Shilling for RFC: Dawn of Civilization mod for Civ 4

[greenline]

China sample game part 4: The Horsepocalypse

In the last update, I founded all the cities I needed for the 4 Confucian cathedrals. One I already built in my capital - the happiness alone being quite welcome, and another was under construction in Qianlong. The goal for this update is to get the rest of the Confucian and Taoist cathedrals built, grab all four techs China needs to research first, and fight the Mongols when they spawn.




One city I missed from the last update was this one, at the edge of Burma. Barb war elephants and longbows will spawn here occasionally, but it's well worth it for the abundance of resources.




Another change made in RFC is that you can't chop jungles until way late in the tech tree, deep in the industrial era. Jungles themselves are split into two types - rainforest and jungle. Rainforest can be improved but not chopped, essentially taking away -1 food from the tile. Jungle can only be improved if it has plantation or camp resources in the medieval era, and otherwise is useless. Most military units can not enter jungle or rainforest tiles unless they have been improved first. Not a big deal for China, which barely has any rainforest or jungle to speak of, but more important for some equatorial civs.

Flat rainforest can only take cottages as an improvement, while hills only allow for mines, so I put them down in the space around the future Vietnamese city.




Around 270 AD, plague starts spreading to my cities. Plagues occur periodically in RFC, and give massive unhealthiness and drain population for 4-8 turns. Plague has been thankfully nerfed from the original version in the mod, where it would kill units and workers too. I think that having a surplus of health reduces the effect of plague, so it may be worth it to build extra health buildings in some cases.

I also pop a great prophet, and decide to use him on a shrine. The gold from the shrine will help me tech a fair bit faster, and I have a long time to generate more great people for golden ages before the deadline of 1800 AD.




Shrines have been nerfed in the mod to be capped at +20 gold, so starting with 17 is really good. There is a wonder that can be built in the Jewish holy city (almost always Jerusalem) that doubles the limit to +40, but I am unlikely to ever capture that city, so 20 is the most I will see.




In 400 AD, I complete the Grand Canal in Ruyin, and the sights are beautiful to behold. The saddest part about playing China to the late game is having to obsolete these wonders and watch this beautiful city starve down - hopefully I can win before that point.




On the way to compass, I discover a lot of other classical / medieval techs, most of which don't bring much of use for China or in general. Guilds is the first technology of the lot that is a bigger deal. It unlocks the Regulated Trade civic, which gives extra commerce to the capital, along with plantations and workshops. In this way it is like a nerfed version of vanilla bureaucracy, and there is a separate civic that adds the missing production and gold bonuses to the capital as well. It is even better than merchant trade for China if you have a super capital like I do, so I plan to revolt once I move the palace to Ruyin.




Compass is the next tech after Guilds, so once I have that discovered, I have some leeway before grabbing the other 3 required techs. This is because, for whatever reason, the AI doesn't like to chase Printing / Paper / Gunpowder nearly as much as it does Compass. There are a couple of techs I want to grab first - Medicine unlocking baths (+2 health), Crop Rotation giving extra hammers to forest chops and allowing irrigation, and Feudalism letting you build knights. Knights are very important for China to start building, because the best way to deal with the Mongol spawn in 1180 is with a lot of horse units.




Sure enough, I pop another Great Prophet soon after the first, courtesy of the various cathedrals and temples I've built letting me run a ton of priests. In a normal game, you'd want to build the Taoist shrine, but this guy is reserved for golden age duty.

Not much else happens in the meantime - just a lot of cities building stuff. I finish three Confucian cathedrals and Taoist cathedrals early, with the fourth Confucian one being slowed down by a straggler city that starved to size one during the plague. But once it built the final temple, I was able to hit the goal well ahead of schedule:




With the massive amount of productive land available to China, you should never struggle when aiming for this part of the historical victory. With all the necessary Cathedrals done, all that remains to do is to finish grabbing the required techs, generate more great people, and build an army.




I slacked on this a little built, only building my first knight (called 'Lancers' in the mod) in 570 AD. Note that there's a new promotion to take here - skirmish, which boosts damage vs light cavalry units. This is very important for fighting both the barbarian horse archers, and later, the Mongols.

