The Sword of Islam: RFC Medieval Middle East

Yes, I am aware of that, but I personally find it rather weird that a civ doesn't want to trade resources at all.
 
Well. This is a bit odd.

Uz47z.jpg
 
Yes, I am aware of that, but I personally find it rather weird that a civ doesn't want to trade resources at all.

Yemen almost always has Sufism and it is likely that they aren't willing to trade away the incense because of that. It's like in BTS - you don't spread Sushi to the people sending you seafood for a good reason.
 
I hope this goes to show that the Byzantines need to be nerfed, but just by a little, as they seem to be getting stronger and stronger with no check, they also as the KoJ, Mamluks (yes t-h-e MAMLUK'S) and Beylik of Karaman as vassals; I would therefore urge the creation of a more powerful Ottoman spawn, to make sure that they don't get crushed on impact, but only for AI. The adding in of "Osman" Turkish barbs spawning inside the Byzantine borders in the West would be a good idea, but also increasing the size of their army and perhaps increasing their spawn zone would be a good idea (ONLY for AI).

Also before the Byzantines go there, the Makurians had everything from Africa to Cairo, I would also therefore consider nerfing them as well, as they are unnecessarily powerful.

Also the Ghorid AI is REALLY weak, also playing as the Ghorids from the onset can sometimes be based on luck, until later. I would recommend boosting the Ghorid spawn by a bit for the AI Ghorids, so that they can defend and attack against the Ghaznavids, who IMO last too long. I'm just happy that if the Ghorids collapse they can respawn later as the Delhi Sultanate.

Altogether though, playing as the Khwarezmians was hell fun, and I guess removing myself from the Levant created some interesting events.
 

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I agree that the Makurians should be nerfed, but not on the fact that they are "unnecessarily powerful." You yourself said in previous posts that the Mamluks needed something to weaken them because they were too strong, and even though it's unhistorical for them to be a pain to the Mamluks it does have that advantage.
 
I rarely see Makurians survive until the Mamluks spawn, so I don't see a problem here.

Also Byzantine is really quite weak about 80% of the games. The respawn can sometimes make them mega-strong, but there is no way around it, since the 4th crusade (that you insisted to be included) usually collapses them.

In your game KoJ is only powerful, because Byzantine has taken care of KoJ's enemies.
 
I agree that the Makurians should be nerfed, but not on the fact that they are "unnecessarily powerful." You yourself said in previous posts that the Mamluks needed something to weaken them because they were too strong, and even though it's unhistorical for them to be a pain to the Mamluks it does have that advantage.

True true true, yes I cannot agree with you more on that, I guess this is a blessing in disguise. But there is a difference between weakening the Mamluks (so that they don't control the entire Levant) and destroying the Mamluk's potential to even get out of Egypt.


I rarely see Makurians survive until the Mamluks spawn, so I don't see a problem here.
That is actually a good point you make there. But I have seen this happening more and more often, and in other people's games as well. So if I were you I wouldn't write it off too quickly.

Also Byzantine is really quite weak about 80% of the games. The respawn can sometimes make them mega-strong, but there is no way around it, since the 4th crusade (that you insisted to be included) usually collapses them.
The thing is Jusos, is that the Byzantines in my game DIDN'T collapse! I checked the playback, they remained intact destroying all enemies. And yes I know I suggested the 4th Crusade, and I think it is fine the way it is.

In your game KoJ is only powerful, because Byzantine has taken care of KoJ's enemies.
Yes I know that, but what I'm saying (didn't I say this?), is that KoJ should be stronger on it's OWN, so that they can last a little bit longer. Although personally I don't think its THAT big of a deal, as they collapse in the 12th century, which I'm fine with.
 
