Rhye's of Europe Civ Discussion Thread

[The Turk]

@st.lucifer

Thank You for your prompt and well written response, I know understand your position better. But two big things I have to disagree with you on, is when you said that the Arabs and Cordobans are easy, I had a hard time believing that because just like jessiecat said, they most definitely are not and require more and better units to help them maintain order and stability. Also I hardly doubt that 1 more city well placed city with resources already hooked up to it is going to bring down the Byzantine Empire, so adding one more would not only help the Ottomans (Because it could flip to them) but it would not harm the Byzantines (until the Ottomans arrived). Also something which you may not be able to change but which I would still love to see changed is the replacement of trade routs with random resource placement on the map, couldn't you just create a "Silk Road" System next to Damascus that would be enabled from the start? The same goes for Indian Ocean trade to represent the Spice Trade that happened. I'm also happy your going to revert some tiles in N Africa and the Middle East to grasslands as that would greatly help, to answer your question about the tiles flipping to desert, that is supposed to represent desertification which took place, whcih you can then revert some of the grassland terrains into desert, slowly weakening the Arabs and the Cordoban cities in North Africa. A mod for RFC has already done this by changing certain tiles around the world on the date 1600 to forests I think, I will get you a link soon. Also I strongly back the idea of having more dense forests in Northern Europe and France (to a lesser extent though). This way coupled with more hills (with dense forests on them) once you are enabled to cut down trees, there will be a production BOOM!! this will enable them to catch up as all the previously dense forests giving them -1 food will have become extra production to there cities and be turned into farmland/cottages bringing there economy to a very big advantage.

 

[st.lucifer]

@st.lucifer

Thank You for your prompt and well written response, I know understand your position better. But two big things I have to disagree with you on, is when you said that the Arabs and Cordobans are easy, I had a hard time believing that because just like jessiecat said, they most definitely are not and require more and better units to help them maintain order and stability. Also I hardly doubt that 1 more city well placed city with resources already hooked up to it is going to bring down the Byzantine Empire, so adding one more would not only help the Ottomans (Because it could flip to them) but it would not harm the Byzantines (until the Ottomans arrived). Also something which you may not be able to change but which I would still love to see changed is the replacement of trade routs with random resource placement on the map, couldn't you just create a "Silk Road" System next to Damascus that would be enabled from the start? The same goes for Indian Ocean trade to represent the Spice Trade that happened. I'm also happy your going to revert some tiles in N Africa and the Middle East to grasslands as that would greatly help, to answer your question about the tiles flipping to desert, that is supposed to represent desertification which took place, whcih you can then revert some of the grassland terrains into desert, slowly weakening the Arabs and the Cordoban cities in North Africa. A mod for RFC has already done this by changing certain tiles around the world on the date 1600 to forests I think, I will get you a link soon. Also I strongly back the idea of having more dense forests in Northern Europe and France (to a lesser extent though). This way coupled with more hills (with dense forests on them) once you are enabled to cut down trees, there will be a production BOOM!! this will enable them to catch up as all the previously dense forests giving them -1 food will have become extra production to there cities and be turned into farmland/cottages bringing there economy to a very big advantage.

I'm with you on the terrain shift idea - it's a good idea, and it would be neat to see implemented. My history thesis is on central Asia, so I'm aware of the desertification issue; your suggestion would be a much more accurate way of representing it. My concern is mostly with the coding burden and potential for error, but if there's a way to do it easily, I'm all for it.

The dense forest idea is also a good one. I'll expand the ones in Germany and put some in the Massif Central. I'm also tweaking central Anatolia a little in the next update to make it more city-friendly.

The pre-built silk plantations next to Damascus (an otherwise unremarkable city) are in many ways a more useful/better representation of the Silk Road than access to a resource of questionable value (think about it - the Atlantic/etc Access resources just enable building colonies late in the game.) By putting the silk and coffee plantations in, those cities become much richer and more valuable - and the plantations are occasionally destroyed by barbarians, just as the Silk Road link was frequently interrupted.

Maybe Cordoba isn't as easy as some of the others, but I've played two games as Arabia in which I built every single wonder without any sort of challenge, founded all of the corporations I wanted to (Hanseatic/Templars/Augsburg in all cities), controlled a ridiculous amount of territory and cities, had over 25% Islamic population within my own borders, tripled the score of the second place civ (Kiev), and could have easily won the game in any way I chose long before I reached the last UHV trigger. Arabia is incredibly easy with a little bit of skill and planning.

 

[Panopticon]

I wrote the mod component to which The Turk refers. If you all manage to agree on which tiles should be changed from Terrain A to Terrain B, it's quite easy to modify what I did to change a terrain feature shift to a terrain shift. But I suspect the former, rather than the latter, will be the challenge.

