Your rating of RAND

RAND is one of the best Civ IV mods I have played so far (and I have played a lot) beaten only by RFC and FFH.

The only reason I prefer RFC to RAND is the lack of polish on RAND (weird landmasses, odd bugs and crashes, odd resource placement or lack of certain resources, quest size issues etc) but this is something that isnt a big deal to me or likely to ruin my enjoyment of the mod.

The main thing for me is such a small thing like stability adds so much to the game. I could write tons about that but I wont. I really like RAND although havent played it much for the last month due to Warhammer Online being out and Colonisation (wich is big smelly underpants and should not be played by anyone!) but im hoping to give it another through bashing at the end off the month when I have time off work.
 
i wouldn´t overestimate the voting, you have no idea how many votes and opinions were the base of the of the presented mean, and i would say for sure that this number was very low so far compared to the number of downloads ;)

And so i would stick more to the opinions written here, even if they could be biased. Imo you could add more flavour graphic wise, eg adding chuggis terrain grafik or add some of the custom unit grafiks [if there is something out doing this already, ignore this comment], but the basic princip behind RFC (and Rand) is genius.
 
IMO getting an evaluation is better.

I don't like RAND as much as others because of RFC giving a playable start position to all civs, and easily defined boundaries (eg as dutch everyone's borders). I know that if I get to America first I can get some awesome cities, and some vassals.

My favourite civs (Inca, Maya, Khmer) are hosed start position wise and I don't know if I can ever have some good land...

And Europe isn't as fun and active as in RFC either. It just... eh. I'm not sure if it CAN improve in the way I would want the RAND experience- but I have RFC, and people who want a game where they know nothing from the start have RAND.

So.. what blizzrd said + my views why.
 
dionysos2048 said:
Well it's now 4 stars, because most people who play it never rate it, but your mention of it is going to make people vote and I think the rating will deservedly improve.
Click to expand...

I just want to second that... now that I understand that this is meaningful to you, Rhye, please accept my A+ vote :)

I am too busy playing this fascinating thing to be looking for places to vote on the Internet.
 
I had hoped that RFC RAND would be like RFC with random maps. Sadly, every time I've tried it my start position was either impossible, crappy, miles away from any resources or all three. The starts seem rally cramped and the maps too full of desert, mountains or swamp. Maybe I should try it more but I much prefer the RFC world map and the alt-history feel of civs with their historic starting positions.
Anyway I'm too busy right now with the development work on our RFC Europe mod which we hope will be an improved RFC in a European setting. Lots of work to go on that still. More contributions would be welcome from everybody esp. Rhye if he's listening:)
 
@ jessiecat

I had a different impression: there were always aboundant ressources nearby, either playing as an ancient civ, in that case stone or marble. Only food was missing sometimes. In medieval civs food ressources are generated automatically.

My problem with RAND was that there is TOO LESS desert and so on. In my impression there was way too much good grasslands so that rivaling for space was no issue.

Overall I appreciate RAND very much and hope, that's improved bit by bit (of course, the Indian start)!
 
@ the green grassland thing, yes. I've started to play about 5-6 games (not all finished). About 4 or so had this.
 
I'm getting back into CIV and was delighted to find Rhye's Rand. It makes for fascinating game play.
One of the few things I would change about your mods is that it seems to me that high culture ought to help your stability. Instead it hurts you on the expansion category. (At least as I understand it.)
E.
 
Hello, ive been playing for a while - i like to take my forum times in "spurts" because i don't like to come off as a troll - absence can make the heart warm. RFC RAND, my thoughts:
(the newer version)

Comments:

Please include an icon - i have ones for the other RFC's, but not this one. i can only get to it through the civ menu which means loading it twice.

FIX that diplo bug, its just so annoying! Not only does it give extra loading time between rounds, but you can deny someone for 30 turns (or give) and it won't change their views. so 30 turns later (i probably should have been asked about twice) they are still pleased.

Thanks for the better starts! Please include a way to control which civ's will appear. if not possible, make some more starting options in regards to indy city's (weather or not they spawn), colonies (should have option to liberate into a legit civ OR indy - could you make it read who all is NOT in the game, and make it possible?) Number of "rebirths" - let the player choose from menu how many times they can change civ's.

Would love to see a victory condition to play from the begining to the end getting as many UHV's as you can. if you score a UHV, you may change to the next-born civ, and aim for another.

Civ re-births: should be an option to turn ON or OFF a "dead" civilization's chances of being reborn at a later time. example: babylon dies, other civ's overtake, and in the 18th century, they respawn with 2 cities, collapsing arabia - then the next turn getting destroyed by turkey, who collapses for taking the former arabia cities.