After unlocking knights, I am left to discover Printing, Paper, and Gunpowder at a leisurely pace.




Also, showing off how I like to develop the original capital. A lot of plains hills makes this city great for production more so than commerce. Note that a recent change in the mod made it so you can only build lumbermills on flatland. Something that I find annoying, given that a lot of the forests I would want to save for health reasons. So on hill forests, you eventually go with either mines or windmills.




Also showing the ability of Great Generals to build the Armory, which boosts military production, once you discover the Commune technology.




Another mega production city, this one powered mainly by vassalage farms. It would be almost perfect for Ironworks, if it weren't for those two steppe tiles you can never improve




After discovering the paper technology, you have the option of building the Porcelain Tower wonder, which gives extra food to statesman specialists and lets you have trade routes with other civs without needing open borders. Statesmen are a new type of specialist that generate a mix of raw commerce and espionage, and build great statesman points. Great Statesmen can either let you change civics without anarchy, or build something like the vanilla Forbidden Palace in a city, reducing maintenance. The wonder isn't really key to winning the game like Dujiangyan / Grand Canal are, but it doesn't hurt, so I build it anyway.

More to come...

[El Grillo]

Plague has been thankfully nerfed from the original version in the mod, where it would kill units and workers too.

Oh thank goodness, that was such a feel-bad mechanic. Looks like things are going nice and smoothly here. Any unusual happenings out in the fog? One thing I did with the China start was send a couple of scouting units up north and west with the goal of contacting EMEA to sell techs to. Is that blocked off by the new terrain types now?

[Magic Science]

Excuse me if you already explained, but why are you scouting so little? There is a lot of dark fog out there.

[El Grillo]

There are some pretty spooky barbs out in the fog, but iirc you can build spies in the classical-medieval age and send them through neutral territory without risk of detection/capture.

[greenline]

Oh thank goodness, that was such a feel-bad mechanic. Looks like things are going nice and smoothly here. Any unusual happenings out in the fog? One thing I did with the China start was send a couple of scouting units up north and west with the goal of contacting EMEA to sell techs to. Is that blocked off by the new terrain types now?

Sending an early scout to Europe / the Middle East is still a viable tactic, you just have to be wary of barbs in Siberia. It might be necessary on Monarch and up difficulties, due to the faster AI tech pace. It's not necessary on Regent, though.

Excuse me if you already explained, but why are you scouting so little? There is a lot of dark fog out there.

Scouting isn't something necessary for the game plan I have. Since I can tech really fast without tech trading, and I have all the cities needed for the historical victory, scouting would just let me see which AIs are doing well and which are not. There are some civs who need to rely on tech trading a lot more though, or even have historical victory goals that require revealing the map, so it would be prudent to scout a lot more in those cases. Barb spawns in the mod aren't affected by visibility, so there isn't really any benefit to fog busting.

Continuing further:




After a lot of peaceful teching, the tech goal is achieved in 680 AD. The other three techs are pretty useful for China - Paper adds commerce to lumbermills and lets you build post offices (+1 trade route, +1 statesman slot), Printing adds commerce to villages and towns like in vanilla, and Gunpowder lets you build the Firelancer unique unit (9 Str Musket replacement, does up to 50% collateral damage!). So even if you weren't going for the historical victory, you'd want these techs anyway.

At this point, you don't really need many more techs to win the game. The main one that would be useful is Urban Planning, which lets you build Taj Mahal - if that is the plan to get the last required golden age. But since my economy is doing so well, I decide to be audacious and click on Combined Arms - a renaissance tech that unlocks the next generation of cavalry units. Knights do well against the Mongols, but Cuirraisers do even better,




With the tech goal finished, I aim to expand a little further into Mongol territory / Manchuria. Not because it would help in the upcoming war at all, I just want the extra health resources for my core.




After founding this city, it pops up with the Silk Road "corporation". Silk Road automatically spawns in cities along the historical Silk Road path, giving free gold and food if you have certain resources, and disappears in the renaissance era. Nothing to complain about, but not something China can really abuse unless you go out of your way to conquer Xinjiang and the Tarim Basin. I don't think it's worth doing that until after the Mongol spawn at least, since that whole region flips to them.