Replies from page 88

a) Sometime after getting Sufism in my 3rd city, it was removed from the 1st city it appeared in and the Sufi Shrine disappeared. However, when I eventually got a 4th city to Sufism and built my "4th" shrine (at which point I had 3 cities with shrines listed), I got a surprise when I had suddenly won the game. I'm guessing the building remains in the city improvement list even when the company leaves to avoid the player getting annoyed if a company keeps on entering and leaving a city repeatedly, but perhaps there should be a check to make sure that each city you have a Sufi shrine in also has Sufism itself for completing the objective?

Sindhi UHV says "build 4 Sufi shrines" so you get scored when you build a shrine. Whether you have shrines in your cities doesn't matter - you can even lose them to the enemy etc.

b) I got an event about someone invading Northern Hindustan ~1400 or so. When I get these things I usually fire up the world builder to see what's happening, but when I checked I couldn't find any barbarbians or anything. Is something supposed to happen here?

Unlike the proper Mongol invasions earlier, Chagais spawn outside of cultural borders like ordinary barbs, so it is possible that the area was fully covered by culture... still, given the area's size, the most likely scenario is that those few Mongol horse archers died before managing to capture anything, like the Turk said they're not very powerful, and aren't supposed to be.

This is my new compiled list:

Suleiman the Magnificent
Tamerlane
Akbar the Great
Shah Abbas
Hulagu Khan
Shah Ismail
Alexios I Komnenos
Babur
Sher Shah Suri OR Baibars
Hemu Vikramaditya
Saladin
Mahmud of Ghazni
Al-Mutawakkil
Qutb-ud-din Aybak
David the Builder
Imad ad-Din Zengi
Malik Shah
Levon the Magnificent
Empress Irene
Guy of Lusignan

I'm fine with getting rid of Nader Shah in favor of someone... Baibars is OK. For the rest, as I said, the idea was to put some well-known leaders that are not in game in favor of those that are, hence Ismail and Babur over Abbas and Akbar. Also, as I explained, none of leaders on the original BTS list are really "bad", really no reason to put Irene there.

On a different note: edead, have you considered an earlier minor suggestion of mine to introduce lumbermills with the mech engineering tech, which seems to have fallen under the radar a bit.

I can add them, apparently they were in use in the Roman-Byzantine & Islamic world (at least wikipedia says so), although probably not in India, when they will be built the most. It would be nice to allow the Byzantines & Muslims to build them early, but not the others; it's probably needless complication though.
 
page 89 replies

I propose the following test -- if you can please code conquest victory to triger with only 1 rival alive, load Byzantium, kill all the VISIBLE rivals and see if you get the victory. This will tell that somewhere else in the code Portugal does actually matter. There got to be a way to debug Conquest Victory, it would be nice to have it in mod anyway...

Like I said, the code doesn't check for the number of rivals, it only checks if all cities on the map belong to the same team, that's it. I found that there is no bug, though :mischief: Conquest victory triggers fine, you just had to wait 10 turns... This works with Portugal and any other rival(s) alive, as long as they have no cities and 10 turns have passed since the game started.

I'm not sure if you have, but it would be nice to have some barbarian pressure on the Zengids Northern and Eastern front, and a good tribe to choose from, would be these people:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ortoqid
Apparently they even killed Nur ad-Din Zangi, so I guess they were a force to be reckoned with.

OK, I'll add them.

And also, while writing up my Ayyubid story, I was looking up some facts when I encountered this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fustat
Apparently al-Fustat was built when the first Arab general conquered Egypt, (rather than it being built in earlier times). It would seem that it even kept its name (al-Fustat), during the Fatimid reign. It just begs the question then, whether you should have the Fatimids build al-Fustat and then when the Ayyubids capture the city, change the cities name to al-Qariah. Saladin rebuilt al-Fustat after it was burnt down by the Fatimid Vizier Shawar (who burnt down the city because Crusader armies were approaching). So the name of the city was renamed Al-Qariah.

