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Re: Ideas for better online game experience

Posted: Thu Aug 24, 2017 4:29 pm
by wieder
I'm not talking specifically about the freecif-web game but in general.

I would not isolate new players because that way they would be effectively playing single player a multiplayer game. Even while that would only last for some time. They would be protected from others attacking but also would lose the chance to trade with others. On longturn.org that would be losing gold trade and here tech trade.

Then again that might work here since the game is different to what I'm used to and the mechanics might work differently. On longturn.org giving only gold to new players might result some weird issues with other nations. Some players might just take that gold with horses - or maybe make some deal. Hard to say.

How is the adding of the new players implemented land-wise? are they placed on some area that's not populated or are the starting locations fixed?

Oh... And like someone pointed to me elsewhere, I may have given a wrong impression about longturn.org games and casual playing. There are some more or less casual players playing there. You don't need to be an expert. Far from it :) What I wanted to say is that the games start when they start and for a reason no more players can be added there. The reason is that people are competing and adding new stuff or changing the ruleset is considered something that was not known when the game started. And that's what we try to avoid. That's why it's not possible to be a casual gamer and just join at any time. Another matter is that people like to figure out how the rulesets work and this gives more challenge to players who don't check the rules.

We also edit the rulesets between the games to make them more suitable for multiplayer. Checking the changes may sometimes give some trouble to very casual players :)

Re: Ideas for better online game experience

Posted: Fri Aug 25, 2017 7:38 am
by Corbeau
Anyway, I believ we agree on restrictinfra: it should be implemented.

Re: Ideas for better online game experience

Posted: Fri Aug 25, 2017 12:51 pm
by pungtryne
Corbeau wrote:Anyway, I believ we agree on restrictinfra: it should be implemented.
I don't.

Re: Ideas for better online game experience

Posted: Sun Aug 27, 2017 12:13 pm
by Lexxie
1. Restricting roads/rails or whatever that is: I don't agree. "Dumbing down" the game is a bad way to solve problems. In my opinion, the greatness of longturn is that the slower pace allows a much more sophistication in negotiation, economics, transportation structure, diplomatic agreements, and so on.

No one is forced to make roads or rails in a way that exposes their cities to easy invasion. This rule almost sounds like it is preventing you from making dumb mistakes. But we are allowed to make our rails go through occupied fortresses, mountains, border check points, or to not build them at all. Can we just admit something? Unguarded transportation infrastructure can be used by an enemy in real life, so it should be in the game also.

2. Restricting deal making, transactions, and diplomatic possibilities. Once again, "dumbing down" the game is bad. Removing gold trading, city trading and other clauses handicaps the best part of longturn freeciv!! ... the unlimited and infinite potential for humans to negotiate agreements and deals and trades. Think what we got rid of. Gold for peace (tribute). Gold for tech. Gold for land and cities. Cities for peace. Cities for gold. Cities for tech. Tech for peace. Two techs and a city in exchange for that nicer city over there. The ability to give a city with a wonder in it for a turn to an ally, to make something possible. The ability to give a city to an ally so that it looks like he's attacking instead of you (wearing false uniforms). A million other wonderful things have been disabled! Most games with restrictive rules have a "meta": a single best way to play. This way is "forced" on you by how the rules work. When you can combine any number of pacts, technologies, gold, money, or cities, all into a deal, this gives your country limitless possibilities for being a real deal maker. It lets unthought of skills and talents in your personality come out. It unleashes the human spirit and opens the doors of diplomacy. It gives you a reason to talk to other nations and create ways to benefit each other mutually. In the slow pace of the longturn game, you can really become a global dealer and negotiator in amazing ways. The full creative potential of the human mind is unlocked. You role-play being a true leader of a nation who makes deals with other nations.

Sadly, multi-account cheating can really take advantage of this. Restricting the rules will never fix it. If you disable gold and city trading, the multi-accounter will just empty cities and loot them. Or use the nations to attack enemies. Or set the nation up as a research lab. What restriction comes next? We can disable city conquest, tech transfer, looting, and twenty other things, and the cheater will just find another way to take advantage of having multiple nations. We have seen that whatever restrictions you come up with to prevent cheating, it will just dumb down the game while the multi-accounters will simply find another way to take advantage. The true solution has to be real anti-cheating policies. The answer is not to get rid of the best part of the game because of multi-accounting, but to find a way to stop multi-accounting. I'm sure combining a few easy policies and rules could restore the integrity of the game. Let's give back a national leader's natural right to negotiate and make deals.

3. Restricting uncontrolled tech proliferation. Turning off tech trading completely eliminates the dealmaking role of playing a national leader. But not limiting it results in wild and unrealistic tech proliferation. The user poll shouldn't be whether to allow or disable tech trading. It should be voting on how to lightly limit it.

How about this? Just like you can only sell one building in a city per day, what if you can only give one technology to one player per day? This leaves everything exactly as it should be for normal play, while preventing wild abuse of proliferation. Now you have to decide who to use your one deal a day on, and make it actually count for some real purpose.

Just like some of the other wonders were changed, Darwin should be changed.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading my long post!