Civ/indy feature: would be nice if there was an option to turn on tiles "color-shaded" by expansion friendliness. like the "grid" the feature would be optional, and it would highlight in green the healthy places, in red the bad places, and in blue the "neutral" places (that wont help or harm stability).

Resource stability: sometimes i get a large area of nice land with a lot of resources and get punished for not trading - when either everyone is in mercantilism, or nobody wants my "one copy" of almost everything, and sometimes when i am forced to sell an excess good for SOMETHING even though its just 2 gpt. Maybe each resource should have a "value" listed on the foreign advisor? this would give a value of what everything is worth.

Gold-Bug: i have yet to be able to offer or request gold or GPT in any game.


All in all, ive seen very different games. one had a north-american owned aztec which destroyed the americans fast. Inca/Maya were also big, and almost everywhere else had collapsed. in another, i played as india, then in one turn, i saw all my area revolt to indy and i get a popup to take Ethiopia. DUH, i take it. i spawn right next to india, wipe it out, build westward - and i don't have to even really think about war, because im secluded. oromo warrior's for the win! in another, i had Japan get the conquerer event! they took over the incans, and while i was fighting the british another suprise: Mayans conquer a british city (in england, i guess tech-gifts to them impacted it), then 2 turns later in congress, i voted YES and they took another british city. then i made them end the war, and the mayans conquered the indy cities that occured from english collapse.

Some nice new optional features to enable/disable different elements (like remove stability, or make it harsher) would be nice but besides that and fixing the gold-bug and diplo-bug i think its great. i love it, and hope to see it continue.
 
I like it a lot. I've always loved the first few turns of a civ game, scouting a new world, that first contact with another civ...
One aspect that doesn't translate well is the expansion stability factor. Especially in med-low likeness worlds, your civ's historical expansion may be totally off based on how the map has turned out. In my last game, I was playing with portugal and had the whole Europe pretty much empty but just couldn't expand due to stability. In RFC, this makes sense as historical but in RAND it sometimes feels too arbitrary and absurd.
 
I hate it. Because I can't play it. I set it up, and then it CtD's whenever I start a game. No clue why.

On the up side, I'm sure if I could play it I'd love it.

Edit: Haha. Just realized I don't have the latest patch. Silly me.
 
I love the idea. It's exactly what I've been wanting to play since I first tried RFC and found it to be too deterministic.

My one main gripe is that the historical victories for the ancient civilizations seem to be almost impossible to achieve now. With RFC each civilization was like a carefully crafted puzzle. If you did your homework on the lay of the land, chose the perfect city locations, build and research paths and crossed your fingers there was a chance - sometimes a small one, but always a chance - that you would achieve all three goals and get that victory.

With RAND the situation is completely different. You should be able to play without knowing all the terrain and civ flipping beforehand, making every decision based on your limited knowledge of your random surroundings. Given that you might not even have, for instance, stone near Egypt, your historical victory may be impossible. But even if you do have a reasonable start there are some conditions you just will not make for each civ: 5 religions for India, most of Babylon's, 5000 culture for Egypt, Christianity for Ethiopia. When the game was a puzzle such conditions were challenges, but in RAND they seem ridiculous.

I really think that RAND should be playable without a single reload and without prior knowledge of terrain. Of course I could just give up on historical victories, but that wouldn't be as much fun.
 
Hi べんきょう, welcome here. Which city are you from?

As you've said, it's hard for me to ensure the factibility of a historical victory, with such a random context. It's like being blind.
It would help if some of you listed exactly all the prerequisites that usually those civs need (like, Stone for Egypt).
 
Hi, thanks for the welcome. I live in Hakodate, Hokkaido (函館、北海道) Have you been to Japan before? I couldn't help noticing the flag and 外人 tag!

Actually, I don't mind that sometimes the historical victory will be impossible... that's part of the appeal of RAND. RAND doesn't really need to be a carefully crafted puzzle with guaranteed prerequisites. However, I do think that in allowing for the random setup all the historical victory conditions should be loosened up and made more achievable for RAND. Knowing nothing about the lay of the land, having no ability to predict city flipping and all the rest is really a HUGE improvement, but it makes things infinitely harder for the early civilizations (especially early European ones, I guess) and loosening up the historical victory requirements would be my preferred means of balancing that.

I realise that I'm speaking from a single-player's perspective only. I hadn't realised RAND could be multiplayer, and easier victory conditions could break multiplayer.

Anyway, thanks for reading and best of luck with RAND development! I really hope it shapes up to be the Civ mod I've always wanted to play.
 
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