No, I think you got that wrong. It's actually in that wiki article - Cairo isn't renamed Fustat, but a separate city founded by the Fatimids in 969 north of Fustat, as the intended capital of the Caliphate (see also Cairo history), originally named al-Mansura, but renamed al-Qahira few years later. Still, Fustat was a bigger city and remained the administrative center of Egypt until it was burned down and Cairo devoured it.

Also another thing you could do, would be to create a small barbarian rebellion around al-Minya (basically south of Cairo would be good), to represent the remaining Shi'ite Fatimid loyalist generals, who still plagued the country-side, and who historically had to be put down by Saladin's brother Turan-Shah. So I think it would be a good idea to place a axeman or two, and perhaps some peasants to spawn on the second and third turn of the Ayyubid game. This would also make sure that the Ayyubid player first has to work on uniting Egypt, by crushing these rebellions, and then later can concentrate on taking Jerusalem.

It's already in game - Ayyubids only flip Lower Egypt, and have to conquer Upper Egypt from the Rebels - precisely Fatimid leftovers.

PS. @Edead: Add Syria and even perhaps the Levant to the Timurd Border provinces. If anything, I would encourage you to add Syria, so they can take Damascus!

It won't actually, because they can't get even halfway there, even with cheating (i.e. if they win every battle). It's not doable in the mod's timeframe.

Two problems with Ottomans : Why aren't Galatia and Paphlagonia border provinces for them ?

Fixed, thanks.

And I had a problem while trading with the mamluks : I make resource exchanges with them, but on the next turn all of them are cancelled. At first I think it's because of the fact that some pirate is blocking the mediteranean, but I can still trade ressources with them, including the ones that I had exchanged before. I redo the trade, but on the next turn all of them are cancelled again ! this time, though, it seems no resource trading is possible anymore (probably some barbarian ship around).

I retried like 40 turns after, and there's no problem this time.

Not sure if it's just barb AI or any AI, but it often moves & blockades every turn, until killed.
 
Just ran a test. It takes me 34 minutes to get a Dutch start, this morning it took about 30. Every game is different, but still, I would have expected more. Have you done any "measurement"?

I will add the BetterAI part to see how much that will helps.

From BTS on Speed I got 6% increase after doing 10 runs of RFCMarathon, first 100 turns only. It should be more than that for mid and late-game (twice as much if you b, but testing speed in RFC late starts is useless, learned that earlier with CAR. Like in your Dutch example I'd get results like 35, 45 and 50 minutes for American start with the same settings - too much randomness to make a meaningful test in a reasonable timeframe. BBAI team or Sephi were testing using stock autoplay, which doesn't work in RFC but allows testing the same save game from say turn 300 to 310, which gives much more consistent results.

I also got 5-10% increase from optimizing pickling (see StoredData module), but that's all Python change that requires a bit more hand-coding. Comes down to the fact that pickling takes time and RFC pickles and depickles script data every time it's read/written (100+ times per turn), when it only has to be done on load/save.

I didn't really test BBAI speed or the impact of save games (they're disabled during autoplay in SoI, in CvGame).
 
I think the reason he doesn't want to trade is that he has the Sufi company, and he wants to keep all his incense for it.

That's exactly how it works, in BTS, or else. I could change it but it's all or nothing, and from IA POV, giving away its incense would be stupid (since he'll lose both the bonus from Sufis, and the Sufis, as they'll move to the player that received the incense).

@Science Rules: the "joking" reply is given specifically in two cases: when the player asks for a resource he already has but has no corporation, as well as when the AI has that corporation.
 
I don't know how you checked it, but al-Qariah has 4008 culture while Samarqand has 4696.:p Even Antioch has more (around 4400). The problem is that there isn't a city with more culture on the map. So again, why doesn't the victory trigger, has anybody else had this problem?:confused:

The game reports Dhar as the city with highest culture, namely 4835.

When you look at Dhar's culture, it says 4402. The reason for the discrepancy is that Rhye's function takes total culture - including all previous owners' culture. Why? No idea, doesn't make any sense to me, since you can't really see that number in-game.

