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Question for you who copy sandbox

Posted: Mon Mar 01, 2021 4:16 pm
by sveinung
I know that some ruleset authors go through sandbox looking for ideas. Do you expect stuff there to fit well into a civ2civ3 style ruleset? Should I mark stuff originating from designs that may conflict wildly?

The reason why I ask is that I often just copy something from one of my (planning stage) rulesets when I need to demonstrate something in sandbox. My various planned rulesets are different in game style, verisimilitude and the story - both from each other and from civ2civ3.

The game play of an item from "It Is Just A Game" will typically not fit in among civ2civ3 - even less among something that attempts detailed historical simulation. Story telling elements of their fictional setting will appear in stuff from "Sons of Adam" (an antediluvian setting) and "Einsemd" (an isolated planet in a science fiction setting). Others may "only" fit in as badly as something designed for a classic based ruleset fits into a civ2civ3 based ruleset.

I sometimes try to do a little bit surface level integration with sandbox but it is far from polished. Would you prefer if I started to tag where things came from so you would know what to think extra hard about integrating with your ruleset if you decide to copy it? I am about to add something from "It Is Just A Game".

Re: Question for you who copy sandbox

Posted: Sun Jul 04, 2021 5:50 pm
by bard
In my case, I like to check sandbox to see examples of how to implement new features, no matter if they fit civ2civ3 style/balance or not.
If the implementation seems balanced for civ2civ3, I like to try to import it for my own version of the ruleset. If not, I still try to see if I could use some of the ideas in a different way.

Re: Question for you who copy sandbox

Posted: Wed Jul 07, 2021 9:07 am
by Corbeau
I didn't see this thread earlier and it seems interesting, but I must admit that I don't quite understand the question. There is "a sandbox" with ideas somewhere?

Re: Question for you who copy sandbox

Posted: Wed Jul 07, 2021 11:56 pm
by cazfi
Corbeau wrote:There is "a sandbox" with ideas somewhere?
Sandbox ruleset. First introduced in 2.6, but only slightly diverged from civ2civ3 there. Has much more stuff in later branches.

Re: Question for you who copy sandbox

Posted: Sun Jul 11, 2021 4:22 pm
by wieder
Longturn is also using a sort of sandbox setup for new stuff. The LTX ruleset was added for testing out new stuff and ideas. Something that is supposed to be at least decently balanced and we are now playing the first game - LT64 - with this ruleset. So it's kind of middle ground between a regular ruleset and a sandbox setup.

https://github.com/longturn/games/tree/master/LTX

Longturn's LTX (and LTT) is based on Civ2Civ3 but there are some heavy modifications to make it more suitable for multiplayer games. Most of the ideas working well for single player setup wouldn't work for a multiplayer game. Partisans is a a good example of this. Very nice for a single player game but not that good for a multiplayer setup where the players try to find loopholes.

Maybe that's why knowing about where some stuff came from is not that important. We always need to figure out the multiplayer part anyway and some of the other multiplayer implementations are wildly "incompatible" with the longturn.net setups anyway. For example the lt.net growth curve for prod and eco no longer has a moment where it turns from "linear" to "exponential" and this alone makes it difficult to use some copy-paste ideas without additional modifications.

Re: Question for you who copy sandbox

Posted: Wed Jul 14, 2021 12:35 am
by bard
wieder wrote:Most of the ideas working well for single player setup wouldn't work for a multiplayer game. Partisans is a a good example of this. Very nice for a single player game but not that good for a multiplayer setup where the players try to find loopholes.
I agree about the differences between single and multi, but imo, if something is not good for multi, there are few chances it will be good for single.

About partisans, if the problem is that players conquer an allied city to get free units and then they let it be conquered again to get more free units, I always thought a solution could be to reduce the population of the city by 1 per partisan created, or something like that.
But there is another issue that makes the appearance of partisan a bit useless for single player too. You just need to use planes or explorers/diplomats to fulfil the tiles around the city just before you conquer it, and partisans will not appear.

I have been testing lately the new features of v3.0, and there is a new flag CanEscape that allows some defenders in a stack to avoid the killstack rule if they have more move points than the attacking units. I really like the idea, but the way it was implemented cause the same issue as partisans, you just need to use planes/explorers or even diplomats/workers to surround the target tile before attacking in order to kill them all. I was thinking about opening a ticket to request that Escaping units in this case remain in the defending tile (instead of running to adjacent tiles, or dying when no one is void).

I'm still not sure where to post this kind of comments or suggestions about new features. Would it be ok to use the topic "Changes in what a 3.0 ruleset can do", now that developers no longer use it. This way, they will appear appended at the end of the topic the comments of ruleset creators that try to use those features.