 

[st.lucifer]

I wrote the mod component to which The Turk refers. If you all manage to agree on which tiles should be changed from Terrain A to Terrain B, it's quite easy to modify what I did to change a terrain feature shift to a terrain shift. But I suspect the former, rather than the latter, will be the challenge.

That's encouraging, thanks! I suspect you're probably right.

Turk, if you'd like to propose some tiles in the Levant for greening/desertification, I'm interested in hearing what you'd change.

 

[The Turk]

That's encouraging, thanks! I suspect you're probably right.

Turk, if you'd like to propose some tiles in the Levant for greening/desertification, I'm interested in hearing what you'd change.

Sure I'll give you an image soon, just let me work on it

 

[3Miro]

@The Turk: I will only point on the ideas that will not change, everything else is more or less a good idea or already under construction.

The entire founding of the Islam + Holy City has been discussed largely and the current situation is more due to code and game rules than anything else. There is no other clean way to deal with the situation, forcing a Holy City for a religion is hard and capitals should not be pre-founded. Think of it as: Damascus was there, but it was the Arabs that made it really important (and don't mind that they don't). The Islamic Holy City Shrine should be associated with the pilgrims making a stop at Damascus on their way to Mecca. Also, having it Jerusalem would really make the Crusades bad (loss of Jerusalem would be too much). Also, more Christianity in the Middle East would only destabilize Arabia.

Arabian conquest to the East has been somewhat addressed in the Islamic Faith Power and we are not changing the map. I know that Turkey and Arabia could be better represented, but our mod is RFC:Europe and we emphasize the Islamic-European history more than the Middle East.

Separate tech tree is redundant. Some revisions might improve it as well as Arabian sub-tree, but we are not making a complete separate one.

 

[The Turk]

@The Turk: I will only point on the ideas that will not change, everything else is more or less a good idea or already under construction.

The entire founding of the Islam + Holy City has been discussed largely and the current situation is more due to code and game rules than anything else. There is no other clean way to deal with the situation, forcing a Holy City for a religion is hard and capitals should not be pre-founded. Think of it as: Damascus was there, but it was the Arabs that made it really important (and don't mind that they don't). The Islamic Holy City Shrine should be associated with the pilgrims making a stop at Damascus on their way to Mecca. Also, having it Jerusalem would really make the Crusades bad (loss of Jerusalem would be too much). Also, more Christianity in the Middle East would only destabilize Arabia.

Arabian conquest to the East has been somewhat addressed in the Islamic Faith Power and we are not changing the map. I know that Turkey and Arabia could be better represented, but our mod is RFC:Europe and we emphasize the Islamic-European history more than the Middle East.

Separate tech tree is redundant. Some revisions might improve it as well as Arabian sub-tree, but we are not making a complete separate one.

Ok sounds good, but I still don't think having the Ka'ba being built in Damascus is appropriate, why not you take out the Ka'ba and instead when Jerusalem flips (and converts to Islam) have it spawn the Al-Asqa Mosque (Dome Rock). That would much more historically accurate. Also about the tech tree thing, thats what I meant, not a COMPLETE new tech tree just a sub-tree that would later join back to the main one. The idea of having Damascus pre-founded came from the idea that Constantinople is per-founded, so I thought you guys could do the same for Damascus, also is it possible to give Damascus more buildings when it spawns then regular cities? And I still think that Jerusalem should be the Islamic holy city or at least, add a Medina to the bottom of the map and make it the holy city, that would be good to. Also I'm surprised that Christianity and Judaism destabilize Arabia, as technically the Muslims didn't mind them and respected there religion as well as tolerated it calling them "People of the Book". Therefore I think it should be that for the Arabians, they shouldn't get a stability hit when they have christianity and Judaism in there cities, if anything they should get a bonus for that (well that may bit too much though).

 

[st.lucifer]

Ok sounds good, but I still don't think having the Ka'ba being built in Damascus is appropriate, why not you take out the Ka'ba and instead when Jerusalem flips (and converts to Islam) have it spawn the Al-Asqa Mosque (Dome Rock). That would much more historically accurate. Also about the tech tree thing, thats what I meant, not a COMPLETE new tech tree just a sub-tree that would later join back to the main one. The idea of having Damascus pre-founded came from the idea that Constantinople is per-founded, so I thought you guys could do the same for Damascus, also is it possible to give Damascus more buildings when it spawns then regular cities? And I still think that Jerusalem should be the Islamic holy city or at least, add a Medina to the bottom of the map and make it the holy city, that would be good to. Also I'm surprised that Christianity and Judaism destabilize Arabia, as technically the Muslims didn't mind them and respected there religion as well as tolerated it calling them "People of the Book". Therefore I think it should be that for the Arabians, they shouldn't get a stability hit when they have christianity and Judaism in there cities, if anything they should get a bonus for that (well that may bit too much though).