I'll fix it. It's weird that it never caused problems with French UHV in RFC. I guess it's just easy to get way above other with Paris.
 
First off, my Ayyubid game which I've been making a story out of doesn't work with the new version!! :scared:
What can I do? I think I'll create a new SoI folder, but I need your old version, is that possible?

Love the changes you've made so far... :drool:
And I'm happy to see that your working on the mod again! Might I suggest that you next add new LH for some civs, also did you look at my new even suggestions for India?

Also I LOVE the new Bakuel units! The Russian units look amazing, it just makes me want to have the game screen pushed Northward, so you could add the Kievan Rus ;)

But while I was looking at some of his units (and by the way, the Orthodox Priest looks AMAZING), I was wondering about a few things:
a. Can you introduce Russian Mercenaries early on? Perhaps just for the Byzantines and the Caucasian civ's, but I'm not 100% sure if that historically accurate, and if it is not, then I'd recommend forgetting about it.
b. Could some of the Russian units be used to replace some Georgian or even Armenian units? Again this would have to come on your judgement call, but after looking at the units, I'm sure the Georgian at the very least could benefit from some of them (javilenmen or archers perhaps)
c. Can you add these workers for the Orthodox factions (except Makuria :rolleyes:). Oh, and I'm talking about the darker looking worker, not the blonde worker.
d. Can you add these Great Merchants for Orthodox factions?
e. Can you use this Russian Great General for the Georgian civilization? I think it would fit well. And I'm tempted to say that it would also go well with the Armenians GG, but I think the current one is the best suited for it.
f. On a side note, have you ever thought about using these Pecheng/Kypchak warriors for barbs attacking the Georgians and for mercenaries for the Byzantines?

Also I find it interesting that you added "Humans can be vassals", how did you get it to work?

And on the manual can you put the requisites for each title? Thanks! :D

Also, what would happen if I'm a Muslim or Catholic faction and I build a Hindu or Orthodox temple, do I still get the happiness bonus? In my opinion you definitely should, and you should not suffer a stability hit, but perhaps just a small piety hit, unless you are running religious law, in which case you should take a MUCH bigger piety hit.

And finally what are these new "efficiany" things you added to the mod? What do they do exactly?

Some Responses:
I'm fine with getting rid of Nader Shah in favor of someone... Baibars is OK. For the rest, as I said, the idea was to put some well-known leaders that are not in game in favor of those that are, hence Ismail and Babur over Abbas and Akbar. Also, as I explained, none of leaders on the original BTS list are really "bad", really no reason to put Irene there.

Well I hope you make those changes then. And the reason I asked you to remove Constantine XI was because first of all, more people know Empress Irene, not to mention the fact that most people know that Empress Irene was a MUCH worse ruler than Constantine XI ever was! And in general, you don't have any female leaders on the list, so why not add the Empress Irene? And lastly, they didn't put Nero last on the list, just because he was well known ;)

I can add them, apparently they were in use in the Roman-Byzantine & Islamic world (at least wikipedia says so), although probably not in India, when they will be built the most. It would be nice to allow the Byzantines & Muslims to build them early, but not the others; it's probably needless complication though.

I'm a tad confused though, were they used ACROSS the middle East? Or only in some parts? For example, I can't find any evidence that lumber mills were used in India. Not to mention that would make the ALREADY buff Hindu civs, even buffer. I'm ok-ok with adding lumbermills, but I would just like you to know, that I think its going to come at a certain price.
 
First off, my Ayyubid game which I've been making a story out of doesn't work with the new version!! :scared:
What can I do? I think I'll create a new SoI folder, but I need your old version, is that possible?

You can right-click on the SoI folder, choose TortoiseSVN -> Update to Revision... then type 64 as rev. number. This will revert you back to the old version. Once you finish your game, you can update normally again to get the latest version.

