RFCEurope 1.1

[AbsintheRed]

Okay, thanks for reporting it
Actually it came up before, but I didn't find the cause yet
There is good chance that it's connected to Venice
Can you check if it appears to you with another random civ?

EDIT: I think I found it
There was a small xml typo in the general italian unit sounds
So it wasn't speicific to venice after all

 

[rfcfanatic]

So far I have encountered it only with Venice, but I have only played as the 7 earliest civs. For example, I didn't notice it with Bulgaria (which also uses customized speech). As you mentioned that it was somehow related to Italian, I'm probably gonna experience this again when I get to play as the Genoese.

Btw, here's another strange thing I found:

Spoiler :

See that Arab crossbowman standing in the water?

 

[AbsintheRed]

Wow, that's interesting
Never saw anything like that in the mod
You didn't use WB anytime in this particular game, right?

EDIT: the plot stats are strange too
99% arab, and 0% venetian
For how long do you have Antioch?
Was it arabian before you conquered it?

 

[rfcfanatic]

Nope, I didn't use WB. I captured Antioch in 1347 and yes, it used to belong to Arabia. If I remember correctly, it was defended by a couple of Naffatun mercenaries, but already then I saw the crossbow in the water (just checked 1344 autosave and it's there).

 

[rfcfanatic]

I traced it further back, and it's there already in 1308 autosave. That's the earliest save I have. The only difference is that Antioch belonged to Mongol Keshiks back then.

 

[AbsintheRed]

Thanks, but if I don't have a save before this happened, I have no chance to find what went wrong
Maybe it's somehow related to culture pushes, and it happened around the Arab-Byzantine wars
The bug itself is probably harmless, just delete and readd the unit to someplace else in WB
I don't have any better idea until a similar issue comes up again

 

[rfcfanatic]

No problem. I got rid of the unit by attacking it with a carrack. The game didn't crash then and haven't done it several turns afterwards. Indeed, it seems to be a harmless bug.

 

[AbsintheRed]

@merijn
I added messages when resources spawn/disappear
The new corp. advisor button is also almost there
I remember you asked for these 2 things a while ago. Was there anything else?

 

[AbsintheRed]

No problem. I got rid of the unit by attacking it with a carrack. The game didn't crash then and haven't done it several turns afterwards. Indeed, it seems to be a harmless bug.

So it won't even crash when you attack/kill a land unit with a naval one?
Okay then, it's time to go back to our straits idea

 

[Spirictum]

BTW how can Venice become so huge? Did you change your Merchant Republic Civ? Or is Viceroy so nice to let you make this huge empire? In Monarch I was struggling to keep my 5 core cities with Constantinople, that I could only conquer Crete, Rhodes and Morea after getting my AA in the final turns of the game (and that was all, 5 core cities + Tanjah, Crete, Rhodes and Morea).

 

[rfcfanatic]

BTW how can Venice become so huge? Did you change your Merchant Republic Civ? Or is Viceroy so nice to let you make this huge empire? In Monarch I was struggling to keep my 5 core cities with Constantinople, that I could only conquer Crete, Rhodes and Morea after getting my AA in the final turns of the game (and that was all, 5 core cities + Tanjah, Crete, Rhodes and Morea).

Yep, I revolted away from Merchant Republic to Feudal Monarchy/Feudal Law quite early as the stability started to get ugly after conquering a couple of cities from the Byzantine and founding a few cities myself.

Before that I also adopted Militarism civic. But now I'm divided whether to continue with Militarism or go Imperialism instead. A couple of civs (Hungary, Byzantium) are out of the game. Would the "cities under occupation" stability penalty still apply to their cities that I now control if I switched away from Militarism?

Besides civics, I prioritized buildings that boost stability. In conquered cities, the first construction projects were Manor House and Courthouse. For some time I also had to build walls and castles, but this problem disappeared after I completed Krak de Chevaliers. Indeed, this will be one of (if not) the most powerful wonder in the game if your goal is to build a large empire and stay stable while doing it. The free castle with KdC is like +1 stability on city conquest, if I'm right.

At the moment my stability cap has dried out, so my expansion has to stagnate until I discover Public Works. Then I can start spamming Night Watch buildings (another stability-boosting building) in my cities. I also hope to build Palacio de Pena soon which is another powerful wonder for stability (can switch civics without anarchy at minimum waiting period; just like Cristo Redentor in vanilla BTS). But for the moment, I'm only gonna worry about suppressing the Ottoman spawn. Although I pursue expansion, my final goal will be to complete the 3rd UHV before Domination.

Well, all of this applies to Viceroy. Not sure if this strategy also works on Monarch though. Does the stability get more difficult to manage as the difficulty gets higher?

