Multiplayer wish list

[wieder]

Thee are not features the multiplayer games like those on longturn.org would really badly need but here are some thoughts about possible options that might help designing new ruleset features.

- ability to steal n times from a city
- possibility to limit the number of techs a player can receive via trades in one turn
- possibility of preventing units (especially nukes) from being unloaded/loaded on sea because that effectively allows skilled players to move them anywhere in one turn
- possibility to choose what kind of diplomatic actions a unit can do. now you can pretty much only choose between diplo/spy abilities

I'm posting this here just that the ideas are stored somewhere. More will follow at a later time.

[Corbeau]

- possibility of preventing units (especially nukes) from being unloaded/loaded on sea because that effectively allows skilled players to move them anywhere in one turn

Actually, missiles of any kind should be unable to be (re)loaded onto anything once they have been launched. Once they are in the field, the end; they should be able to either explode, run out of fuel or be disbanded (with no shields return if it happens in a city).

Infantry should be able to be loaded on more or lass anything: tanks, freight, helicopters, boats. Hell, I'd remove airlifting and replace it with transport planes that have long range, no attack and can stay in the air for 3-4 turns.

[Alien Valkyrie]

Some of these things are already (partially) possible:

- possibility of preventing units (especially nukes) from being unloaded/loaded on sea because that effectively allows skilled players to move them anywhere in one turn

This could be done by marking sea units as "Unreachable" (or introducing a new unit class "Submarine" for that) and using the "disambarks" and "embarks" unit type properties. That way, it would be possible (and necessary) to give missiles the ability to disembark from submarines, but not embark outside of a city. It would, however, also necessitate explicitly allowing every single naval unit (and possibly certain air units as well) to attack submarines (with the "targets" property).
Obviously, this still allows flying a missile from city to city, which, as Corbeau pointed out, isn't the greatest of things.

- possibility to choose what kind of diplomatic actions a unit can do. now you can pretty much only choose between diplo/spy abilities

This is possible using action enablers starting from Freeciv 2.6.

[wieder]

Some additional ideas for ye wish list. These would be nice to improve the multiplayer experience. Probably no impact on single player.

Yeah, it could be dealt with using that kind of tricks. However the most elegant way would be having a setting that would use moves for loading or unloading units. This setting should be unit specific so that a nuke with 16 moves could lose like 9 moves when loaded. Maybe this could be done to Freeciv 4.0

Another feature for the wish list is having a setting to prevent some actions from being completed if the player tries to perform them too close to TC. Thiscould be called something like gameactiontime or something and it would prevent some actions from happening if there would be less seconds to TC than the value of the gameactiontime is. This could include at least the following:

- workers/enginers from completing tasks no matter how many units are used.
- changing government
- changing tech target
- launching the space ship
- city trading

Another way to deal with workers building roads just seconds before TC would be introducing workerparalysistime that would prevent the workers from completing the task in the same turn if the workers themselves can see an enemy unit and the value of the parameter would be less than the turn has time left. This would solve lots of issues with people waiting for TC and then deploying the workers at the last possible moment.

And then there is city trading. The city trading is a powerful tool but too often too powerful. Would be nice if it would be possible to make a cost for city trading. This could be for example a % value of the buy cost or the city or maybe % value of the actual value of the city. It could include the build costs of units, city improvements and a small cost for the size. Probably shouldn't become much more expensive even if the city was size 50 compared to a city with size 2. Units should definitely matter since this is an easy way to give units from one player to another.

and... Would be cool if the server settings could define that your nation would be played by AI if the player would be idle for more than N number of turns. This would help in situations where someone just goes idle. Should be possible to take back the control of the nation in case this player comes back one day.

[Corbeau]

A few ideas and suggestions.

Basically, I get my ideas from a game called "RL"

- workers/enginers from completing tasks no matter how many units are used.

I understand where this is coming from, however, I feel you're looking this from the wrong direction. Simply implement two things:
1. You can't build roads in enemy territory
2. Fortress doesn't change tile ownership

Basically, 1. makes perfect sense when you consider that due to restrictinfra, this road wouldn't be used anyway, except in conjunction with 2., but 2. is unrealistic anyway. You built a fortress on an enemy tile? Cool story, bro. In Civ, a tile is order of magnitude of hundreds, if not thousands of square km. No, you can't use it, farm it, mine it, connect it wit roads for the purposes of normal traffic. Basically, an often use of a fortress is for people under Democracy is to stuff their units inside so that there is less unhappiness at home. Because if you have an American fortress in Kabul, people at home are going to say "Oh, that's fine then, they may just as well be in Wisconsin, no difference at all".

- changing government

If I understood correctly, the only problem with this being too close to TC is that some people would like to seize the opportunity to incite revolts and bribe units? Well, that doesn't happen too often anyway is I'm not sure it's that big a deal. If it is, then maybe simply declare that the benefits of a new government such as "no revolt/bribery" happen exactly 24 or 48 hours after revolution was started.

But another idea, from a board game called Through the Ages, often described as "Civilization without the map part": have two kinds of changes of governments. Revolution, business as usual. but also a peaceful one, where you spend a certain amount of bulbs and/or money, and then the change is peaceful and instantaneous. There the bulb cost was equivalent to one tech cost. However, there are much techs in al so, in equivalent, here it may amount to the price of maybe five techs. Another way of doing it may be that "bulbs are taxed by % for the next 5-10 turns", to make up for the need to change the system and social infrastructure.

- changing tech target

Why is this a problem?

- launching the space ship

Ok why is this a problem? I never reached a spaceship in Freeciv, but I was under the impression that people are able to see the state of your spaceship and that nobody can launch theirs by surprise, so it's basically irrelevant at which part of the turn it happens.

- city trading

I have a way of solving it. Again, RL helps. When a city is integrated into another government, it's not a trivial move. So, here, make it so that a city is transferred to another nation only with a 2 or 3 day (turn) delay. Removes a lot of possible abuse and trickery that way.

(An exception may be when a city is immediately conquered, then the conqueror has one minute to open a diplomacy screen and give it to his ally (and only ally). After those 60 seconds are over (or, it doesn't matter, it can be 300 seconds), the window of opportunity is closed and you have to use the usual channel, a three day wait.)

[cazfi]

Basically, an often use of a fortress is for people under Democracy is to stuff their units inside so that there is less unhappiness at home. Because if you have an American fortress in Kabul, people at home are going to say "Oh, that's fine then, they may just as well be in Wisconsin, no difference at all".

Fortress must be within 3 tiles of a friendly city for the no-unhappiness effect to work.

[Corbeau]

Fortress must be within 3 tiles of a friendly city for the no-unhappiness effect to work.

Is this hard-coded or a ruleset thing?

[Alien Valkyrie]

Fortress must be within 3 tiles of a friendly city for the no-unhappiness effect to work.

Is this hard-coded or a ruleset thing?

Firstly, this is a server setting thing – if happyborders is enabled, I'd assume the distance doesn't matter, so long as the fortress is a border source.
Apart from that, I'd assume hard-coded, since I can't recall ever having seen a setting for something like that anywhere in the ruleset.

[Corbeau]

In SG1 it is enabled which hints that this was so in a number of previous games, too. Could be wrong, though. But if it was enabled, this means you can reduce unhappiness by building a fort on the other side of the world in the middle of enemy territory and people will act as if the units were in the neighbouring town.

[Alien Valkyrie]

Yeah, that's of course not realistic. Then again, the whole thing with claimed borders is unrealistic – if one player builds a city no other player can build cities in the surrounding area, even if the player has no form of military control there.