This other city I founded in Manchuria / Siberia shows off another new terrain feature, Taiga. Taiga offers extra health and tile defense, but can't be cleared until Ecology. So this iron will have to remain unmined.




While I mentioned earlier in the thread that catapults suck in this mod, the later siege units are a lot better and worth building. Trebuchets come in at Fortification and Bombards at gunpowder, and both get extra experience if you have a castle built in the city. So that makes it easy to get a bunch of accuracy trebs / bombards running around. I build a couple to help me take cities from the Mongols.




Showing off the ability of settlers to 'refound' cities and add extra buildings to them. Since I entered the renaissance era, the list of free buildings is now rather substantial, and gets this city up to speed a lot faster.




One tech before combined arms, I hit Statecraft, which unlocks the Forbidden Palace wonder for China. This bad boy takes a ton of hammers to build, but cuts civic costs by 33% when finished. It comes too late to be useful for the historical victory, but otherwise is very strong (oddly, Japan is the civ that can get the most benefits from it, since the historical victory for Japan requires both conquering China and being first to discover a bunch of future era techs). I build it too, just for fun.




In 840 AD, Burma spawns. The city here doesn't flip to them, but loses the resources at the edge for the foreseeable future. In a long game, Burma is prime conquest material once the Mongols are dealt with.




I unlock Cuirassiers in 890 AD, giving me plenty of time to turn off tech for a couple turns and upgrade my now substantial stack of knights. Note that the light cavalry you unlock is proportionally much weaker than horse archers.




Vietnam spawns in 940 AD, stealing away the city I conquered. The Vietnam AI I have found to be pretty weak as well, so they're good fodder if you want more land.




In 950 AD, you get a little taste of what the Mongol invasion will be like, when these packs of Keshiks spawn in. Keshiks are the most brokenly overpowered unit in the mod, being 3 move 10 strength light cavalry units that cause collateral damage. You don't want these guys to hit your cities, because they are strong and will weaken defenders with collateral damage, so it is better to attack them first. Luckily skirmish promoted Cuirs are well up to the task, although I do lose a few on bad dice rolls.




While you can unlock the tech for Taj Mahal fairly early on, China is limited in building it because it requires Islam as a state religion. Islam doesn't naturally flow to any core Chinese cities, so the best way of getting it is to conquer deep into Central Asia and then running a missionary into your territory. But at this point, I've generated so many great people naturally that I don't need to do this plan.

While this is going on, I built a couple caravels to get the circumnavigation bonus, and to get contact with other civs to abuse the Porcelain Tower trade routes.




Along the way, I discover that the AI Arabs are shockingly up a tech on me (at this point, every other civ close to an era behind). The Arabs might be a risk to build Taj Mahal first - if they weren't about to be steamrolled by the Mongols.




Shown here is the expansive, but dry and sparse Mongol core territory. The initial Mongol flip range is a lot bigger than this, though. Since I have a lot of Cuirs, I have the mobile striking power to quickly recapture those cities, so I'm not worried too much about them flipping.




The Mongols spawn on turn 1180, and one turn later, the cities flip. The Mongols immediately declare war on me after spawning, so I do not have to declare war on them if I want my cities back, thus ensuring they get no extra units. However, the Mongol starting army is still no joke. My goal is to find and defeat the Mongol armies in the field - the Mongol AI does a horrible job of building any more units besides the ones they start with, so once you beat their initial army, you are safe.




As you can see, my border fortress north of Chang'an flipped, along with the millet city, the fur / deers city, and the other deer city. Each flipped city starts with two crossbows, which will be trivial for my Cuir stack to smash through. Somewhere north in the fog of war is a monster 20+ keshik stack, which is the real threat.




I start by recapturing the millet city, and moving my stack further north to hit the fur / deer city. My smaller  stack of firelancers tries to keep up as best they can.




A couple of reserve cuirs are enough to recapture the sheep / copper city. The Mongol AI doesn't seem to attack from the west from what I've seen, so this city is safe.

A couple turns pass. I recapture the other flipped cities, wondering where the doomstack is. And then I see it:




Keshiks galore, trebs, and the other Mongol unique unit, a 9 strength horse archer. Ouch!

