What kind of changes does LT40 have

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wieder
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What kind of changes does LT40 have

Post by wieder »

Not everything is listed here, just the more important stuff. This includes LT36, LT37, LT38 and LT40 changes. The base LT changed made for civ2civ3 are not listed. Mostly cost, 3x moves and small wonder related. This is to give idea about what kind of game to expect. May include some errors but you get the idea.


- revolution takes 1 turn
- chance to receive techs is 50%
- no conventional tech trading, stealing / trading with diplomats and spies
- only marines can attack from ships
- nationalism as new government. kind of updated tribalism but with trade bonus and with max 50% tax/lux/sci rates. no incite/bribe
- nationalism has upkeep of 3 gold for units
- can build cities on mountains
- gov specific early units
- despotism: knights
- republic: caravel
- federation: marines
- nationalism: fighters and armor
- monarchy: spy
- communism: destroyer
- democracy: helicopter
- space ship parts less expensive
- cannons have 3 moves, artillery 4
- partisans cost 40, cost 1 population, no home city
- migrants cost 15
- immigrants (cost 30) obsolete migrants with railroad
- colonists (cost 50) obsolete settlers with railroad
- fanatics and crusaders can't be bribed
- partisans can be added to a city
- submarines can move diplomats, spies and explorers
- new empire sizes and +1 unhappy for each additional city
- magellan's give +2 moves + 10% promotion chance bonus
- triremes have 7 moves
- nuclear power gives +1 move to sea units
- fusion power gives +3 moves to sea units
- granary sizes: granary_food_ini = 16, 18, 20, 22, 24, 30, 40, 50
- new building resource agency increases city work area to 4 tiles away
- cities get 50% defense bonus at size 8 + double free units
- cities get another 50% defense bonus at size 20
- city trading is enabled
- no unlimited flights to destination city
- House of Peasants small wonder with trade to increase city working area in early game
- electricity gives cities more vision
- lighthouse gives more vision to a city, gives +3 moves for triremes, makes new triremes veteran
- malbork castle small wonder gives city 3 entertainers output + 1 lux
- flagship frigate. Unique unit, can have only one of this kind. more expensive and powerful
- underground tunnels small wonder 100% defense against all attacking units
- harbor gives +1 food and harbor improvement with electricity another +1 food
- drafted musketeers, cost 20 take 1 population
- drafted riflemen, cost 25, cost one population
- spy costs 80, has 7 moves
- warriors obsoleted by pikemen
- science cost 120%
- freight defense 2, HP 20
- settlers can't be added to a city
- start units: 6 settlers, 8 workers, 2 explorers
- new missile unit similar to those in the 50's
- added anti-aircraft riflemen, very expensive but good at defending against air attacks
- only Battleship and Carrier can move nukes
- Nuclear Defense System small wonder with flight, 95% defense chance
- barracks can produce veteran siege units
- siege units have adjusted attack values for the veteran levels
- catapult attack 4, catapult gets double firepower when attacking cities
- cannon attack 6, gets double firepower when attacking cities
- King Richard's no longer reduces unit costs
- everyone gets techs once n number of players have it
- Battleships can't become veterans, do not slow down when damaged
- cruise missiles get bonus when attacking battleships or carriers
- missiles have virtually no vision, need to get vision from some other unit
- fighters can stay on air for one turn change
- bombers can carry missiles
- workers, migrants, colonists and settlers can pillage improvements
- amphitheater upkeep 1
- atlantic telegraph company small wonder cost 120, gives embassy with everyone
- gold transfer tax 10%
- cruise missiles have 15 moves
- added anti aircraft missile able to attack air units
- can't bribe air units, except helicopters
- pyramids cost 160
- added trade bonus for fundamentalism
- removed mausoleum of mausolos
- removed statue of zeus
- monarchy has less production wasted compared to republic
- coastal defense available with gunpowder
- barracks I cost 60, barrack II 45 and barrack II 30
- fanatics available with conscription, cost no population can only be built with fundamentalism
- sun tsu cost 150, gives another v level with barracks
- fortress gives better vision
- mountains give better vision
- great library gives +10 sci to the city
- isaac newton gives 12 sci to the city
- coastal defenses are visible to outside the city
- airport is visible to outside the city
- partisans no longer appear when cities are conquered
- veteran_move_bonus = 0, 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 21, 24, 27 (divide with 9 to get the actual moves)
- veteran_raise_chance = 50, 45, 40, 35, 30, 25, 20, 15, 10, 0
- battleships cost 280
- submarine costs 40, has 12 moves
- nuclear missile costs 300
- mass transit costs 50
- better vision for advanced mounted units
- better vision for caravel
- workers are capturable
- Leonardo upgrades 2 units / turn but takes away one veteran level for each upgraded unit
- magellan's costs 200
- palace and 2nd palace give 4 less unhappy from military units
- no trade with caravans
- under despotism, 20 units can bring martial law
- no tech upkeep
- better veteran bonus system for diplomats and spies
- crusaders can only be build with fundamentalism
- tribalism has 4 free units
- +5% science bonus for federation
- isaac newton costs 400
- amphitheatre costs 50
- no inciting cities for fundamentalism
- +1 food to hill/desert cities
- no pollution on ocean
- courthouse cost 45
- 2nd palace administrative center, cost 150
- Michelangelo costs 600
- added fusion units: fighter, armor, bomber and battleship
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Corbeau
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Re: What kind of changes does LT40 have

