Ok, where to begin, I recently played my first game of RFC Europe Alpha Version 2.8 and I started as the Arabs and I was not impressed with a couple of things. I know this is a long list but these are all my constructive criticisms which I sat down while playing and wrote down on two sheets of paper, so please take my suggestions into consideration as I put a lot of thought into this. Also if your confused by any of my suggestions, please don't hesitate to ask about them as here I cut down on my reasoning to save space. These might be a bit out of order but thats because I wrote it as I saw it
I'm going to respond to these point-by-point. I'm sorry if this takes a lot of space - if you're a longtime modder here, just skip over it; if you're newish, go ahead and read it as these are largely common questions.
Ok here we go:
1. First off I found elephants in Iceland (LOL). You guys might want to change that
The elephants represent walrus ivory. We're working on the artwork.
2. The Cordobans became Orthodox Christian even though only ONE of there cities was Christian while the ALL the rest were Muslim. To counter this just give them 1-2 more Imams to convert there cities
Reasonable suggestion. I've never seen Cordoba be anything other than Muslim, but that's a good idea.
3. Byzantines NEED more cities in Anatolia to unify all of Anatolia under one culture and for the Ottomans to spawn and be able to get more cities quickly therefore crumbling the Byzantines faster. I would suggest giving 2 more cities in Anatolia. Also too simulate the Byzantines large navy there should be 2-3 boats when they spawn (remember the Arabs even had to move the capital of Egypt from Alexandria to Cairo just because of there navy, if you want more evidence on there navy just ask me)
Adding more cities in Anatolia creates a few problems. First, the maintenance of all of the Byzantine cities is a bear - it's hard for them to have any tech rate at all with all of the GPT they have to spend. Adding more cities makes that worse, and most of the ones we might add (Trebizond, Antalya, etc.) wouldn't have many advantages to offset the maintenance penalty. Second, more cities in Anatolia gives the Turks no room to expand when they do spawn. I realize that the Ottomans as they're currently coded are too weak to do much (and the territory they get isn't very hospitable), but we're working on both of those things.
4. Like mentioned before Arabia is TOO TOO weak in the military (only three horse archers isn't going to get them far) and technologically. For Gouod's sake these guys were hundreds of years ahead of everyone else the same goes for the Cordobans
I agree that the starting military is weak, and we should probably improve it to ensure that they're able to take at least a couple of Byzantine cities from the start. The problem with Arabia is that they're an incredibly powerful civ if played correctly - the existing tech advantage and buildings/wonders which they have access to in the early game, along with a handful of great cities (al-Qods, Sour, Alexandria, Cairo-on-the-hill, easily Tunis) give them such a head start that it's impossible for anyone to catch up. Balancing Arabia/Cordoba will be a challenge, but as it currently stands I'd rank both civs as easy to play.
5. Al-Qods should be the Muslim holy city as its the 3rd holiest city for Muslims. So take out the Masajid Al-Haram (The Ka'ba, which should be in Mecca) and replace it with the Al-Asqa Mosque (Dome of Rock), it should spawn there when Islam spreads to Al-Qods. Also a good idea would be to switch around the powers for the Masajid Al-Haram and the Al-Asqa Mosque to give the Arabs the same benefits. So now when the Arabs found Damascus as there Capital there should be an Imam to spread Islam to Damascus initially (just so Christianity doesn't spread to Damascus).
Obviously, Damascus isn't the most logical holy city for Islam, but as we're having Islam founded as Arabia spawns, that will always end up as the holy city. They don't need an imam to convert Damascus, as their unique power will spread Islam to any Arabian city, including Damascus - if anything, it would make more sense to have Christianity in Damascus to represent the substantial Christian minority throughout Syria. I'm not sure there's a way of building or moving the holy city in al-Qods after the flip.
6. There should be a Far East Asia trade route (early on though) right next to Damascus, to represent the Silk Road. Also there should be something to represent the Arabian spice trade between Arabia and South East Asia resulting in the conversion of thousands to Islam in modern day Malaysia and Indonesia (ask for further details on ideas)
There are silk plantations next to Damascus and Aleppo to represent the Silk Road and all of the trade it generated. Neither region was known for its silk. The problem with adding a Far East trade route is that it's not workable until the discovery of Astronomy, so that doesn't help them at all - it would make sense to have some sort of representation of the spice trades, though, possibly in the form of a spice plantation near al-Aqaba. Others have argued for the inclusion of an Indian Ocean access resource in the Red Sea, which would make sense except for the Astronomy issue.