You absolutely have to fight this monster stack in the field. Why? Not only does it have insane amounts of collateral when combining both the trebs and the keshiks, but the Mongol unique power reduces city defense to 0 when a Mongol army approaches it. Thankfully the AI tends to not be smart enough to get the full use out of it. With the stack in range, I promote all my available cuirs and send them in:




There are some survivors, but not enough to break my own stack anymore, which retreats back into the city, with my firelancers catching up to guard them. This is essentially the game won at this point - with the back of the Mongol army broken, there's not really any way I can lose anymore, short of a self inflicted stability disaster.

more to come...

[greenline]

wrapping up:

Some things to note: leading up to the Mongol war, I had finally got enough great people to burn on the remaining 3 golden ages (Should have got a screenshot, but I forgot to at the time). In addition to golden ages no longer preventing anarchy, in RFC, they also require 2 different great people at the start, and then 3, 4, 5, instead of starting with 1 like in BtS. I had naturally birthed most of the ones I needed, and got the one remaining one from a tech - a free Great Merchant at the Economics tech (also got a free scientist with the Scientific Method tech, but I already had plenty of scientists). So after defeating the Mongol army, all that's left for me to do to win is wait out the remaining golden age turns. The mod is usually pretty good about giving you victories up front rather than having waiting turns, but unfortunately this is one case where you have to wait it out.




After suffering the massive losses from last turn, the Mongols push forward with their remaining forces, but at this point, it's easy to clean up with the Firelancers.




Because all of the fighting was taking place on Mongol territory, I end up with war weariness spiking in some cities, amusingly.




Even while I was cleaning up the remaining Mongol forces and marching on their capital, on the other side of the world, the Mongol armies continue to ravage the middle east. This is because the Mongol AI gets their armies to spawn directly in the middle east next to cities, rather than marching them all the way through Kazakhstan. Even after wiping out the massive doomstack, I'm still slightly below the Mongols in power - but the AI has no idea on how to route all the military in this part of the world back to east asia.




Another new set of barbarians spawn around this time period, barbarian 5 str heavy galleys. I had prebuilt some of my own ships to deal with them - but if I had forgotten, the worst I would see is my seafood pillaged.




My forces advance on Qara Qorum and conquer it the next turn, after which the Mongols agree to give me a city for peace. I thought it'd be a city I could get some use out of, but instead...




Yeah, thanks for the worthless colony on the other side of the world . I liberated it instantly rather than having to look at this eyesore.




And with that, I had nothing more to do but to put cities on wealth / research builds and hit end turn until I won.

Having only played one test game with China beforehand (if you don't count some throwaway attempts to figure out the barb spawns), I found it impressive that I was able to push the victory date further back than the first time, despite not changing my overall strategy much. Someone motivated could probably do this even before the mongols spawn, by using clever bulbing strategies, and maybe settling cities tighter together to save on maintenance costs.

If you look at this and think the whole mod is as easy, that's definitely not the case, though. I picked China for a test game because they were the one civ I had played where I could actually, consistently pull off the historical victory condition - most were a lot harder than this!

If anyone wants, I could potentially do one more sample playthrough on one of the harder historical victory challenges - although there is a good chance I might not succeed. Anyway, I hope this was a decent showcase of the mod, although there were some mechanics (like stability) that hardly mattered for this run.

[Amicalola]

I would like to see a sample playthrough of one of the weirder/smaller civs, as opposed to a powerhouse like China. Loved the thread so far.

[greenline]

Because one game of civ is never enough...




This time, I'm taking the Khmer for a spin. In RFC, these are one of the 'small, weird' civs, having a tiny core in Southeast Asia, a historical victory goal primarily related to culture, and are expected to die shortly after achieving those goals. I've played a test game with them halfway to completion, which made me think I could pull off a victory with the right planning. However, there is a significant chance I fail this time.

The Khmer only have one unique unit, the ballistaphant - unchanged from vanilla, from what I can tell. The baray has been buffed slightly, giving +2 food instead of +1, which will be very helpful for the historical victory goal. I will show off their unique power in a bit.




