Militarizm - a PBEM Civ-like strategy

Various topics about the game, the website, or anything else Freeciv related that doesn't fit elsewhere.
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Ignatus
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Militarizm - a PBEM Civ-like strategy

Post by Ignatus »

Militarizm (rus.: Милитаризм) is a game played by email (PBEM) in which many ideas discussed on this forum as potentially useful for Freeciv have been realized long ago.
  • All moves are resoluted simultaneously, after all players email their orders for the current turn to the server. Which unit moves first, depends on type and experience; the move points are divided in 3 phases within a turn.
  • Units get veteranship due to experience, exp earned in combat formula is (Sself*(1-Dself0)*Denemy)/(Senemy*(1-Denemy0)*Dself)*Denemy*100 (S is strength, D0 is damage (fraction) before combat, D is damage in combat). Losses basic formula is 7%*1.1487^(Senemy-Sself) but there is also some random part...
  • Each unit may have a command (attack, fortify, explore, transport...) and list of target unit types. Non-target enemy units won't be normally attacked.
  • Units will automatically retreat if they have too low morale, or have such a command...
Sources (PHP server/JS client) are <edit: dead link deleted>likely lost :cry: (you hardly need Delphi code...) but the help files are arhived, portal is here. The main theory topic is this (most doc is in Russian).
I have not played it yet but I think it's interesting!
Ignatus
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Re: Militarizm - a PBEM Civ-like strategy

Post by Ignatus »

The main difference with Freeciv (that we probably will never import but who knows?) is realistic supply - technical units transport fuel from cities to all units that are far from them. An unfueled unit gets stuck (any movement or attack spends 1f) and may be captured, the capturer shares half of its fuel; planes crash (or sometimes teleported to the nearest base? couldn't get well yet). Another diference is that there is no tech tree or buildings, your engineers just may develop any unit type stats and city factory stats from level 1 to level 10 (it's a wargame, not 4X, so economy is a bit simpler); you may freely spread the engineers you have rented by several development branches. Another interesting features:
  • There is some diplomacy but no diplomatic states. You can specify for each unit which nations it should attack.
  • Units of different nations may share tiles. E.g. your planes detect submarines if fly right over them. Wether an attack happens, depends on if the units within the radius of possible combat have corresponding commands and capacities.
  • Not necessary the currently moving unit is one that attack, it may trigger one attack of more agressive (by command and experience) enemy ones by its movement (like, a well-controlled autoattack). The least agressive troop among the targets is selected. The moving unit attacks until it sees targets and has mp and morale.
  • After the combat, if one side retreated or was destroyed and the another has go-to instructions, the victorious unit continues going its way.
  • As in Freeciv, attacks and other missions (like "bomb city") consume 1 mp. But fighters can attack max 5 times per turn and bombers 1 time; they can move ahead if they have more mp. The fighters (that also have only 1 fuel here) are smart enough to not attack enemies if they won't have enough movement to get to the destination base afterwards. Damage weakens but not slows.
  • Commanders (can be rented from a borse, a player can pay more and buy one before one who pays less, or obtained freely; any way they also require per-turn wages) enhance attack and/or defense of several units. Commanders have unit class specialization, for wrong classes their bonuses are 3 times weaker. With the experience a commander gets by the commanded troops, it may grow in rank and add more units he can command (from 1 to 10). If a commanded troop loses, there is a probability that the comander is captured or killed.
  • In the latest server branch there were some kludgy mod of turning a bomber into a desant plane. If the bomber is damaged on the way, the desanted unit will be damaged proportionally. On thhe way back, the bomber becomes a normal bomber and may attack.
Last edited by Ignatus on Wed May 27, 2020 9:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Ignatus
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Re: Militarizm - a PBEM Civ-like strategy

Post by Ignatus »

In Militarizm-II the units were redesigned. Now all of them have limit of attacks, some of them may counter-attack after being attacked (this is independent from if they have defense; planes are never counter-attacked but for fighter clash it was edited back). Only close attacks are counted (infantry attack their own and adjacent tiles, planes - only their own tile). Ranged units (artillery has range 3 attack, howitzers have server-adjustable range like 5) have number of shots equal to their speed; they support friendly units in combats.

Other changes were removal of naval units and mines (in Mili-I they were put on seas for 50% moves of the mining ship, and even your own ships could explode on it just with 5 times less probability than foreign ones) and appearing of transporting units (the latter were done in a very controversial way).

Unit morale in this version is checked at the end of iteration (1/3-turn movement phase), so a unit will attack with any losses before it ends. That means, in the first iteration all units may attack if it's severely needed. (Btw, "retaliate" command moves the unit only from its targets, so to make a damaged unit return to its base without panical jumps from passing through enemies player should clear all its target specs).

In both editions, units don't regenerate from just idling. They should be repaired by special city activity (applied to max. 3 units in the city) or by "Stab"/"Remounting batallion" unit. The latter unit/base (it converts between the states) has one more ability - any movement from the base is considered a road step (thus, stabs are built at river banks for fast crossing).

Unit can attack only targets it sees, and artillery has vision radius 0. Artillery fires at "Bombardment by correction" mission at units detected by your another units if they are within your artilery's target list; alternatively, it may shoot at specified square disregarding if there is something in it.
From other commands, we should note that there are "Agressive attack" command (attack any targets) and "Cautious attack" (only ones with less defense).

Units may help production in a city not by disbandment (it just wastes all) but by increasing its "industrial level" with performing special activity.

The game in genral was designed a bit more "hardcore simulation" than Freeciv; there were guidelines about tile sizes (4x4 km) and turn lengths (1 day) and correspondence between game units and real military divisions of 20th cenntury. Of course a simple game could not avoid certain simplification and conventions to retain playability, and its alleged "realism" spawned endless holywars in its community that was one of the reasons why it is virtually forgotten for now.
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