Alternatively you can rename the folder and re-install the old version from the installer, but that's a bigger download if you don't have it stored somewhere.

Apart from all the small fixes the SVN version has human vassals & AI "luck" factor that should produce more deterministic games. Both of these features might end up being removed before the patch. AI luck is kind of cheating, and human vassals might be abused. I modified the mechanic to fix the potential problems, namely:
- the AI won't ask for a tribute if he can't get one (no trade network), so you don't get a silly popup every turn
- if there is no trade network, the AI won't give you any techs, to prevent abuse
- if all is dandy, the chance for human to get a gift (bonus/tech) is 1/5 of normal

This deals with the most obvious abuse, though still when playing as Armenia the game seemed much easier thx to hugging Byzantium, didn't get any techs, but I got free stone, cotton, olives etc. and no enemies, without doing any real service to my master. Eventually Basil cancelled all deals saying I've got too powerful, but stone was already used to finish the cathedral for the first UHV.

I'll answer the rest later, still have a page or two of old replies to get through.
 
Thanks for the help Edead! :)

But quick question, which civilization should I play to try and make the most of becoming another civ's vassal? Because I've tried several times, to test it out, but I've never gotten around to becoming someone else's vassal.
 
Armenia can become a vassal of Byzantium easily, then you have to connect to them to get the benefits. Georgia and Ak Koyunlu can probably become a vassal too. You have to do it when you're both at peace and be significantly weaker.
 
While playing M2TW, I realized a great unit for the Crusaders (or just the holder of the Guardian of the Seplchure title), would be the "True Cross" icon that was carried into battle, in general large Crosses were carried into Crusader battles, to lift moral, so perhaps you could also do that, and have them give a stack bonus, perhaps +1 movement or 5% attack bonus, I don't know, but thats just the idea. You could also adapt this for the Muslim players, but I don't know what their equivalent would be. :confused:

I can't make new units, at this point I think Bakuel is the only one who can and he has a long list ahead (fortunately India is next in line IIRC, which will fix the last culture group in SoI).

And finally, have you ever thought about naming the relics that are found by conquering cities? Perhaps another function of the relics would be for a bonus like the thing I mentioned above, rather than ALWAYS having to settle them, I don't know, just a suggestion; it would be interesting to see how far a relic travels in the game, like you could potentially see the "True Cross" in Baghdad or Constantinople even, that would be really cool! (Plus WITH the customization, you could have unique powers for each relic)

It's a problem due to the fact that relics are universal and can be found anywhere, this includes Hindu/Buddhist relics in India (although Levantine cities have a bonus).
I begged for no new feature requests for some time and things like unique abilities for relics are something that would probably take a week of time to code ;)

I'm really not fond of adding Jainism, or changing Chemistry (recently added a workshop bonus for it, or is it not in the 0.3.2 version?), or writing a new iconoclasm multi-event. I do have a new feature incoming, but it's a modcomp so didn't took much of my time. Talking about SuperSpies here, but more on that later.

These kind of flips shouldn't be possible, there is no chance to defend the city. Maybe the enemy troops should get pushed away.

Does it ever happen in RFC? I might have broke something.

And thanks for other screenshots, I'll be collecting them for a showcase of sorts :)

I always wanted to ask edead if it is possible to show difficulty level on the main screen...

Well, sure it is, but what for? Personally I hate BUG for cluttering my screen, so obviously I'm not fond of adding a lot of new info. It could be an XML option, is that good for you? (GlobalDefines.XML)

Well. This is a bit odd.
Spoiler :
Uz47z.jpg

It's there specifically so I can track settlable places that still lack a name. I'm not using generic names at all, trying to fill the whole map instead. Will find a name for this for the next patch.
 
SuperSpies

I merged SuperSpies into SoI, they work fine and don't imbalance the game in any way IMO. For those who do not know it from other mods (all that include RevDCM), it allows spies gain XP and special promotions. The main use for this would be for Assassins - they could be turned into special spies, rather than combat units. Espionage missions can be restricted to specific unit, so that only assassins can perform assassinations etc.

