Suggestions and Requests

[Force44]

As for the resources on islands.

I prefer them to be connected without roads. Loading and unloading already takes two additional worker actions (road takes 3, but you have to use a ship to get to the island so I kind of figure that balanced)

I really like to build roads on them anyway. It feels like the proper thing to do, giving the islanders some infrastructure. It would be really nice if the road on the island would give a tiny bonus to commerce or production, small islands are already lacking rivers and acces to them in the BFC implies also at least 3 tiles of coast (which isn't great for production either) so to me a such a tiny bonus would not feel out of place.

 

[gilgames]

All res should be connected anyway, thats why we have borders, if a thing is within its our. If its a statement, we can use roads for transport only as El Bogus said.

 

[El Bogus]

It would be really nice if the road on the island would give a tiny bonus to commerce or production, small islands are already lacking rivers and acces to them in the BFC implies also at least 3 tiles of coast (which isn't great for production either) so to me a such a tiny bonus would not feel out of place.

Fun Fact: In Civilization 2 there were no cottages. Roads were the improvement to get commerce and only gave +1 .

 

[Force44]

As for the topic of modmodding RFCE.

I'd like to do a little modmodding myself to experience the experience of modding.
But my utter lack of knowlegde regarging the subject is holding me back.

Were I ever to ask for help in my hypothetical modmoddingefforts I fear the help given to me will consume more time than just coding the thing yourself

But any help given would be really appreciated nonetheless. So if my modmodding ever leaves the hypothetical realm I'll send you a pm.

 

[Force44]

concering roads

If roadspamm is a problem maybe the rule that a road can not be connected to another tile containing a road if that road is already connected to 3 (or 4 to allow crossroads) tiles of road.

Personally I use roads to connect cities and to provide defensive options.
If the free road were to be taken away (as far as it is free, it already costs 3 worker actions, so it allready cost 3 gold to construct (or are worker units excluded from upkeep in RFCE?)) might I beg for a Sortie (new) promotion to make up for the loss of finishing enemy units without having to leave the safety of my city?

Sortie, unit gets another move after victory (destroying an enemy unit)
prerequisite: city garrison I (for archers/gunpowder), city raider I (for infantry) or flanking I (for cavalry)

Finally my biggest concern regarding additional costs tied to roads is (ugly) XvX -shaped roads (as opposed to X-X -shaped roads) because they share the same length (->same cost) but cover a larger area in a field consisting of perpendicular superposed lines and rows.

One final final idea regarding the costs of roads. Can it be made dependent on the distance from a city? (eg. first ring around the city free, second ring around the closest city 1 gold, third ring around the closest city 2 gold, fourth ring around the closest city 3 gold etc.) It would feel more immersive for me that way to connect far away (but still situated inside my cultural borders) resources. (they would feel further away because of the bigger associated cost to connect them to my tradenetwork)

 

[Force44]

Fun Fact: In Civilization 2 there were no cottages. Roads were the improvement to get commerce and only gave +1 .

That was also the case in civ1​

In this peculiar case, unlike in civ1 and civ2, the bonus of either +1 or +1 should only be applied to small islands though (imho).

 

[AbsintheRed]

I misunderstood. I thought you were puzzled what way was best to implement the connection of resources on islands and were wondering what way and why that way the connection of resoursces on islands was done in DoC.

Ohh, thanks.
No, I'm good, as I mentioned earlier I know where to look.
Actually I have already implemented the change yesterday.

 

[AbsintheRed]

On a one-tile island a road always looks a bit ugly to me. So, I'd prefer the connection without the road. Another thought is to connect ressources without roads generally if the new building-roads-for-gold design is implemented. Roads then had the sole purpose of transporting your units.

In this peculiar case, unlike in civ1 and civ2, the bonus of either +1 or +1 should only be applied to small islands though (imho).

I decided against this. I dislike the idea of having this special rule only on small islands.
If I were to introduce bonus connection without resources, it would be applied everywhere. Something along the lines what El_Bogus said in the second part of his post.
But at this point there is small chance for that.