Post by Corbeau »

wieder wrote: - despotism: knights
- republic: caravel
- federation: marines
- nationalism: fighters and armor
- monarchy: spy
- communism: destroyer
- democracy: helicopter
Purely role-playing reasons, but wouldn't it be better is Communism got Partisans and Democracy got Battleship?

- immigrants (cost 30) obsolete migrants with railroad
- colonists (cost 50) obsolete settlers with railroad
I vaguely remmeber discussing this... Was there a more particular reason for thi apart from price?
- submarines can move diplomats, spies and explorers
How about bombers? Parachuting into enemy territory?
- new empire sizes and +1 unhappy for each additional city
We discussed this to great length, but I'll keep applying pressure to increase this. This is a drastic cutoff that will end up as a hard limit. All big(ger) empires will look alike and less diversity is always bad.
- granary sizes: granary_food_ini = 16, 18, 20, 22, 24, 30, 40, 50
Why stop at 50? Keep in mind all cities will have granaries by then and it's effectively 25. (Or does granary give 10 food instead of 50%?)
- new building resource agency increases city work area to 4 tiles away
How about more buildings (at least two) that give less + each, for the same end result? Build gradually, not in leaps.
- no unlimited flights to destination city
I'll just repeat an idea I had: remove airlifting altogether and introduce air transport unit.
- flagship frigate. Unique unit, can have only one of this kind. more expensive and powerful
Don't like the idea because it's too arcade, but that's just me.
- harbor gives +1 food and harbor improvement with electricity another +1 food
I'd move it a bit later. Maybe it's just me, but harbour is not high on the priority list and people may simply delay it until electricity.
- spy costs 80, has 7 moves
I love typing so I'll repeat my idea about more diplomat/spy units with a more smooth "getting expensive" curve.
- science cost 120%
... and also my opinion that, with tech exchange (even significantly curbed) this may turn out to be too fast. Remember SG1.
- start units: 6 settlers, 8 workers, 2 explorers
Even though being a vocal speaker for a quick start with more settlers, 6 may be a bit too much, perhaps?
- Nuclear Defense System small wonder with flight, 95% defense chance
Just a comment on terminology: I know it's inherited from the original, but SDI as a small wonder and NDS as a city improvement may be a bit more historically accurate ;)
- everyone gets techs once n number of players have it
For clarity, use capital N ;) (nag nag nag nag...)
- cruise missiles get bonus when attacking battleships or carriers
Good one!
- added anti aircraft missile able to attack air units
You MUST call this Dvina :D
- barracks I cost 60, barrack II 45 and barrack II 30
Now, this doesn't make much sense. It should either be equal or the other way round. I understand that those are actually upgrades, but:
1. Historically, earlier units were easier and cheaper to train
2. Playability-wise, 30 shields in the early game is much more expensive than 30 shields in late game, so 30/45/60 (as opposed to your 60/45/30) would probably mean that the cost is effectively similar for all three.
- partisans no longer appear when cities are conquered
Why?
- +1 food to hill/desert cities
This actually means that a city on Hills will have more food than city on Plains? Rethink a bit? A city on hills already has better production and also defence bonus. Should not reward this too much.
- no pollution on ocean
Actually, I've never seen pollutoin on oceans, but it would be the most natural thing to have. But also make it possible for more early sea units to clean it up.
- Michelangelo costs 600
Why so much?
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Re: What kind of changes does LT40 have

