RFCE 1.3 Playtest Feedback

[gilgames]

OK, it was on topic long ago but now i made a lil' "research" on it. It's Hungary's UHVs. we all know thats currently way too easy. I tried a new one and made it, also done the regular ones.

1, resettling the basin: Have 2 cities in all of your core areas by 1150. (date can be arranged)
(thus you will do it anyway, you must focus on it a bit)

2, Four Seas: have a costal city on four different seas in/by 1350. (historically these were baltic, black, mediterran and adria) the date can also be discussed, but before it, there is the mongols and austria

3, Deffender of europe: Allow no ottoman in europe till 1541. (This is the historically failed one. in 1541 ottomans took Buda)


-I tried it, and can be done, also there are things that you must do, not only because u are there
sorted better in time, you can decide when to have a golden age. and a bit more challenge imo.


But to make the last one more serious, ottomans need to be changed:
-all starting unit mace and longbow should be janissaries and...
if ottomans take Istanbul, then they flip all Asia Minor (all above antakya)
-or both at start.

Reasons: AI byz have nothing to do after ottomans start. if they doing well, you are crippled, if they are weak, you are crippled. recently arabs are qiute good, you are crippled. Hungary tends to be strong always.

also new uhv ideas for ottomans:

- Vassalize or collaps hungary by 1541.
- Ottomans empire: old uhv 1+2 in 1580 (i have no good idea for this date)
- 3. uhv is good as it was.


Another idea to separate the seas into "provincies" just like lands. as baltic, north, black etc....so they could be checked and uhvs could be tied to them also...

so what do you think about them?

 

[Spirictum]

I like the idea of sea provinces, it'll probably help in making different UHVs related to the seas themselves (coastal cities, fleet size, fleet presence)

 

[AbsintheRed]

Sorry for that. I didn't notice the space was used in that file to align the table. Now I checked all files again and the only RFCEBalance.py and 1 line in Consts.py are affected. But I suppose you already changed it back. (Otherwise I will do it after your commit)

Unfortunately it was way more difficult than that
3Miro wasn't consistent with his <........> either, in a lot of places he used <....> instread. Obviously those got messed up when you automatically switched to <tab> format.
And those were the most dangerous places for syntax error, as the length looked equal in some lines which were of totally different size.
Not to even mention all the "typos", where there were 6 or 7 . instead of 8 in the original code.

Took a lot of time to thouroughly check everything, but finally it's ready
Now everything is consistent (hopefully)

 

[merijn_v1]

I'm glad everything is fine now.

You probably already noticed, but I'm now working on the victory screen. I'm adding some extra info for all UHV, like the "control province X" UHV already have. So please don't touch the victory.py and victoryscreen.py.

Right now, I have all civs upto Poland done. (chronological order)

 

[AbsintheRed]

Ohh, sry, just saw this
I still had some pending formatting changes to be finished in the victory.py, just finished uploading it in my 1108 commit
But no prob, it's mostly formatting, not too many real changes there
Won't touch the file further till you are ready

Anyway, I'm curious
What extra info does it have? I didn't see anything new in the "control province X' UHVs
What's your plans with it?

 

[ales_]

As I understand, he meant giving other UHV goals a description like the Colonies goals already have.

 

[AbsintheRed]

As I understand, he meant giving other UHV goals a description like the Colonies goals already have.

Ahh, I see now what I misread
But you mean Conquest goals, I presume
That's where the goals are already separated to 'already done' and 'not yet'

 

[ales_]

Yes, I misread too.