7. Too many random animals, for example, for some reason there were 3 lions in Crete??
8. Overall there is a general lack of historical independent cities in N. Africa, Anatolia (as mentioned before) and Central/Eastern Europe. If you guys need help with this I can give you a good list of needed independent cities.
Proposals are welcome, but we wanted to leave some freedom of choice for city placement, and giving the independents more cities would make them that much more militarily powerful and more intimidating for the AI to attack. We're unlikely to add many more independent cities.
9. N. Africa and the Middle East are TOO desolate with deserts they need more plains/grasslands initially, and then at a certain point switch it too desert or plains. This will symbolize the rise and fall of Arabia. (I didn't explain this much for FAR more reasoning ask later, I will explain in more depth)
This is my problem - I made N. Africa more barren than it actually is to prevent Cordoba from establishing an extremely powerful base which its enemies can't reach to invade. As it currently stands, Cordoba doesn't expand that way, which makes my fears less reasonable - I fully intend to make the land more fertile in the next update. As far as the terrain switch goes..... that makes historical sense, but is more complicated to code and far more disruptive to the player or AI. I recognize that the areas that you mentioned were more fertile at the beginning of the mod's time period than they are today, but I don't have the coding skills to make the terrain shift. Someone else may, and may be interested in pursuing it.
10. You guys should think about changing the Genoan and Cordoban leader heads from Mehmed and Alexander to more suitable leader heads
11. For some reason the Civic icon graphics keep annoying me that they havn't been changed. If you guys need help finding graphics a great place to look at is Rise of Mankind just ask Zappara first.
Working on it/no comment.
12. La Mezquita in Spanish means "The Great Mosque". Therefore I would just change it too its original name Aljama Mosque. Anyways everyone knows it as a Mosque before a Cathedral.
No objections here.
13. Back to Damascus. Damascus should be the Capital of Arabia but it should already be founded (like Constantinople or Rome) from the beginning of the game, therefore make Damscus have Orthodox Christianity since it still to today has quite a big Orthodox minority plus they have a patriarch in Damascus. Also Sour (Tyre) should have Catholicism as well to represent the large amount of Lebanese Maronites (Catholics) there.
Here's the problem with this - we have no civs which flip a city as their capital, as they all begin with settlers and found their own. There may be a way to do this, as I'm fairly certain that there were civs in RFC that did it, but the mechanics are something we haven't worked out yet. We could manage this by pulling the Arabian start back to the very beginning of the mod, but that would be stretching history considerably. I'm with you on the religious minorities.
14. Try to be unique with the Wonder powers as a lot of them are that they enable all the civics for some category which I think truly ruins the game. I guess 1 or 2 is OK but the rest should be something else. Once again if you guys need help with coming up with ideas ask me.
I also feel that we have too many wonders, and too many of them have game-changing properties. I'd like to see them cut down as well.
15. A good idea for future versions of the game is to have a seperate Muslim (for the Arabs and Cordobans) technology tree. And then later on maybe around the 1400's about (I would say the 1600's for historical accuracy, but for gameplay 1400's is ok) revert it back to the normal tech tree with the rest of the European countries to show the catching up of the European power during the Renaissance especially.
I don't think that's going to happen. It increases the learning curve and makes the game mechanics that much more difficult. The way it's currently done, where the Muslim civs start with a substantial tech lead and buildings which greatly accelerate their tech rate up to the late Medieval period seems like a good balance to me.
16. Don't enable skirmishers if a civilization does not have access to horses, I find it a bit silly
Agreed.
17. Another idea for a faction (so you can get rid one independent) would be to add the Fatimids or Mamlukes represented as Egypt when Arabia or whomever is controlling the Egypt area becomes too unstable, so in some games they might now appear. Because then you could make the Egyptians Shi'ite and have the Ottomans or Arabians as Sunni's (and the Mongols as Shi'ite's and the Timurds and Cordobans as Sunni's). You could take out Judaism (which dosn't spread much anyways) and add the Shi'ite's instead.