Post by wieder »

Yeah, it might make sense to have communism getting partisans. Role playing elements may make you to feel more like being there. I gave democracy helicopters because of Vietnam, but Battleship might also work. Depending on how to place that on the tech tree. Can't be available too soon.

The immigrants and colonist cost more because that prevents them from being used as really cheap unit training targets.

I was thinking about bombers dropping units but it would need a new unit class for the infantry units. Now horsemen and elephants are also in the same unit class. Possible yes, but might not make into LT40.

The empire sizes... Under consideration.

The granaries were made bigger by replacing the current values. Didn't test what would happen with more sizes.

The default working area is 3 tiles away (about 7*7) and this is one more (9*9) but as the actual value is sqr(something) it could grow in steps, yes.

The airports replaced with transport planes is kind of good idea but needs some thought. Now plenty of units can be airlifted but the airlifting can only take place between pre-defined points, airports. Big change.

The harbor improvement comes with electricity because there is also the supermarket. But yes, could come later. Then again lots of players have trouble reaching even electricity and this could be applied to later games.

The more levels for diplos/spies needs lots of thinking. There are many issues, like poisoning too early. Hardcoded stuff.

Yeah, 120% for tech may be low. I'll think about it and come back to this.

We had 6 settlers for LT36 and there the problem was adding them to a city. Can't be done on LT40. But maybe 5 would work?

Wow! That's interesting idea! You mean making SDI as small wonder with 100% defense and the Nuclear Defense system as city improvement but with 95% or less accuracy for the other cities? Sounds like Civ4... I like this! Brings some uncertainty even for superpowers once they have nukes + defenses.

Yeah, capital N, too fast typing :)

Dvina? Yeah, could be called that :)

The cost of barracks was that way to make the early wars less devastating. Could cost 60 all the way, yes.

Partisans no longer appear because of an exploit. Let ally take your city, conquer it back, repeat and you get tons of partisans even while the city shrinks. Lots of them. Instead the partisan unit was completely changed and it's now the only one you can build without a home city.

The food thing is not really changed that much. It's the same as with LT38 and SG1. It was a LT36 change. Probably could have described it better.

Michelangelo is really powerful as it allows you to have 3 more content for each city with cathedral. Was worth building in the old games.
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Corbeau
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Re: What kind of changes does LT40 have

Post by Corbeau »

wieder wrote:Yeah, it might make sense to have communism getting partisans. Role playing elements may make you to feel more like being there. I gave democracy helicopters because of Vietnam, but Battleship might also work. Depending on how to place that on the tech tree. Can't be available too soon.
Just a thought, make a new unit: Gunboat. It has a Bombarder flag. Problem solved.
I was thinking about bombers dropping units but it would need a new unit class for the infantry units. Now horsemen and elephants are also in the same unit class. Possible yes, but might not make into LT40.
Hm, yes, the units are always able to be dropped off anywhere, not just in the airport (or is it possible to limit this?) So, paratroopers?