 

[Panopticon]

At the beginning of auto-playing Novgorod:

Traceback (most recent call last):

  File "CvEventInterface", line 23, in onEvent

  File "CvRFCEventManager", line 152, in handleEvent

  File "CvRFCEventManager", line 163, in _handleDefaultEvent

  File "CvRFCEventHandler", line 340, in onCityBuilt

AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'iImpBeforeCity'
ERR: Python function onEvent failed, module CvEventInterface

 

[AbsintheRed]

Ehh, it seems AI autoplay messes up my fort-to-walls hack
Works perfectly fine if you start with a civ in 500 AD, no matter how long you play
But there are still issues this way, unfortunately :/

 

[gilgames]

I tried a danish game right now. So compared to the old one, its means more action and +1 settlers. and come on! are you serious? a lots of province 2/3 of them border or foreign! i had no time to biuld any settlers at all. London flipped to france when my huskarl landed. i made 5 husk to take tonsberg and raze stavanger, all of them failed. Its nice that husk can beat berserks but all ai defend himself with archery units...
all togather it seems a bit too much. or too short time. its doesnt make sense why i have to attack norway and occupy sweeden while controlling england !?
i do not see the point in this rush, i.e.: spain got 500 years to conquer core and historical areas + make all of them catholic. we all know its can be done till 1200 or less, but not under 100 years for sure. i took spain for example, because similar starting time-unit-province to conquer. i am really curious how do you see this!

another question: Does sombody play with the Dutch? i mean more then 1-2 times (when u rty them...)

 

[Swarbs]

I tried a danish game right now. So compared to the old one, its means more action and +1 settlers. and come on! are you serious? a lots of province 2/3 of them border or foreign! i had no time to biuld any settlers at all. London flipped to france when my huskarl landed. i made 5 husk to take tonsberg and raze stavanger, all of them failed. Its nice that husk can beat berserks but all ai defend himself with archery units...
all togather it seems a bit too much. or too short time. its doesnt make sense why i have to attack norway and occupy sweeden while controlling england !?
i do not see the point in this rush, i.e.: spain got 500 years to conquer core and historical areas + make all of them catholic. we all know its can be done till 1200 or less, but not under 100 years for sure. i took spain for example, because similar starting time-unit-province to conquer. i am really curious how do you see this!

Have to say I agree with this - conquering three or four cities and building two settlers is not really possible for the Danes.

I think we need to consider one of the following:

1. Having poorly defended indie cities spawn in Mercia and East Anglia when the Danes are played by a human
2. Removing Mercia and East Anglia from the Danish UHV
3. Having the Danes spawn in 800AD rather than 936AD in line with:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danelaw#Background
"From around 800, there had been waves of Danish raids on the coastlines of the British Isles. In 865, instead of raiding, the Danes landed a large army in East Anglia, with the intention of conquering the four Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England".

Personally I would lean towards a combination of 1. and 3. - give the Danes more time to reflect the historical period during which they focused on conquering England, and have indie cities spawn there (can be better defended if the Danes have more time). This is because the Danes settling new cities in England is ahistorical imo - that UHV should be a conquest UHV rather than a settling UHV.

 

[Swarbs]

another question: Does sombody play with the Dutch? i mean more then 1-2 times (when u rty them...)

I play with them a bit, tho' it takes a long time for them to autoplay.

I find they can be a lot like the other late game civs, particularly Muscovy and the Ottomans but also Portugal, in that their game depends too much on what has happened during autoplay.

If you have a weak / collapsed Germany and France then you are generally fine, as no one will try to attack you. But if you have super powered Germany or France that has conquered and vassalised loads of civs, you can find a stack of doom attacking you soon after you start, with no real way to fight it off. Similarly with Portugal if one of the Spanish / Cordobans has dominated in Iberia, Ottomans with Hungary and Byzantium, and Muscovy with Germany and Hungary.

I think there is an argument to have a split start for the mod, perhaps with an 1125AD (200 turns if I calculate correctly?) start to make it a bit more balanced for the later civs. Also means there is no more than 200 turns to autoplay for any civ, even a late starting one like the Dutch.

 

[merijn_v1]

I think there is an argument to have a split start for the mod, perhaps with an 1125AD (200 turns if I calculate correctly?) start to make it a bit more balanced for the later civs. Also means there is no more than 200 turns to autoplay for any civ, even a late starting one like the Dutch.