This is what you see upon spawning in. A ton of resources, the double rice + bananas being plenty to grow this city very large. Being one tile off the coast isn't even a big deal, since I can still build a harbor owing to the lake adjacent to the city center. It's certainly way better than the original Khmer start on the old map:

On the other hand, it's a lot harder to control all of that new land...




The Khmer victory goals are so long they keep finding ways to run off the screen. In order, they are:

By 600 AD:
Have 2000+ total culture

By 1200 AD:
Build the Wat Preah Pisnulok wonder
Have four hindu monastaries and four buddhist monastaries
Have an average city size of 12

By 1400 AD:
Have Angkor (the capital founded in place, which is currently not set to have the right name on founding, but the game still recognizes it as such) be the largest city in the world
Have an average city size of 15
Have 12000 total culture

This leaves us with several goals:

Settle or conquer three cities besides the capital and grow them large. To build the wonder, I need to tech Civil Service ASAP. The wonder helps with the victory goal, having a similar effect to hanging gardens where it gives +1 pop in all cities. Third, I need to generate a lot of artists. Fourth, I need to keep Thailand from spawning at all costs. Thailand will spawn and flip the Khmer capital if you drop below a stability level of "Solid" near the time when they spawn, and Thailand spawns in 1240 AD, before the third goal will be checked by the game. It's a lot to cram into the limited turns you get, although it should be a lot easier here than in the original version of the mod, when Khmer spawned in 600 AD instead of of 20 AD.




The default starting civics. Never use Deification with Khmer - you start with Hinduism as a state religion, so stick with clergy for the building bonuses at the start. Despotism is necessary since the starting terrain is food rich and hammer poor. There's no way to build all the buildings and units you need without a copious amount of whipping. Redistribution is also mandatory, since there's no other way to get the capital as the biggest city in the world, and fast.

The most interesting choice here is on how long you want to run Manorialism. In the China game, I never switched off it because I was frequently building new cities and needed new workers constantly, and I preferred the low upkeep and bonuses to farms and pastures. For Khmer, though, you don't have a lot of time to be building workers, and you don't want any more cities than the necessary four to keep your average population high. For this game, I intend to run Manorialism at the start to crank out four workers, which I felt was a decent amount, before permanently switching to Caste System. Caste System in the mod gives increased worker speed similar to vanilla Serfdom, and +1 food to plantations, at the cost of having high upkeep. Since I need food like no one's business, this seems the way to go.




And now, showing off the Khmer unique power I mentioned earlier. You can turn 25% of your production into food at the capital, to potentially supercharge growth. I don't use much of this at the start, since the capital is busy frantically whipping stuff, but it may come into play later.




The first and most pressing goal at the start is the culture goal. You need 2000 total, which you can get most of from an artist bomb. Culture bombing was nerfed in the mod to create less culture in earlier eras. For Khmer, it offers +1600 culture per bomb at the start, which is just enough to squeak to 2000 culture by the deadline when combined with the residual culture from running artists. Since there is no civic equivalent to vanilla caste system, letting you run unlimited artists, the first tech goal is rushing Aesthetics, unlocking the Jeweler building, which adds an artist slot (Khmer starts with the technology to build theaters, thankfully). After that, I need to grab Civil Service to build Wat Preah Pinsulok, and then after that I plan to run the culture slider as high as I can for the rest of the game.

With all that out of the way, I start by having my worker farm the rice and have the capital build more workers. While that is going on, I send my starting workboat to the west, hoping to score a good tech trade with an Indian civ.




On the way, I run into a scouting boat from Persia. Note that in RFC (maybe in vanilla too?) you can't trade techs with a civ until you've unlocked a trade route with them.




A taste of Indochina's barb troubles. These Hindi War elephants are a giant pain in the ass, since Khmer has no easily available metals and the best you can do is trade Ballistaphants with them. Eventually Burma will spawn take care of them for me, but for now, I have to dance around these when they spawn.




Some turns later, I meet the Dravidian civ. Despite sharing a state religion, he refuses to trade any techs. A letdown.




Early on, I get a natural Buddhist spread to the capital, which is a huge break. In my test game, it took way later for any Buddhist spread to occur. I hope the mod goes back to how the Khmer originally worked and just gives you a Buddhist missionary as well as a Hindu missionary to start, since the luck involved here is annoying.