Also, I'm guessing horses and elephants shouldn't coexist with large planes and if they do, the realism has already gone to hell so why not load an elephant onto a plane? :P
The granaries were made bigger by replacing the current values. Didn't test what would happen with more sizes.
I started the test game yesterday, came back today and found a city with size of 60 and then realised it's year 2300 AD so... Not good data :D
The more levels for diplos/spies needs lots of thinking. There are many issues, like poisoning too early. Hardcoded stuff.
Like I said, give diplomats defence bonus when in city, poisoning becomes harder and more costly.
We had 6 settlers for LT36 and there the problem was adding them to a city. Can't be done on LT40. But maybe 5 would work?
Sold.
Wow! That's interesting idea! You mean making SDI as small wonder with 100% defense and the Nuclear Defense system as city improvement but with 95% or less accuracy for the other cities? Sounds like Civ4... I like this! Brings some uncertainty even for superpowers once they have nukes + defenses.
Actually, I wasn't referring to percentages, I didn't even check them, only to terminology :)

But a 100% defense may be a bit unrealistic. 95% is good and will actually serve as deterrent because nobody will want to build 20 nukes to be able to fire one.
Partisans no longer appear because of an exploit. Let ally take your city, conquer it back, repeat and you get tons of partisans even while the city shrinks. Lots of them. Instead the partisan unit was completely changed and it's now the only one you can build without a home city.
Fair enough.

So, after the testing, a few thoughts.

"Anti-aircraft Riflemen" really sounds wrong. Can't say it's a bad unit, it just sounds wrong. Anti-aircraft Artillery sounds much better, however, there may be some confusion with the icon. And, is AA needed so early in the game? Maybe, instead, have SAM Battery and use the icon of a missile?

Also, what happened to the SAM Battery city improvement?

Next. Citymindist=6 is really, really annoying. Yes, it is proportional magnification and all, but in the end, what we have now, is a huge map where you have to click-click-click to find your cities because if you have even a moderate empire only a small part of them fit into the screen. Also, not sure yet, but the changable city radius may also be annoying, but I'm still thinking about it. But a note: an improvement that increases city radius is agood idea, but why "Resource Agency"? We already have something perfectly logical for this: Mass Transit.

Actually, if you really want dynamic city radius, start small and increase it with: Wheel, Invention, Rail Road, Combustion/Automobile, Mass Transit (improvement).

And, actually, I've never been able to understand why Combustion and Automobile are separate techs, The difference is too small.

Next. More units may be fine, but I foresee a lot of confusion because of the same icons, especially Riflemen and Armour that are going to be used massively. Maybe rethink this?
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Re: What kind of changes does LT40 have

Post by wieder »

Gunboat... Would probably need new sprites for that :) Then again there might be sense in changing the cruisers to do bombardments attacks when attacking cities. The cruisers are not that used anyway, even with the new 4/8 A/D values.

Maybe better to let the bombers only carry missiles at this point. Carrying units might have... Unexpected results :)

Yeah, the ruleset creators often like to avoid some randomness. Adding a 5% chance for letting the others to nuke your city might spice the game by adding that small uncertainty that your defenses are not foolproof with SDI, tons of military units and 50 spies defending the city :) 20 nukes would cost 6000 shields but I guess someone might afford that in the late game.

The anti-aircraft riflemen are called that mostly because they have the same qualities as riflemen but they just defend better against the air units. Artillery might also work but there we have the ideological problem. The siege units are really bad defenders and here they would be defending well. Let's check the SAM battery idea again. The idea was that it's actually difficult for the enemy to see if the ground troops have anti-aircraft weapons or not. Before attacking at least.

Isn't the SAM Battery still there?

The citymindist 6... Maybe... just maybe it should be switched to 5... After all it has been 4 in some games. 5 is still more than 4, right? :P

The mass transit is kind of late game improvement but it might work really.

The units using the similar sprites mostly have the same qualities but may are more or less powerful in some aspects. The early units are also obsoleted by the regular ones and after that the attacker need to take care of when he/she built. Less powerful early units may be a nice surprise to the enemy.

Maybe more dynamic radius to LT42... Might need too much testing now. Good idea, in any case.
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Re: What kind of changes does LT40 have

Post by Corbeau »

A bit more thoughts.