This is what is on my todo list after I finished the UHV screen. That means I will start soon. I think I will use 1260 AD as a starting year like RFCE++.

 

[AbsintheRed]

This is what is on my todo list after I finished the UHV screen. That means I will start soon. I think I will use 1260 AD as a starting year like RFCE++.

Agreed, I also planned to have a late start
1260 sounds good
But only after the long-promised official release of 1.3

 

[AbsintheRed]

I tried a danish game right now. So compared to the old one, its means more action and +1 settlers. and come on! are you serious? a lots of province 2/3 of them border or foreign! i had no time to biuld any settlers at all. London flipped to france when my huskarl landed. i made 5 husk to take tonsberg and raze stavanger, all of them failed. Its nice that husk can beat berserks but all ai defend himself with archery units...
all togather it seems a bit too much. or too short time. its doesnt make sense why i have to attack norway and occupy sweeden while controlling england !?
i do not see the point in this rush, i.e.: spain got 500 years to conquer core and historical areas + make all of them catholic. we all know its can be done till 1200 or less, but not under 100 years for sure. i took spain for example, because similar starting time-unit-province to conquer. i am really curious how do you see this!

another question: Does sombody play with the Dutch? i mean more then 1-2 times (when u rty them...)

Have to say I agree with this - conquering three or four cities and building two settlers is not really possible for the Danes.

I think we need to consider one of the following:

1. Having poorly defended indie cities spawn in Mercia and East Anglia when the Danes are played by a human
2. Removing Mercia and East Anglia from the Danish UHV
3. Having the Danes spawn in 800AD rather than 936AD in line with:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danelaw#Background
"From around 800, there had been waves of Danish raids on the coastlines of the British Isles. In 865, instead of raiding, the Danes landed a large army in East Anglia, with the intention of conquering the four Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England".

Personally I would lean towards a combination of 1. and 3. - give the Danes more time to reflect the historical period during which they focused on conquering England, and have indie cities spawn there (can be better defended if the Danes have more time). This is because the Danes settling new cities in England is ahistorical imo - that UHV should be a conquest UHV rather than a settling UHV.

Yeah, I'm also improving the UHV along with the barbarian changes
I don't really want to change the starting date, at least for now.
Maybe after 1.3, we will see if we can get something challenging out of the current setup or not.

My proposal was to include a couple more indy towns in England (for example Norwich for East Anglia) - so the UHV's English part is all about conquest - and reduce them to towns on the English spawn
Didn't get too much responce to that though

Also unsure about the Norwegian / Swedish part.
Conquering Vestfold does seem difficult, as it usually have at least 2 cities or a major civ, including the capital

 

[merijn_v1]

I don't have any other items on my todo list currently, so I will start working on it on the background and wait with commiting until after the release.

 

[AbsintheRed]

I don't have any other items on my todo list currently, so I will start working on it on the background and wait with commiting until after the release.

Alright, sounds great!
Btw, there is a bug with your new victory screen
Line 1305, with iBiggestTrader == iPlayer, pBestTrader.getName())
The python error won't appear for all civs, but check a Byzantine start for example

 

[AbsintheRed]

I don't have any other items on my todo list currently, so I will start working on it on the background and wait with commiting until after the release.

If you have time, you can check the background and the buttons of the new leaders
I'm not perfectly satisfied with everything there
For example in some places in the Foreign relations screen, some of the new buttons are smaller than the other ones
Of the backgrounds: I will soon post a list which ones should be changed IMO

PS: don't change the big FPK files yet, just put your changes into the temporary Art folder
It will happen on release when they are final, but otherwise don't want to force the players to dl ~500 megabyte with every commit where we change some art

 

[DC123456789]

Maybe only reduce them to towns if the English player is human? The only problem really is that it doesn't give the human much choice for settling IIRC, the AI wouldn't suffer from that (and it's not like the English particularly overperform or anything right now anyway).