There's assassination mission in SuperSpies, but IMO it sucks - it allows the spy to kill a great person settled in a city. It's just not very strategic, basically a flavor thing or annoyance. I'm thinking on the ways to do assassination differently. Killing alive GPs would look better, but it's not a particularly useful mission either. There could be something like assassinate the governor - reducing stability - for a very high cost... possibly abusive. Feel free to help me out there ;)
 
SuperSpies

I merged SuperSpies into SoI, they work fine and don't imbalance the game in any way IMO. For those who do not know it from other mods (all that include RevDCM), it allows spies gain XP and special promotions. The main use for this would be for Assassins - they could be turned into special spies, rather than combat units. Espionage missions can be restricted to specific unit, so that only assassins can perform assassinations etc.

There's assassination mission in SuperSpies, but IMO it sucks - it allows the spy to kill a great person settled in a city. It's just not very strategic, basically a flavor thing or annoyance. I'm thinking on the ways to do assassination differently. Killing alive GPs would look better, but it's not a particularly useful mission either. There could be something like assassinate the governor - reducing stability - for a very high cost... possibly abusive. Feel free to help me out there ;)

I think this is a REALLY great idea! And I can't wait until your implement it. But I think this super spy modcomp should apply both to the Hashashin and regular spies, with the difference being that the Hashashin can still attack armies. By the way, I would suggest you buff up the Hashashin, even before you include this modcomp. Would it be possible if you could give them an ability to attack the WEAKEST unit in a stack? Rather than the most powerful?
Going on to ideas, I really like the assassinate the governor idea, I definitely think that should be included. Something else that could be included would be where the spy opens up the city gates (if there are walls), therefore lowering defense. Another special ability would be for the Hashashin to be able to kill workers, caravans, and missionaries (of different faiths, ie. if your Muslim and kill a Sunni Missionary you get minus piety), as well as GP as you stated before. Anyway, tell me what you think about my ideas!


Indian Event Ideas:
Spoiler :
PPS. New event idea, since you don't have many events concerning India and because there is nothing really representing the Sikh religion, which was established in 1606 (the death of the 5th Guru, and became a political entity), but goes back to the 15th century with the first Guru teacher (Guru Nanak, I'm pretty sure), (which was fairly militant, as far as I know), you should have some sort of event, where you can either support the new and upcoming religion OR you can suppress it, and have barb troops spawn, but if you support it you have minus piety, but no barb spawn, and perhaps some other bonus as well. Anyway your good at the balancing

I was also thinking, that you could have something relating to the Jains of India, who have been established for hundreds of years before the game even starts in 750 AD. Perhaps a similar event to above, but because Jain's are STRICTLY non-violent you could instead have a lose of money, especially considering that they were GREAT Jewelers (and still are, as they are very rich), and perhaps they can build a workshop in your city, or a jeweler building (which would be cool if you could include in the game).

Also remind me again why you can't have the iconoclasm event spread to several Byzantine cities?

I'm a tad confused why you don't want to include more events for India? Currently the Middle East, ESPECIALLY the Levant and Byzantium, have T-O-N-S of scripted events, so why not just give two for some India Civs (whoever controls a certain province). I think it would be a really good idea, considering the fact that they have little to none.

As for increasing the frequency of the iconclastic movement, I understand that will take a lot of time or whatever, but its a change that needs to be done, and that should be done. I would hope that you would possibly just take the time to implement it, because I know it will be worth it in the future. Anyway, if you have already invested SO much time into this amazing mod, why can't you spend a fraction of that time, coding some cool events :thumbsup:

Also I saw the Byzantines respawn after they were captured by the Sultanate of Rum, which was strange, considering that I thought they only respawn if they lose their capital to barbarians (eg. Bulgarians or 4th Crusade), shouldn't it work like that?
 
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