18. To enable #17 and just in general it would be great if you could expand the Middle East a little bit more to allow for more room for cities like Cairo and Damascus to grow. You could then add Mecca or Medina and move Islam's holy city there. Again this could be done in future versions
No. This is not going to happen. You have no idea how much work is involved in this proposal. When we began working on the mod, my original map went to the Urals and the Persian Gulf - we decided that the mod should be Eurocentric, so we eliminated Mesopotamia. The only way to do this was to shift the entire map one square at a time to the east. It was an extremely tedious and time-consuming exercise, and I will not be doing it again - even if it didn't involve redoing every single settler map, city map, and other game features which involve map coordinates in any way. Without the rest of Mesopotamia, there's not much justification for adding Shi'a Islam. We're also not going to replace independents with other civs.
19. There should be more of the 'timber' resource around Sour and Lebanon in general to represent the Cedars of Lebanon, just adding 1-2 more should be great
Much of the area had been deforested for charcoal by the time timber becomes important in the mod. Sour is also one of the most productive cities on the map, particularly in the early game - adding more timber would increase that advantage further. There might be some justification for adding a second timber resource north of Antioch, but there's not really anywhere to put it in Lebanon. The existing timber is meant to represent the cedars that you referred to.
20. PLEASE change the textures for the Muslim Buildings (the religious buildings) from the Indian style to a more Middle Eastern style, another one of my annoyances
21. Please explain what an "Islamic Sahn" is because I thoroughly believe I or someone else can come up with something better than that. Once again ask me for ideas.
22. What about Arabian 'Conquest' or Colonial Projects which can be constructed to represent the conquest of Persia, Central Asia and the Arabian Peninsula (Oman and Yemen) and East Africa (could just be represented by a trade link)
Please offer suggestions for a building to replace the Sahn, if you don't like it.
Would all civs have access to the Arabian conquest? We talked about and rejected the idea of individual colonial projects - giving the Russians Siberia, for instance. Again, there are ample resources available to Arabia and nobody else (coffee, silks) which represent these trade links.
23. Change the Arbalest icon graphic to make it look less Chinese.
24. You guys should make the tech 'Plate Armor' come later (or just the ability to cut down forests), until more of the Northern European civilizations arrive and mature a bit, as to simulate the great dense forests (which there should be more of, more forests and which give you -1 food,) of Northern Europe which were only later cut down and turned into farmland causing a boom in production in Europe causing it to catch up with the Muslim world, while in the Middle East most of the farmland was used up turning it into desert (causing desertification). Again for more explanation ask me as I can explain it further.
The ability to chop forests is already fairly late in the game. The proportion of dense forest to woodland could be changed, and there may be some merit to that proposal.
25. I find that when the Northern European civilizations spawn they are too advanced for there own good. These guys were settling Barbarian tribes, not predecessors of the Romans! They should be put back a few techs but give them maybe more settlers (too settle N Europeans great stretches of land) and/or preferably many more military units.
Two problems with this idea. First, the Northern European civs start out technologically backwards and stay technologically backwards for much of the game. There are some exceptions - Sweden especially - but the lack of starting techs means that civs like France and Burgundy which spawn early are hopelessly behind and pathetically weak in the middle to late game. Second, controlling great stretches of land is actually disadvantageous for tech rate without building up the infrastructure to take advantage of it. Giving them more military units just increases the likelihood that they destroy each other and Germany collapses (as it always does). Which civs are you complaining about, specifically?
26. This i'm only 50-50% on but I think that Germany's UHV to have the largest army should be moved to the 1700's when Fredrick the Great was around, during the militarization of Germany. Shamefully I'm not hearsed to well in the history of Germany.
27. Please explain why there are 'relics' in Southern Russia?? What are they supposed to symbolize?
28. Lastly (finally), why is there coffee east of Damascus? Coffee originated in the Yemen (or in Oman not 100% sure), so therefore you should put it at the bottom of the map on the Arabian Peninsula.
The relics in the Carpathians are there by mistake. I'm taking them out in the next map update - basically, they were dropped there as the mouse dragged, and they don't show up with an obvious icon so I missed them.
The coffee is next to Damascus (and down by al-Aqaba) to represent that coffee from the rest of the Arabian peninsula, just as the silk plantations near Damascus are intended to represent the silk from countries further east.
I hope no one is offended by my suggestions, the only reason I sat down to do all of this work was out of my great respect for your guys work and my love for this mod and the wish to see it succeed, and like I said before I'm one of your guys oldest fans
No offense taken. My responses aren't designed to offend either - I'm sorry if a few of them are a little blunt. We appreciate your feedback and suggestions, and some of them are very helpful.
