their historical strengths. The conquest of Byzantium is straightforward enough, though the prerequisite conquest of Greece seems to be missing, and it is easier to conquer them heading straight for Constantinople with a few seige weapons. However, the expansions into Bulgaria, Hungary, Southern Kievan territories and Arabian Syria destabilizes my empire irrevocably, where these were actually the keys to the early and middle presence of the Ottoman. As such, the resitance to Ottoman expansion should be relatively weak early on, and strengthens as they move North and West.

Upon reflection, I offer these suggestions:
1-a collapsing state that submits itself to vassalage cannot lose its capital due to instability, player or not. At the very least, this could be a unique attribute for the Ottomans, who relied heavily on European subjects and Janissaries.
2-Hungary, Bulgaria and Kievan Rus become more prone to vassalize after losing cities, and switch to Islam upon this political change.
3-The Khazars, I think, should be implemented, as they were a very influential force in influencing the Byzantine Romans, and were responsible for stopping the spread of Islam into the Urals, and were the only European state in the middle ages to adopt Judaism as a state religion. This would bring the Kievan into a larger sphere of political influence, and not relegate them to some bushwacking fringe state that only exists to be destroyed by Mongols. After all, the Kievan is not able to successfully occupy foriegn lands, so the concept of Kievan Hegemony will lead eventually to collapse. Also, the Khazars themselves could become the Mongols if no state religion is adopted by 1100.
4-A Kingdom of Jerusalem should be established after a Catholic power occupies the city for X turns. The idea behind this is that the Crusades seem to bring about such instability that it is more useful to vote your enemies into positions of leadership, so they collapse soon afterwards. The frequency of the Crusades often leads to all of France, Germany and Burgundy as independants for large portions of the game.
5-The English should get +25vsMounted for Longbowman.
6-Mercenary nationality needs to change. I'm tired of seeing Ligurians in 1440. >_>
7-Venice and Genoa should have more initiative in destroying each other, and razing/capturing the other Italian cities.
8-France and Spain should have a stronger drive in capturing Italian cities. Naples for France, Milan for France.
9-The Islamic religious bonus should be scrapped. A common feature among Muslim nations was the Mamluk social caste. Perhaps a special Mamluk promotion (Start with March for unmounted, +1 movement for heavy mounted, maybe?) or a limited number of special Mamluk units available to Muslim nations, who go Barb when you switch? It seems the more I spread Islam currently, the harder it is to get my cities to plateau. There have even been a few Ottoman games where my largest cities grew too large, starved but continued to grow, got unhappy, revolted, and destroyed all my progress.
10-Castile and Leon should be seperate civilizations. Spain either grows too fast or too small currently, and I often have to resort to WB to ensure they dominate Iberia, because I get tired of shooing the Muslims out of Burgundy.
11-Catholic States that achieve a super-power status (Most often France, Germany, Spain and Austria) should have a new option to coerce weaker neighbor states into doing this or that, depending on the relationship. Burgundy to France, Poland to Germany, Portugal to Spain (Initially) and Hungary to Austria. Small things, like demanding unit renationalization (gifting) from vassals, cash or resource extortion through RFC choice menu instead of diplo, or giving up cities, regardless of whether the civ is a vassal or not. If the civ refuses, the Pope could issue a vote for war declarations, as the Papal state would be acting in a subservient manner, as a puppet diplo state.
12-The Netherlands should be able to spring up out of the instability of other civs in the region after 1150.
13-Resource placement needs to be changed. Why is there rice in Spain? As a tradeable, viable commodity, they should be placed as far east as possible, along with all silk, to establish the value of connecting to and maintaining a Silk Road.

Those SUGGESTIONS having been said, I would like to say that RFC europe has become my favorite mod, and I have stopped playing nearly all other mods/play styles. I am already flirting with the idea of using micromanaged saved CIV4 games to teach my classes when I'm teaching college in a couple years. Keep up the good work, and thanks guys!

Welcome to CFC.