There are some mods with rules like that, in some it can also work well.
For example in Sengoku mod all roads on the map are permanent, you cannot build or destroy roads. They only represent the bigger trade routes and military roads.
Thus most of the resources are without roads in the mod, all improved resources are connected to the trade network by default if they are inside your territory.
While this is a great concept for that specific region and time perioud, it probably won't work well in RFCE.

 

[merijn_v1]

As for the topic of modmodding RFCE.

I'd like to do a little modmodding myself to experience the experience of modding.
But my utter lack of knowlegde regarging the subject is holding me back.

Were I ever to ask for help in my hypothetical modmoddingefforts I fear the help given to me will consume more time than just coding the thing yourself

But any help given would be really appreciated nonetheless. So if my modmodding ever leaves the hypothetical realm I'll send you a pm.

My advice, just start doing it. When I started modding, I didn't have any experience. I got all my modding skills just by doing it. About a year ago (or is it 2 years ago already? Damn, time flew by now I think of it), I didn't understand python. But now I'm fairly decent with it.

And don't be feared for asking for help. We will happily help you if you make a mistakes or have a question. You will learn from that. In fact, we both learn from it. It doesn't matter to us if that it will make slightly more time. In fact, it can even save us time. Once you have some experience, you can help us with all kinds of things. It just takes a little time to get some experience.

Helping others is one of the major things I like the modding community so much.

 

[AbsintheRed]

I can only second merijn's thoughts.
Just post if you have any questions, a lot of people will be happy to help.
The Civ IV community here is a very friendly one - modders, playtesters, and forumers equally - it's great to be part of it!

 

[ales_]

Fun Fact: In Civilization 2 there were no cottages. Roads were the improvement to get commerce and only gave +1 .

That was also the case in civ1​

That was also the case in Civ3... and as a result the maps were ugly because they were fully covered by roads.

 

[Force44]

I forgot about Civ3. But I still consider the maps ugly not because they were fully covered by roads, but because the roads did not have an interesting graphical representation. Like the penrose tiles in Helsinki.

Modding somehing like that in, now that I would consider a challenge (also for experienced modders).

link to 3 minute long YouTube video explaining the basics of penrose tiles:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxlEojkVJ0c

 

[Panopticon]

Irish cities: The importance of Teamhair was symoblic, religious and mythic. But as for an urban settlement where many people lived, as opposed to a fortress, this city should simply be Duibhlinn or Áth Cliath. I wonder whether this should be one of those cities with a probability of appearing as one or another.

 

[Arcangelus]

First of all, I would like to say: Thanks for continuing to work on the mod. I feared it had died after several months of apparent inactivity, and I'm glad that wasn't the case.
Second, I would like to report a couple of annoying (but harmless) bugs. I'm not sure if there is a dedicated place for bug-reports for the SVN version, if so I apologise in advance.

Some texts on the civilopedia are broken. To be specific; CIV4GameText_RFCE_Mercenaries.xml and CIV4GameText_RFCE_Units.xml use [paragraph:2] instead of [PARAGRAPH:2] on several instances, resulting on a broken formatting (meaning that the lower-case version is read as normal text).
Also, there is a "I" missing on the history of the Totenkopfhusar (tag TXT_KEY_UNIT_PRUSSIA_DEATHS_HEAD_HUSSAR_PEDIA, in CIV4GameText_RFCE_Units.xml). Currently it says "[PARAGRAPH:2]n 1808" when it should be "[PARAGRAPH:2]In 1808".
There is also a Tab missing on the first paragraph of the trebuchet history, but I was unable to find the corresponding file.

 

[AbsintheRed]

First of all, I would like to say: Thanks for continuing to work on the mod. I feared it had died after several months of apparent inactivity, and I'm glad that wasn't the case.
Second, I would like to report a couple of annoying (but harmless) bugs. I'm not sure if there is a dedicated place for bug-reports for the SVN version, if so I apologise in advance.