Two thoughts:

-Constantinople and Rome are pre-founded, and the civs start from 500 AD. That's easy. Coding that for a civ that starts after 500 AD is more difficult.
I'm with 3Miro on the Jerusalem issue - I meant to make the point about destablization by the Crusades in the earlier long post, but forgot.
-All religions destabilize all civs. We're not changing it for any individual civ, unless it would be as a UP. (Might be a good one for the Dutch, but they wouldn't see much/any benefit from it.)

 

[The Turk]

anywho here are the pictures I have with dots to represent what they should be at the start, then change them back to what they were now. But what do you think about the wonder change, and getting rid of the Ka'ba, that can't be TOO hard to code?

oops! Sorry for using green dots, I now realize its really hard to spot them

 

[3Miro]

I second st. Lucifer. I know it is not historically accurate, but from the gameplay point of view it makes most sense. Islam is the Arabic religion and it belongs to the "most Arabic" city. It terms of the gameplay dynamics, the city that is "the most yours" is your Capital. Jerusalem is a bad choice, since it may fall to the Crusades and that becomes a huge loss. Other cities (such as Medina or pushing Mecca's location) are potentially weaker and thus have the effect to weaken the effect (if it takes too long to build a Market and get the bonus or if you cannot use the faith point combined with other specialists or if you cannot use the extra culture to get all the silk sooner or to culture push the Byzantines) and that holds for both the AI and the Human.

 

[3Miro]

anywho here are the pictures I have with dots to represent what they should be at the start, then change them back to what they were now. But what do you think about the wonder change, and getting rid of the Ka'ba, that can't be TOO hard to code?

oops! Sorry for using green dots, I now realize its really hard to spot them

We can do wonder and map changes.

 

[The Turk]

We can do wonder and map changes.

Perfect! Ok as long as you guys do the map changes in the Middle East and in Germany and take out the Ka'ba and replace it with the Al-Asqa Mosque in Jerusalem I'll be more then happy! Also you might want to change the name of Jerusalem, while its part of the Byzantine Empire, I'm sure there was a better name for it.

 

[jessiecat]

I second st. Lucifer. I know it is not historically accurate, but from the gameplay point of view it makes most sense. Islam is the Arabic religion and it belongs to the "most Arabic" city. It terms of the gameplay dynamics, the city that is "the most yours" is your Capital. Jerusalem is a bad choice, since it may fall to the Crusades and that becomes a huge loss. Other cities (such as Medina or pushing Mecca's location) are potentially weaker and thus have the effect to weaken the effect (if it takes too long to build a Market and get the bonus or if you cannot use the faith point combined with other specialists or if you cannot use the extra culture to get all the silk sooner or to culture push the Byzantines) and that holds for both the AI and the Human.

I'm with both of you on all your points though I also see what The Turk is on about. Would it not be possible to have the Dome of the Rock built automatically in Jerusalem when it flips and becomes Muslim? No different from having the Church of the Nativity representing Christianity. Damascus would still remain the capitol, with the Masjid Al Haram representing the founding of Islam and some beefed-up resources so it can grow a bit stronger and have better production. Right now it's pretty weak and is always overshadowed by Sour and Jerusalem.
Also we need to address the issue of respawning and 2nd. leaderheads. When the Arabs switch from Abu Bakr
to Saladin, the capitol really should switch too, from Damascus to Alexandria or Cairo, as it did historically.

 

[The Turk]

I'm with both of you on all your points though I also see what The Turk is on about. Would it not be possible to have the Dome of the Rock built automatically in Jerusalem when it flips and becomes Muslim? No different from having the Church of the Nativity representing Christianity. Damascus would still remain the capitol, with the Masjid Al Haram representing the founding of Islam and some beefed-up resources so it can grow a bit stronger and have better production. Right now it's pretty weak and is always overshadowed by Sour and Jerusalem.
Also we need to address the issue of respawning and 2nd. leaderheads. When the Arabs switch from Abu Bakr
to Saladin, the capitol really should switch too, from Damascus to Alexandria or Cairo, as it did historically.