3. We won't include more civs. We already have more civs in the game than the vanilla RFC, and it only makes the game a lot slower. And the Khazars would only have a very few plots of historical area on the map.
4. As I said above, no more civs. And if we did, it discourages the human player to conquer Jerusalem.
5. It already has + 25% vs. cavalry. It only makes the English Longbowman too overpowerd if we add more bonusses.
6. We will change those names.
8. France and Burgundy already conquer Milan a lot. No need to change that. But Spain can indeed try to conquer Italy more often.
10. No more civs. And if we split them up, they have to little space. And it is not worth the coding effort we have to do for them.
11. zipzapzup is currently working on a new catholic system which increases the strength of catholic civs/pope.
12. I disagree. There wasn't a "real" Dutch civ before around 1550. The Dutch became a civ during the 80 years war. And that war started in 1568. The Dutch weren't an independed civ before that.
13. The resource placement is good. And the rice in Spain isn't from the beginning. It's introduced in Europe around 1000 AD by the Moors. (Check it on wikipedia.) So it's totally historical. Haven't you heart of Pealla?

 

[ezzlar]

I just started a game as Turkey but Adrianapolis wouldnt flip to me. Then I discovered that it was the Bulgarian capital! That cant happen often!

 

[BipedTheGreat]

Good enough reasoning for me merijn, though I would offer that saying the dutch became dutch after the 80 years war is like saying the french didnt become french until after the death of charlemagne. the franks had a long history, dating back before the dissolution of the western roman empire, just as the belgians did. is autonomy fa prereq for rfc nation status?

 

[merijn_v1]

Good enough reasoning for me merijn, though I would offer that saying the dutch became dutch after the 80 years war is like saying the french didnt become french until after the death of charlemagne. the franks had a long history, dating back before the dissolution of the western roman empire, just as the belgians did. is autonomy fa prereq for rfc nation status?

I said they became independed when the war started. If we didn't do it, their was no war at all. And before that date, we were controlled by several other "civs, like the HRE, Franks etc. So we weren't Dutch, but Frankish or so in that time.

 

[NoShameD]

Am I the only one to get this bug ?
Just started a game as Venezia (yeah, I know, viceroy... just testing first !) and I met a problem : on turn 2 (804 AD), the first goal was lost !

 

[Mardouro]

Hello, I’ll post here some of my feedback on the beta 3 version (monarch):

• When you are choosing the civ you’re playing, the civs are not sorted by date of spawn.
  
• AI Venice settles in Crimea, I saw it for the first time with 2 cities, one called Cumae (kind of wrong) and another called Caffa (ok). They probably settled by land, since they were at war with Byzantium and also they had captured Beograd.
  
• AI Hungary seems very weak all the time. They settle in the wrong places, the terrain is quite unattractive, their core area is invaded with culture from neighbor civs like Bulgaria on the southeast, Venezia on the west, Austria on the northwest and north. They start with despotism, tribal law, tribalism, etc instead of other medieval civis available to them. They suffer barbarian raids from the beginning and that last for too long. Also, very often the venetians/germans/burgundy conquer Beograd and Belograd, which ruins it for Hungary. When I go for Austria with the autorun, the Hungarian cities never have any végvár built. The settlemap is too small for a civ whose UHV is to be the largest in Europe and the magyar names for the cities in Austria, Slovakia, Poland, Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, the Balkans, and Slovenia should be reviewed.
  
• AI Bulgaria tends to be a catholic civ… Norse tends to be Orthodox at first but then converts to Catholicism.
  
• Cannot gift cities to vassal states, only if the game considers it a libetation.
  
• In the Reference folder, Poland settler- and war-maps are very small given their UHV objectives. Kievan Rus never builds a city on the black sea so you must settle yourself, which ends up being called Khavarovsk or Brjanks.
  
• The Norse always send a stack of units to capture Lubice or Gronongen but they end up sleeping in the tile next to the city instead of capturing it, for centuries. Even when the odds are on their side. This happens with other civs too; from what I see, they don’t attack until some siege unit is present.
  
• Now that the market allows 2 merchants, and the AI builds them much sooner, the corporations requiring a great priest come rather late in the game. For example, in one game the dates were: Hanse 1122 (Nantes), Medici 1308 (Frankfurt – by me), Templar 1317 (Poznan), Teutonic 1320 (Preslav), Hospitaller 1347 (Venezia).
  
• Germany now likes to settle Salzburg, which gives Austria a better start. However, AI Austria never seems to achieve much greatness.
  