Some texts on the civilopedia are broken. To be specific; CIV4GameText_RFCE_Mercenaries.xml and CIV4GameText_RFCE_Units.xml use [paragraph:2] instead of [PARAGRAPH:2] on several instances, resulting on a broken formatting (meaning that the lower-case version is read as normal text).
Also, there is a "I" missing on the history of the Totenkopfhusar (tag TXT_KEY_UNIT_PRUSSIA_DEATHS_HEAD_HUSSAR_PEDIA, in CIV4GameText_RFCE_Units.xml). Currently it says "[PARAGRAPH:2]n 1808" when it should be "[PARAGRAPH:2]In 1808".
There is also a Tab missing on the first paragraph of the trebuchet history, but I was unable to find the corresponding file.

Hi!
It seems you are here for a long time.
Nevertheless this was your first post, sooo: welcome to the forum!

Thanks for the report, will fix those tests!
EDIT: btw, we still have some missing civilopedia entries, and a lot could use various improvements.
Would you, or anyone else care for updating some of those?

 

[Force44]

I really like the Danish UP (unique power) and Norse UP.
The Swedish UP, ...meh.

Sure, at first glance it seems awesome, a free promotion for all of your units. It turns all of your units into UUs (unique units).
The thing is, the bonus is Formation, a bonus against heavy cavalry.

Let's say I'm fighting heavy cavalry one fifth of a time. That means that four fifth of a time there is no bonus at all.
Besides, the other civs can pick Formation as a unit upgrade anyway. Making the Swedes four fifths of the time just a Scandinavian civilization with no UB at all.

To make their bonus more usefull, instead of Formation all units could get combat I as a bonus.
This will end up with combat against heavy cavalry at the same odds as before. But against all other units they also enjoy a (arguably even bigger though) leg up.

This may be undisarable gameplaywise. However gameplaywise there is another option.

Currently the English UP is under revision.
The Swedish lands are very similar to the English posessions in France (lots of flatlands. France is also where most of the bonus from the English UP is received.).

At the moment there are two candidatebonuses to Replace the English UP.
1. Improved cottage-hamlet-village-towns
and 2. Improved and earlier workshops

Either of these, but especially the second one (improved earlier workshops), would come in very handy, gameplaywise, for the Swedes, to differentiate them from the other Scandinavian civs.

Land and tax reforms were performed between 1527 and 1558 (source: Wikipedia, History_of_Sweden), making the Swedish armies solvency (ability to pay their bills, the same thing that made the Dutch come out on top in the Anglo-Dutch (sea)wars) amongst the highest in europe.

This is a bit late for this mod (the Swedes start in 1210). But to me it seems a bigger problem that the occupation of the vast majority of their (proportionally small) population was farmer.

Sure the vast majority of their wealth (raw resources and food from the baltic) was harvested in workshoplike enterprises but then again those are already represented by other improvemenents.

Also a Greater Sweden filled with towns or workshops makes the land look very full, what would strike me as a bit unhistorical for lands known for their vast emptiness/very low populationdensity. (A beef similar I pretend to have with an England or France filled with towns)

Then again, workshops keeps the polulation of cities low (successfully simulating the small overall, small urban and relatively large rural population of Sweden)

summary:

If England gets the bonus to cottage-hamlet-village-towns, could Sweden get the bonus (maybe even without the earlier acces) to workshops?
I consider it a bit problematic historical but it would be fun and simulate their relatively small population for their proportionally large empire.

 

[AbsintheRed]

to make their bonus more usefull, instead of Formation all units could get combat I as a bonus.
This will end up with combat against heavy cavalry at the same odds as before.

This is not true, Formation is +25%.

Anyway, adding the current English UP to Sweden is an interesting idea.
I'm usually leaning towards differentating the civs more, whenever we have a good option for that.
I have already added quite a few additional aspects to UPs recently.
In a scenario based mod, balance isn't depend on these things at all.
On this case though: would it really be that backed up historically?
If not, we can also consider improving the UP with changing the bonus from Formation to a unique promotion for Sweden, with whatever bonuses we want.