First, about unhappiness and empire size (again).

After some more testing, I did start to grow mine, got 21 cities, still didn't reach the limit, so, basically nothing is happening. And right now I have to dislodge my neighbours in order to grow further. Will need to do a lot of dislodging to reach the limit.

The main question is what is your goal: to simulate situation of unrest when an empire grows or to artificially limit empire size in a game of Civilization and remove main emphasis on combat.

If it's the former, all legit so the only issue here is: which limit to pick, meaning, which empire size is critical for people to start revolting. So, in history, people revolted at ALL sizes, it all depended not on the size but on internal organisation. There is always potential revolt so it's only a matter of the state to curb it, suppress it or whatever means there are at their disposal. The pressure was always there, can say linear with size, but definitely consistent and mathematically speaking, "monotonously growing" from the start. So, if this is the principle, I'd say that you'd have to have similar numbers for the first step as for the size of every next step. Yes, it would be nice if thing could grow exponentially, or, even better, as square of the size, but it can't so we need to approximate.

Whatever the method, a strong cutoff with zero size-unhappy until ~25 and then very small step after that is a very bad approximation. What I'd call realistic may be base 10 and step 5, maybe base 15 and step 5 if you want to be lenient. Or something else. But NOT base 25 and step 1, or 2, or 3.

If it's the latter, well, firstly, imposing artificial borders is always bad. It constrains the game and gives a feeling that players are forced to go down one particular path, planned for them by the admin. And it's not a good feeling. Also, if the goal is to curb fighting, it won't work because, like I said, and like you said, the ~25 base is larger than the average space for cities and war - if it happens at all - will happen way before someone fills their land because the limit is higher. The only difference is that inferior players won't be destroyed, but only crippled, and as a result, they will probably leave the game anyway and we'll be left with idling nations instead of destroyed ones, because nobody will want to risk high unhappiness. It actually happened in some instances in LT38. We were tossing cities to each other, nobody wanting them because of this.
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Re: What kind of changes does LT40 have

Post by wieder »

The empire sizes are not a hard limit but something that seriously requires you to change strategy. With big cities it shouldn't be an issue anyway but with small ones they will probably not produce anything. And then there is anarchy. Or then we could add some gov(s) intended for the bigger empires. With steps of 4 and starting from 8 maybe. Or something like that.

The idea is to have a game where the only way to win isn't kill everyone else.

The problem is that there is no way to create several points of unhappiness. Like first at 15, second at 25, 3rd at 34, 4th at 40...
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Re: What kind of changes does LT40 have

Post by Corbeau »

wieder wrote:The empire sizes are not a hard limit but something that seriously requires you to change strategy.
The only strategy viable here is "stop expanding". No other choice.
And then there is anarchy.
Let's be serious, OK?
Or then we could add some gov(s) intended for the bigger empires. With steps of 4 and starting from 8 maybe. Or something like that.
That may work, but I feel we already have too many governments. Maybe put my idea about "composite governments" (see Alpha Centauri) back into circulation?
The idea is to have a game where the only way to win isn't kill everyone else.
This can be achieved in many more ways than just put such a hard limit.
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Re: What kind of changes does LT40 have

Post by wieder »

With the city limit and even with big empires stopping at the limit(s) there are still few things that will make the big ones different from each other. First the selected government. The gov with most cities can have 30% more cities that the one with least cities. However even more important is the strategy the players are taking. I highly doubt everyone would end up with similar cities. At some point it might make sense to build few big ones and some smaller ones and then disband those smaller cities.

Maybe citymindist 5 would actually help with this strategy. You could build cities A and C and B between them and then disband B when A and C a big enough.
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Re: What kind of changes does LT40 have

Post by wieder »

Maybe changing federation and maybe despotism for building really big empires? What I wanted to say was that, not really adding. Changing. Not adding :) Writing in hurry :)

Anarchy really works. Try it out.

What other possibilities there are to make conquest victory less tempting?
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