After building four workers, I revolt to caste system and have them use the one available forest chop for a granary - made cheaper with Redistribution. The map is kind enough to give Khmer salt for the health bonus.




This independent city to the north spawns shortly afterwards. You might think it makes sense to conquer for the four city goal, but it has a very annoying habit of popping out crossbows that are difficult for Ballistaphants to kill. It also lacks food resources, having an unseen seafood and sharing the pigs with the other independent city.

After finishing the granary, I build my first settler, just around the time Aesthetics is finishing. The pace of the first goal is such that I need to start running artists now, having no time for further developing the capital.




The tech path after discovering Aesthetics. The main thing we unlock on the way to Civil Service is the Citizenship civic (competes with Vassalage). This is specifically good for the Khmer historical victory, because it boosts the production for libraries, theaters, and aqueducts.  Also on the way is the Monasticism civic (competes with Clergy), which boost great people points in cities with your state religion by 50%. I plan to use that once every necessary building / wonder is built. However, before we can go for Civil Service, we need to make a pit stop at Generalship, to unlock Ballistaphants in the first place. Kind of sad that you can't even build any at the start...

The first city I found is 2SE of the capital, borrowing one of the capital rices, and having two seafood resources for itself.




In addition to the solitary barb war elephants, there are also these barb swords, which were acting a little buggy in the version of the mod I had. Rather than invading or pillaging, they were content to just fortify on one hill for the game and prevent me from building improvements nearby. I guess that was preferable to having to defend against them.

While the capital works exclusively on a theater + jeweler pair and runs artists, I had the second city build another settler, this one heading to the east:




Clam, crab, citrus, and spices will make this city a food powerhouse if nothing else. This was the turn I generated my first great artist, immediately used on a culture bomb. I'm 8 turns from the deadline, so there is sadly no opportunity to settle it instead.




Around 560 AD, the Malaysian civ spawns. They almost always found a city in Singapore, and they are to be my intended victim for the fourth necessary city. Singapore has two seafood resources, in addition to ivory, spice, dyes, and sugar. Malaysia is stuck building archers, lacking the tech for crossbows, so they will die quickly to Ballistaphants - which crucially can move through unimproved jungles.




Malaysia is kind enough to swing me a tech trade where the stingy Dravidians wouldn't. Too bad I have to invade them, they're a nice neighbor. At this point, I am busy whipping out Ballistaphants, letting the overflow dump into the missing hindu / buddhist monastaries, then into granaries, harbors, and barays. My capital and other cities are starting to rack up unhappy faces, but there's not much I can do about that. 

I scrounge together three elephants, but then disaster strikes when a barb elephant kills two of mine. This delays my invasion of Singapore to turn 244:




Three elephants vs three archers. Thankfully, luck goes my way this time, and I take the city flawlessly.




Not only that, but Malaysia is kind enough to sign peace instantly and not force me to whip any boats to defend my exposed seafood. Phew!

With four cities, I focus on spreading Hinduism to Singapore and whipping the remaining monastaries. The goal is accomplished ahead of schedule.




When Burma spawns, the barbarian sword stack that was fortifying endlessly on the hill tile simply vanishes. Weird. (Burma spawning is the reason why I never bothered settling in this direction - no way my crippled civ focused on dumb religious buildings and wonders can fight them)




The second great artist spawns in 820 AD. I decide to settle this one, hoping that the long term culture, gold, and happy face will pay off when running the culture slider later. I might have lost the game on this turn by not using a bomb, so we will see.




And here is where I left off. A few turns from Civil Service. 30 odd turns to build the wonder, then generate as much culture as possible. I'm close or already at the 12 pop city average goal. Let's see if I can pull it off.

[Mjmd]

With the stability mechanic along with somewhat set areas and civs spawning just taking cities is it possible to go on large conquering sprees?

[thestick]

Endgame, maybe? I know that Japan, Germany, and America have 'conquer large chunks of the world' as part of their historical victories. Stability minuses for expansion are based on population outside of the core, so it should be possible if you're willing to restrict non-core city growth.