Ya basically when Jerusalem flips to the Arabs, and becomes Muslim, you can also let the Dome of Rock Spawn into Jerusalem just like it did historically, and you can take out the Ka'ba which is supposed to be in Mecca. Anyways I really like the idea of letting the Arabs start off as Abu Bakr, and then letting them switch to Saladin and moving the capital to Cairo. This would be really could if you could pull that off, also you could then change the name from the Umayyad Dynasty to the Fatmid Dynasty

 

[embryodead]

Ya basically when Jerusalem flips to the Arabs, and becomes Muslim, you can also let the Dome of Rock Spawn into Jerusalem just like it did historically, and you can take out the Ka'ba which is supposed to be in Mecca. Anyways I really like the idea of letting the Arabs start off as Abu Bakr, and then letting them switch to Saladin and moving the capital to Cairo. This would be really could if you could pull that off, also you could then change the name from the Umayyad Dynasty to the Fatmid Dynasty

Fatimids don't make much sense considering that it was Saladin & his uncle that put the final blow to Fatimid Caliphate and took Egypt from them. If anything it should be Ayyubid Dynasty or simply Sultanate of Egypt since that name includes both Ayyubids & Mamluks, everything from 1171 to Ottoman conquest.

Other than that, I too think Al-Aqsa should be the Muslim Shrine.

 

[The Turk]

Fatimids don't make much sense considering that it was Saladin & his uncle that put the final blow to Fatimid Caliphate and took Egypt from them. If anything it should be Ayyubid Dynasty or simply Sultanate of Egypt since that name includes both Ayyubids & Mamluks, everything from 1171 to Ottoman conquest.

Other than that, I too think Al-Aqsa should be the Muslim Shrine.

Oops! ya your right, what I meant to say that it should be the Ayyubids in Egypt later on. And once again I urge the RFC Europe group to take out the Ka'ba and instead let the Al-Asqa Mosque spawn in Jerusalem, once it flips

 

[jessiecat]

Oops! ya your right, what I meant to say that it should be the Ayyubids in Egypt later on. And once again I urge the RFC Europe group to take out the Ka'ba and instead let the Al-Asqa Mosque spawn in Jerusalem, once it flips

I'm with you half and half. The Al-Aqsa Mosque should spawn in Jerusalem and the Ka'ba should remain in Damascus when Islam is founded. We need such a compromise, for the gameplay reasons already described.
Sedna and 3Miro, please decide on this and implement please.

 

[st.lucifer]

anywho here are the pictures I have with dots to represent what they should be at the start, then change them back to what they were now. But what do you think about the wonder change, and getting rid of the Ka'ba, that can't be TOO hard to code?

oops! Sorry for using green dots, I now realize its really hard to spot them

I'm fine with those changes - I'm actually thinking about making the eastern part of the Nile delta more inhabitable anyway. The reason that the delta is plains rather than grassland is actually to make the cities better - there aren't many hammers available otherwise unless the whole area's covered in water wheels, which aren't much use early on.

On the Dome of the Rock issue - would it be a reasonable compromise to spawn the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem upon conquest, but as a ceremonial wonder only (perhaps it gives culture, but no other function?) That way there's an obvious Muslim holy building/wonder in Jerusalem, but the gift isn't a powerful unbalancer.

 

[jessiecat]

I'm fine with those changes - I'm actually thinking about making the eastern part of the Nile delta more inhabitable anyway. The reason that the delta is plains rather than grassland is actually to make the cities better - there aren't many hammers available otherwise unless the whole area's covered in water wheels, which aren't much use early on.

On the Dome of the Rock issue - would it be a reasonable compromise to spawn the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem upon conquest, but as a ceremonial wonder only (perhaps it gives culture, but no other function?) That way there's an obvious Muslim holy building/wonder in Jerusalem, but the gift isn't a powerful unbalancer.

So, you agree with my compromise as suggested (post 1933)?

 

[Wessel V1]

I'm fine with those changes - I'm actually thinking about making the eastern part of the Nile delta more inhabitable anyway. The reason that the delta is plains rather than grassland is actually to make the cities better - there aren't many hammers available otherwise unless the whole area's covered in water wheels, which aren't much use early on.

I agree that plains are better than grasslands around the Nile delta, combined with farms and another hammer for the right civic, these cities can become quite productive, and most of them already become rather large because they work lots of coastal tiles. Grasslands make cottages more attractive, but then the player must choose between productive cottages and productive farms, which will probably the latter one as they are much more useful in Africa and the Levant.
Another thing: more plains (in stead of deserts) also means more land to farm when the area can be irrigated. So, this means that Arabia actually is going to grow faster after they discover a late game tech, which we are trying to avoid AFAIK.
And a final suggestion: please remove the plains at the edge of the map. The only thing they do is attracting the AI to build worthless cities there.