LongTurn support in Freeciv-web

[louis94]

What about private messages? I'm coming to a stage where they would be very useful

I think you can send private messages by entering the playername, followed by colon, and then your message, like in the regular Freeciv desktop clients.

Can we pretend I never asked this?

It's for sure a sign that the feature isn't very discoverable. Newbies will likely send confidential messages to everybody by mistake. Maybe a chat system like in social networks would help? If I understand well, the current UI is inspired from IRC.

Louis

[Corbeau]

What about private messages? I'm coming to a stage where they would be very useful

I think you can send private messages by entering the playername, followed by colon, and then your message, like in the regular Freeciv desktop clients.

Hmmm... As can be witnessed in the game chat, this isn't working.

[AndreasR]

Hmmm... As can be witnessed in the game chat, this isn't working.

I have fixed this now, there was a bug there. Private messages can now be sent using the playername, followed by colon. I'm not sure if the receiving user has to be connected to the server at the same time as the sender, but I think it should be better than before now.

[AndreasR]

The LongTurn game now has 102 players of a total of 150. When the game is full, I will start a new LongTurn game with 250 players, which I estimate will happen in some days.

This will be the settings: pubscript_longturn_6004.serv.

Are there any important changes to make before the new game begins?

[Corbeau]

I would very much like to see small wonders.

Also, "landmass 85" means 15% water, 85% landmass? That is unaesthetic, to say the least Give us more oceans, make navy worthwhile and some more blue colour on the map. We are all used to more water than land on the map, just go with the biological programming

Anyway, I think it would be much better to wait for a week or two, just to get a feel of how things are going here and see what the necessary changes may be. Why rush? it'll last months anyway

Also, 20k tiles? For 250 players? That's 80 tiles per player OVERALL, meaning both land and sea. There won't be enough room even for the starting settlers. I suggest toning down ambitions and be happy with 50 players per game. OR increase map size further.

However, this cramped game may be justified either if:
- you want a very aggressive game where people are at each others' throat from the start, where most of the time luck will be the key factor to determine who survives, and I would personally hate that very much. On the other hand, that may be interesting, to see a 30-small-players-federation against a large empire.

or

- you are counting on many people going inactive and serving as food for remainers; again, some luck involved, but at a more acceptable level.

Either way, it would be very good to wait to see how this game will progress to be able to make some conclusions. Personally, I would be interested to see what will be the overall research rate, as people will undoubtedly exchange techs, to see if a tech slowdown would be desirable. OR get Tech Upkeep into play.

...or, simply, just start the damn thing and consider it another test game.



All that said, there is one thing I'd want. I would like to keep score and run a "LongTurn Web League" that would be based on endgame score. And for this to work, it would, obviously, be required to see the score of all players at the end of the game. I understand that this is automatic for a player who has Marco Polo (embassy with everybody). Maybe extend this effect somehow or somehow make score visible to all at endgame?

[Corbeau]

Chat issues again. I'm not even sure what this is

(T4 - 02:30:14) To whoever replied
(T4 - 02:31:32) To whoever replied nobody
(T4 - 02:32:30) To whoever replied nobody to danemk, that was stupendous. I take my hat off to you.
(

[AndreasR]

The current Freeciv-web LongTurn game now has 135 players, so I will start the next LongTurn game when it has filled up.

> I would very much like to see small wonders.

I think the current ruleset has small wonders support, see here.

> Also, 20k tiles? For 250 players? ... OR increase map size further.

I agree. So I've increased the map size to 30k tiles. This is the current longturn game settings: pubscript_longturn_6004.serv. Does it look OK now?

This is what a map looks like with the latest settings:


This is what starting positions with the current settings looks like. You can get an impression about how much area is available to each player, and how much ocean is available etc:



> somehow make score visible to all at endgame?

The score of all players is available in a dialog when the game ends.

The score of all players is also available during the game here: https://play.freeciv.org/game/details?h ... &port=6003

[Corbeau]

I still don't understand, do you see this as another test game or are we getting more serious? If it's a testing game, then fine, although do we need two of the same? (Unless you are testing server limitations.)

If it's a "real" game, that's still 120 tiles per player, including water. One city occupies 21 tiles. Is 6 cities per player (or less) an interesting game? (Unless you really want to stimulate all-out carnage?) Keep in mind that this is LongTurn, players have a whole day to make their move, if an empire remains small, it doesn't really get more interesting than at the beginning, you do your moves in half a minute and you're done for the day. No or very little sense of growth.

And it is irrelevant whether there are 50 or 500 players with this kind of map. You are limited to, say, six immediate neighbours and the world further away has no significance. With so little water the map is monotonous and may as well be all land. You are confined to your small area and have no way of discovering what is happening outside of your event horizon; you could send explorers over other people's territory, if they let you, but little else.

Again, I can think of a few things that may be interesting in this situation. But do we need two games like this?

Settings I'd recommend are at least 200 LAND tiles (preferably 300 or more) per player and at least 60% of oceans on the map. A continental outline, not fractal, so that there are distinct land features.

How big map can the server handle?

----

On a slightly different note, an interesting setting would be if all players start the game in the area that makes up 1/2 or 1/3 of the map and have to explore/conquer the rest of the world that is either empty or occupied by AIs. Asymmetric is fun. Keep that in mind for the future.

[Corbeau]

Oh, and one more thing. If there would be ONE thing that I believe should be implemented, it is "offline diplomacy", something that exists in Freeciv Client: make it possible to negotiate and sign treaties without both players having to be online at the same time. This is The Thing. This is what Freeciv Longturn is about. Everything else is candy. This is essential.

[Corbeau]

Minor bug: when a player types a semicolon in chat, his names doesn't show.