LongTurn League (LTL)

Planning and discussing Freeciv Longturn gaming
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Corbeau
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LongTurn League (LTL)

Post by Corbeau »

Hello everybody. I started planning this a long time ago, but certain events caused drastic delays. However, one game that is suitable for starting this project is nearing its end so may as well make a public announcement. I think I mentioned it somewhere, but it got lost in the threads and subforums, so let's make an official announcement.

Starting with LT40, I will be calculating and recording scores for the purpose of persistent ranking of individual players of Longturn-class games of Freeciv. The scoring system will be fairly simple: number of points awarded will be calculated using the following formula:

Points = ROUND( ("inverse rank" / No. of active players)^2 * SQRT(No. of active players)*10 )

where "inverse rank" is almost self explanatory: in a game of 10 players, the best player has rank 10, 2nd best is 9 etc. and last is rank 1. Rank will be determined by the in-game score at the moment the game ends. Modifiers to this score may be possible, but that should be determined by half-game at the latest, and preferably much, much sooner.

An calculated example of the scoring can be seen here:
http://forum.freeciv.org/f/viewtopic.ph ... 565#p81253
(see bottom of the post, "Option 2")

Number of active players will be determined by the half-game based on how many people actually played a significant number of turns, that is, enough to have been able to influence the game.

If nobody objects, for LT40 I will use 25 as number of players because even if there were players who quit early, I believe they were replaced quickly enough. Of course, we can debate the "enough" but a change of this number for 1 or 3 won't change much anyway.

Conditions for LTL scoring
There will be one hard-fixed condition: no alliance victory in the game.

The reason for this is that I want this scoring to be a show of individual skill of running your nation and negotiating with your neighbours and potential friends and enemies. You will be competing against your friends, too, which isn't possible if alliance victory is enabled. This changes gameplay drastically and would make a huge difference regarding your goals.
Last edited by Corbeau on Tue Oct 08, 2019 12:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Corbeau
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Re: LongTurn League (LTL)

Post by Corbeau »

Standard disclaimer: This is the scoring I am (will be) running according to my preferences and ideas what the game should represent. Everybody is free to completely ignore this and play the games I'm keeping the score for any way he pleases.

That said...

Looking at the example of just finishing LT40, I wish to introduce two changes for future games where I will be keeping score.

1. Random end

I am still not sure how to implement this. Suggestions are welcome.

I have noticed two problems. One is that, as a multi-month game is approaching its finish, things are accelerating towards the violent grand finale. The final few turns are starting to look like a frantic race for the score regardless of any logic and previous playstyle. Ok, I am aware that this is "just a game" and this happens in all games, but sometimes I have a feeling this is going too far.

On the other hand, this is just a minor effect and it only influences the relative position of two neighbouring players and maybe it doesn't have impact on the game as a whole.

But the other problem is more serious.

I know of at least two players who planned or offered to give their cities to someone else in order to alter the final game score. I can only guess how many others are/were willing or actually went through with it. Now, in itself, this doesn't have to be a huge problem. In some cases this can be seen as a reward for consistent playing, being a worthy member of an alliance and also a reward for selfless acts earlier in the game. Also, maybe it can be considered a dead-man's trigger, a final act of revenge against someone who stepped on someone else's foot.

These things make this last-moment gifting a more or less valid tactic.

However, what can also happen is a trans-game score trading, exchanging out-of-game favours and creating trans-game alliances. I don't have to explain why this is bad.

To solve these problems, I'm thinking about devising a system to record the score at a random moment at some point in the game after a certain "switch" has been activated. It can be "any player researches tech X" or "best player has more than Y land" or something like that.

As for a random moment, still thinking about how to do it. It could be something completely out-of-the-box, like, after the "switch" has been activated, the game ends / score is recorded in the moment "the first title on the New York Times web page starts with letter M". Or some other random "switch 2" can be devised, ideas are welcome.

There are problems with this kind of solution, but at this moment it is the best idea I have. Also, I'm still weighing out how much of a problem this may become.

2. Pollution

Firstly, I don't know what happened to negative score from the pollution. At least in Civ 1, and very probably in later versions, too, there was -10 points penalty for each polluted tile at the end of the game. There is no such thing in Freeciv, not even as a ruleset/server possibility.

At this moment, in the last turn, the world of LT40 is a complete and utter wreck. Huge patches of desert and swamped plains and who knows how many land tiles turned into sea. As far as I'm conecerned, there are no winners in LT40. Everybody has lost. Naturally, not everybody is equally to blame for this.

This is why, for the purposes of this scoring system (that, I repeat, everybody is free to ignore), at the end of every game from now on (not including LT40) I will make a printscreen of the final map, MANUALLY count all the pollution tiles and deduct them from the score. I'm still considering whether this should be -10 or a bit less, but the information will be known soon enough.

.....................................


These two things may exclude each other: if I decide to stop the stopwatch and record the score at a random moment, I will not be able to check pollution. So I'll probably have to choose between these two options. Currently I'm more inclined towards #2.

As always, ideas and opinions are more than welcome.
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Corbeau
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Re: LongTurn League (LTL)

Post by Corbeau »

I am long overdue with copying the results of LT40 here (being the first game I was planning to include in the LTL), but being only one game, it's not that relevant yet. The scoring can be seen here:

http://i64.tinypic.com/30vhlqc.png

With the second game I was planning to include in LTL, LT43, it turned out that I misunderstood the pre-declared winning conditions. Those are that the game can be ended EITHER by "alliance victory" OR by "score victory", depending on the situation and the disposition of players. (More information here.

So, I am slightly re-declaring things:

In order to fall in line with the main condition that I set - no pre-declared alliance victory - LT43 will be included in LTL ONLY in case a "score ending" is declared. If it ends with alliance victory, it will not. AAnd, again, this will be decided by in-game actions of the players.

If the game is included in LTL scoring, the following adjustment will be made: for every polluted tile 5 points will be deducted from the in-game score of the player on whose territory the pollution is present and the ranking for this game adjusted according to that.

And, as always, standard disclaimer: all of this doesn't dictate in any way how people should play their games. This scoring doesn't influence gameplay in any way and everybody is completely free to ignore this.
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* Freeciv LongTurn, a community of one-turn-per-day players and developers
* LongTurn Blog - information nexus with stuff and stuff and stuff
* Longturn Discord server; real-time chatting, discussing, quarrelling, trolling, gaslighting...
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Corbeau
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Re: LongTurn League (LTL)

Post by Corbeau »

Just for the record, I announced this way before, but no harm in repeating: I will be scoring the end result of Game XV for the LongTurn League (LTL). What counts there are individual scores. The first game that I took into account for LTL was LT40. The next may be LT43, depending on how it ends (see above).

Standard disclaimer: everybody is free to completely ignore this scoring. There are no material awards, only eternal fame for those who feel like accepting it.
--
* Freeciv LongTurn, a community of one-turn-per-day players and developers
* LongTurn Blog - information nexus with stuff and stuff and stuff
* Longturn Discord server; real-time chatting, discussing, quarrelling, trolling, gaslighting...
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