 

[rfcfanatic]

Hmm... the game froze to the point where I had to shut it down via Windows Task Manager while the game was processing a turn switch from 1377 to 1380. But as it has happened a few times earlier when I played with other civs (France, Byzantium), I believe it's not related to "deleting" that crossbowman with a naval unit.

There were many things going on in 1377: plague, Ottoman spawn, Ottoman destruction, Ottoman re-spawn etc. Maybe just some memory issue. This problem has never reoccurred when reloading from the latest save.

 

[AbsintheRed]

I really doubt it's related to the arabian crossbowman, rather some memory issues as you said
Post if you cannot continue your game after reload

 

[merijn_v1]

@merijn
I added messages when resources spawn/disappear
The new corp. advisor button is also almost there
I remember you asked for these 2 things a while ago. Was there anything else?

If there was anything else, I don't remember it. I guess there wasn't anything else.

But in the meantime, I came up with something else:
An interactive mercenary-advisor button. When there is a mercenary in your pool, the button gets a green wink. When there isn't, you get a red cross. Look at the screenshot.
With "a mercenary in your pool", I mean there really is a merc in the pool available to be hired. Sometimes you get a message that a merc is available in your territory, but it isn't (yet) in the pool. So when you got to the advisor, you'll still see an empty pool. The green wink should only be shown when there really is an unit visible when you open the advisor.
This makes it easier to see if a merc is available or not. You only have to look at the button to see if you can hire a merc without having to open the advisor screen itself. I know you get a message when a merc enters the pool, but that's only for one turn. And you can miss it for several reasons.
I experimented a bit on how to code it, but I failed. But it seems that it only requires some additional python code. Not some .thm thing like the corp-advisor button. If you can do the python code, I can do the required XML and art.

Spoiler :

This is the code that manages the merc-advisor button:
In CvMainInterface.py

		# < Mercenaries Start >
		iBtnX += iBtnAdvance
		# Set the mercenary manager button in the interface
		screen.setImageButton( "MercenaryManagerButton", ArtFileMgr.getInterfaceArtInfo("INTERFACE_MERCENARIES_MANAGER").getPath(), iBtnX, iBtnY - 1, iBtnWidth, iBtnWidth, WidgetTypes.WIDGET_ACTION, gc.getControlInfo(ControlTypes.CONTROL_MERCENARIES_MANAGER).getActionInfoIndex(), -1 )
		#screen.setImageButton( "MercenaryManagerButton", ArtFileMgr.getInterfaceArtInfo("INTERFACE_MERCENARIES_MANAGER").getPath(), iBtnX, iBtnY - 2, iBtnWidth, iBtnWidth, WidgetTypes.WIDGET_ACTION, -1, -1 )
		# Hide the mercenary manager button 
		screen.hide( "MercenaryManagerButton" )
		# < Mercenaries End >

I was thinking/hoping that something like this would do the trick: (very abstract example)
if (merc in mercpool):
screen.setImageButton( "MercenaryManagerButtonGreenWink", xxxxxx)
else:
screen.setImageButton( "MercenaryManagerButtonRedCross", xxxxxx)

I loaded a test game and unfortunately, the new corp advisor button seems not to be working.

 

[AbsintheRed]

I loaded a test game and unfortunately, the new corp advisor button seems not to be working.

Yeah, I know
The theme file updates are not complete yet

About the mercs: a small continuous notification for the player is a good idea
Will think about it, how would be the best to solve this

 

[AbsintheRed]

About the mercs: a small continuous notification for the player is a good idea
Will think about it, how would be the best to solve this

I don't want to add too many things to the user interface, but what if this is another small line under the stability, GG points and UHV counters in the top left corner?
In the same minimalistic stlye: a small mercenary icon, and after that a number of the availeable mercenaries
Or two numbers: currently hired mercenaries + the availeable ones
Thoughts on this?

 

[Pieboy12343]

It said in the installation thing that first you install normal Civ 4, then Warlords, then BtS, then the patch. If you don't install everything or in the wrong order, it won't work.

 

[AbsintheRed]

If you have your Beyond the Sword running without any issues with the 3.19 patch, RFCE will also work perfectly for you
Until then we cannot help you...

 

[gps]

Great mod! Just went through my first game with it - and I must say I am quite impressed. Very professional looking, I especially like the beautyfully designed leaders.
Just one thing seems a little bit strange, maybe a bug? I was playing Germany and vasalized Norse. When Sweden appeared they were at war with the Norse but at peace with me. When I ask Sweden to make peace with Norse they say "Sorry, it's not in our their hands". And this infinite war really spoils my relationship with Sweden...

 

[AbsintheRed]

Thanks, glad you like the mod!
And it's definitely a bug, I'm looking for it some time now
There is something wrong with war declarations when vassalization and spawns are both in the picture