And something very related to what I said above:
I'm also willing to add more unique things to the civs (units, buildings, or even improvements).
Wanted to talk about this with merijn for a while now, but considering his 2nd UU and UB modmod for DoC he will probably like the idea.

 

[gilgames]

Made a little research on the net and found an idea to their UP, instead of formation, they could gain +x% military power bonus (3-5-8-10% idk) against all units if its their neighbours. Sweden fought wars exclusively with their neighbours only. So UP could contain the same malus vs anybody who doesn't have land border with them. Well after i wrote it done i see now its maybe too hard to code it. But still good for an idea.

edit:

The Allotment System

At the end of the thirty year war it was obvious that Sweden could not afford a standing army powerful enough to defend the whole kingdom.
The solution was to set up "Indelningsverket", an army organization in which the soldiers were given small holdings to live on.

The whole countryside was divided into "Rusthåll" (a farm that arms a man) and "Rotar" (files). A "Rusthåll" was a farm big enough to support a cavalry man and his horse. A "Rote" was two, tree or four farms that together had to provide for, and support an infantry man.

Translate into game: a cottage (farm) that gives enough food +hammer + x% military production but no commerce.
+1 food, +1 hammer +5% military prod. and -1 commerce if near river. buildable on: grassland, plains, (remove forest) maybe even hills too.

edit2:

however this article suggests that Combat I would be more fitting for them
http://www.militaryhistoryonline.com/17thcentury/articles/geniusofsweden.aspx

ps: 2. UU and UB is always welcome

 

[El Bogus]

And something very related to what I said above:
I'm also willing to add more unique things to the civs (units, buildings, or even improvements).
Wanted to talk about this with merijn for a while now, but considering his 2nd UU and UB modmod for DoC he will probably like the idea.

That would be really cool!

 

[Force44]

to make their bonus more usefull, instead of Formation all units could get combat I as a bonus.
This will end up with combat against heavy cavalry at the same odds as before.

This is not true, Formation is +25%.

You are correct I was utterly sloppy in my formulation.

What I meant to say was a dedicated defender against heavy cavalry will end up with Combat II and Formation. And the amount of promotions lacking get there is the same when you get Forrmation for free or when you get Combat I for free.

~​

I think graphically it would look very nice if the Rotar were to replace workshops (become available sooner) as a building unique to sweden.
(brings down the population a little and gives an idea of not very densely populated land)

The Rusthall could provide a replacement for the watermill if we would like to have both in.

Still (my initial concern about the whole Swedish economic bonus), the end of the Thirty Years War was in 1648, which is very late in our mod.

~​

Perhaps alternatively, perhaps in addition, an unique bonus for all Swedish units would also differentiate them from most other (amongst them Scandinavian) Civs.
(Notable exception, the Moors (and of course https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lp6iqzeA2p))

The question then becomes, do you want the bonus to feature predominantly when playing with the Swedes or against the Swedes.

When playing against the Swedes the current bonus really is fine (it just makes your heavy cavalry a little less effective against them)

When playing with the Swedes it is a bit bland (because you get to use it rarely and you have little agency over it)

Combat I is such a nice promotion not only because you use it every battle but also because it opens up all kind of nice promotions. Greatly enhancing your agency. (on the other hand this increase of agency is what makes the promotion so powerfull, perhaps even overpowered)

I can not think of a solution (the properties of the promotion) right now, but it would:
1. need to pose a (small) challenge when facing the units of the Swedish civilization
2. be applicable more often than Formation
3. give more agency than Formation but ideally less than combat I

eg.

+25% defence against heavy cavalry
+10% attack
acts as a prerequisite for amphibious, charge, cover, feint, formation, pinch and shock.

( actually that would not seem to bad as a first draft for the promotion,
the 10% attack seems to be a bit high though,
maybe tune it down to 5%,
...but that looks so...
...miniscule.
)

~​

disclaimer:
All statments in this post are made in my humble opinion (IMHO).
When I refer to our mod I refer to RFCE, the mod Absinthered has put so much work and effort in, which I feel priviledged to share my thoughts on and play.