Cheers! :P :P

Re: Ideas for better online game experience

Posted: Sun Aug 27, 2017 1:37 pm
by Corbeau
Lexxie wrote:1. Restricting roads/rails or whatever that is: I don't agree. "Dumbing down" the game is a bad way to solve problems. In my opinion, the greatness of longturn is that the slower pace allows a much more sophistication in negotiation, economics, transportation structure, diplomatic agreements, and so on.
There are two criteria when discussing game settings. One is game playability and the other is realism. Here you just explained why restricting movement on enemy terrain is good for playability.
No one is forced to make roads or rails in a way that exposes their cities to easy invasion. This rule almost sounds like it is preventing you from making dumb mistakes. But we are allowed to make our rails go through occupied fortresses, mountains, border check points, or to not build them at all. Can we just admit something? Unguarded transportation infrastructure can be used by an enemy in real life, so it should be in the game also.
And here you mention realism but, again, you obviously don't know how war works, what "units" mean in Civ and how is real combat actually approximated and symbolised in Civ. Again, very, very simple: in combat circumstances a unit never moves down the road (or especially rail) by normal road speed. If you control the territory, you do. If you don't, you don't. No, the road is never clear of enemy units even if in Civ approximated reality it seems that it is.[/quote]

I agree about tech and moey trade. Also, about limiting tech trade, I mentioned this about a dozen times: setting root_reqs and tech upkeep. It's not perfect, but it's a step in the right direction.

Re: Ideas for better online game experience

Posted: Sun Aug 27, 2017 8:22 pm
by pungtryne
Corbeau wrote:And here you mention realism but, again, you obviously don't know how war works, what "units" mean in Civ and how is real combat actually approximated and symbolised in Civ. Again, very, very simple: in combat circumstances a unit never moves down the road (or especially rail) by normal road speed. If you control the territory, you do. If you don't, you don't. No, the road is never clear of enemy units even if in Civ approximated reality it seems that it is.
There are ZOC rules to represent that a road is defended by units. If there are no units defending the road or the cities along the road, it means whoever has units there controls the territory. I think this works great. It's totally normal to have units in cities to defend them, and that's what makes them defend roads, among other with ZOC rules.

I totally agree with tech upkeep and hope that this can be experimented with.

Re: Ideas for better online game experience

Posted: Sun Aug 27, 2017 9:51 pm
by Corbeau
pungtryne wrote:There are ZOC rules to represent that a road is defended by units. If there are no units defending the road or the cities along the road, it means whoever has units there controls the territory. I think this works great. It's totally normal to have units in cities to defend them, and that's what makes them defend roads, among other with ZOC rules.
I believe Wieder explained this from the playability point of view so let me try with the realism. The main strategy that the inferior defence can use is hit and run. They can't stop an invading force that way, but they can slow it down.

In Longturn - and Civ in general - hit and run is not possible due to simplified movement system. Once you hit, you can't run and you can't hit tactically to slow down (and inflict and receive minimal losses), only full-on, to destroy. So, since this strategy is completely disabled, something needs to exist to compensate for this. And that is restricted movement.

In reality, a small force of 100 men can slow down an armada of 10,000 men if only they play by the book, which is not frontal, just stall. Such a small force is invisible in Civ scale and is represented by this feature.

Keep in mind the scale. On the ap we are playing on, all of Denmark would be smaller than two tiles. That distance is easy to cross in one turn. But without restriction, Barbarossa (1941) could be won in two turns.

Re: Ideas for better online game experience

Posted: Sun Aug 27, 2017 10:56 pm
by pungtryne
Corbeau wrote: In Longturn - and Civ in general - hit and run is not possible due to simplified movement system. Once you hit, you can't run and you can't hit tactically to slow down (and inflict and receive minimal losses), only full-on, to destroy. So, since this strategy is completely disabled, something needs to exist to compensate for this. And that is restricted movement.
That is zone of control.

Restrictinfra is more a playability question, and in my opinion I lean towards having it off, at least for roads. I wouldn't mind trying out a game with restrictinfra though.

Re: Ideas for better online game experience

Posted: Sun Aug 27, 2017 11:03 pm
by Corbeau
pungtryne wrote:
Corbeau wrote: In Longturn - and Civ in general - hit and run is not possible due to simplified movement system. Once you hit, you can't run and you can't hit tactically to slow down (and inflict and receive minimal losses), only full-on, to destroy. So, since this strategy is completely disabled, something needs to exist to compensate for this. And that is restricted movement.
That is zone of control.
No, because you need to have a full-scale operational military unit in the area built over several turns in order to exert ZOC. Which is exactly what I'm NOT talking about.

Re: Ideas for better online game experience

Posted: Sun Aug 27, 2017 11:09 pm
by pungtryne
Corbeau wrote:
pungtryne wrote:
Corbeau wrote: In Longturn - and Civ in general - hit and run is not possible due to simplified movement system. Once you hit, you can't run and you can't hit tactically to slow down (and inflict and receive minimal losses), only full-on, to destroy. So, since this strategy is completely disabled, something needs to exist to compensate for this. And that is restricted movement.
That is zone of control.
No, because you need to have a full-scale operational military unit in the area built over several turns in order to exert ZOC. Which is exactly what I'm NOT talking about.
That's natural to be able to have advantage from ZOC. You need to at least get some men with clubs to keep the enemy out. It's only 10 prod so it's not much.