• In the Middle Ages, as soon as the Arabs respawn, the Pope calls for a crusade, Jerusalem is captured by the Christians, and the Arabs fall again.
  
• The island of Sicilia is never occupied.
  
• Portugal and Spain don’t have that “rush” of settling the Atlantic isles like we used to see in regular RFC.
  
• England isn´t very keen on capturing barbarian Dubh Linn.
  
• With the northern passage in the Baltic sea, we now see norse workers building a road from Roskilde to Tonsberg, it takes them centuries, and sometimes they have to go around Poland and indy Minsk.

Thank you, good games

 

[yogiebere]

I'd disagree, bulgaria is almost always orthodox. But kind of a weak civ

And yes there are some serious problems with Hungary. I played as them last week, and they were actually very strong. I conquered venezia, had through and bosporus (at war with ottomans a lot) and pushed Poland Austria with strong culture. Even had some kiev cities.

Venice is supposed to settle there, and actually I've never seen that happen

Yes there is a major sicily problem as it actually is a strong city when properly upgraded

some other great points. Yes Portugal is really frustrating; they build 4 cities in about the space of 15 tiles. Instead they should very quickly settle western africa and african islands. As in they only have Lisboa (maybe one north of lisboa). Also they have issues being catholic; I've seen muslim lisboa just as often as catholic

 

[youtien]

Cordoba UP is too weak. Medic promotion doesn't mean much. I suggest add +1 health to all cities, that won't be too powerful, yet helps their UHV.

 

[youtien]

In my Venice game Bulgaria is powerful(I fed them some techs but they conquered Odrin by themselves) and had 2 vassals, and fought me twice.

And in beta 3 Cordoba and Arab seldom build their wonders. I could usually build them after I get Arabic Knowledge.


By the way, how early can you conquer Constantinople? I can do it in 800s as Bulgaria, in 937 as Venice. Just put a spy to have the city revolt, and have 6-8 units outside. 225% defense is nothing.

 

[yogiebere]

And in beta 3 Cordoba and Arab seldom build their wonders. I could usually build them after I get Arabic Knowledge.

I've noticed this too, they definitely should build the Gardens of Al-Andulus and the Alhambra (la Mezquita too?), either by UHV or some other means

its interesting that most Muslim wonders are Cordoban in fact

 

[ezzlar]

Cordobas new UHVs are somewhat difficult.

1. Cordoba largest city in 1000 AD
2. Build Mezquita, Alhambra and Gardens of Al-Andalus by 1100 AD
3. Have 7000 culture in 1100 AD

They all have different focuses! And for almost the same years! I managed goal number one and two with 3 years margin. But still only had 2000 culture...

 

[Zipzapzup]

Getting the wonders as soon as possible makes it rather easy because you will mostly get one great artist. Or you may rush for drama and get an artist for free. Building belfrys also helps a lot.

 

[thwump]

Getting the wonders as soon as possible makes it rather easy because you will mostly get one great artist. Or you may rush for drama and get an artist for free. Building belfrys also helps a lot.

Yeah its pretty simple to get multiple great artists also. Drama is one tech up from what you need for the wonders and you will probably get there first gunning for it. Then you can build a theater and pump out another artist fairly easily before the time limit (when I tried this recently I think I actually ended up with 3 artists before the deadline).

 

[civ_king]

Cordobas new UHVs are somewhat difficult.

1. Cordoba largest city in 1000 AD
2. Build Mezquita, Alhambra and Gardens of Al-Andalus by 1100 AD
3. Have 7000 culture in 1100 AD

They all have different focuses! And for almost the same years! I managed goal number one and two with 3 years margin. But still only had 2000 culture...

rush for drama, a tasty 4000 boost should help for 3.

Getting the wonders as soon as possible makes it rather easy because you will mostly get one great artist. Or you may rush for drama and get an artist for free. Building belfrys also helps a lot.

I thought Islam had minarets?

 

[Zipzapzup]

when I tried this recently I think I actually ended up with 3 artists before the deadline.

The last time i played Cordoba and changed the UHV i actually got more than one great artist but i had the impression that it is rather luck based if you get one artist. So i left the culture and time window so far open that you may rush for drama and get this artist for sure.

I thought Islam had minarets?

You are right. But the effect is the same.