Ideas for better online game experience

Planning and discussing Freeciv Longturn gaming
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pungtryne
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Re: Ideas for better online game experience

Post by pungtryne »

It makes total sense that if you have no units protecting your railroads/roads like in Denmark, that the enemy can use it freely. You can surely find 20 examples where the roads and railroads were protected. But that's not the point. We sure can find many examples of both cases.

The point here, it has happened in history that somoene didn't defend their infrastructure, and therefore, got a "sudden death". Therefore it is realistic. It's a no-brainer to defend your infrastructure if you build it. With all respect, it's idiocy to make railroads without protecting them.

Imagine the scenario of someone having an island and lots of cities with rails connecting them and not a single unit. Of course it is realistic that military troops here can just use the rails and take the whole thing. This can happen so quick that there is no time to get up local defends. This happened with many countries in WW2, that the attack came so quick that no one reacted quickly enough. Norway too, but due to topology it obviously wans't as easy to take as Denmark.

The scenario of undefended territories isn't unrealistic either. It's not like infrastructure get automatically defended like you said earlier. Iceland is pretty much defenceless. If you have just enough naval power to neutralize the coast guard, you don't need many divisions to take the whole island as it has no standing army. (But you have to watch out for NATO coming!)

If it is an expetion or not that some country defend or don't defend their infrastructure isn't the point either. The point is what happens if they don't.

If you want realism Corbeau, then it is realistic to protect your infrastructure if you don't want the enemy to use it.

It seems to boil down to some players wanting to remove certain features because they are seen as to powerfull by the weak players that don't understand them. Others examples could be rapture growth, trade bonus in republic/democracy, howitzers ignoring city walls, and probably a lot more. I think this is an unfortunate approach. The right approach should be to study the features and learn how to use it to your advantage instead of complaining that you don't know how to tackle them.
Zelrond
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Re: Ideas for better online game experience

Post by Zelrond »

Hi!

I think its realistic to use undefended roads, housing, etc. etc. like any real historic invation. Forts for example... if you got rid of the defender, and now occupy his fort, shouldnt you just use it? "Nah its their fort, not ours... how could we?" - Not the brittish when attacking Cartagena some centuries ago.

Tell general Patton that using foreign roads is not real. "Nah, we should not advance at full speed towards Germany trough not well defended territory, capturing the fleeing soldiers on the way" - Not general Patton who rushed hundreds of km. trough France and Germany with his tanks and armored vehicles.

Also, my first post! im trying to start using this forum. hope to do well. Hi to all!
accomplishednoob
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Re: Ideas for better online game experience

Post by accomplishednoob »

Corbeau wrote:Wieder, I prefer the games to be realistic because that's what the games are all about ;) The main reason we don't want "sudden death" is because it repels players, and one of the reasons it repels players is that it isn't based on reality.

When in doubt, always ask one question: is it realistic / does it make sense ?
I disagree. Realism for sake of realism is misconception. realistic ≠ fun.

Example from the current trend in freeciv.org:
Admins banned gold transfer though it seems to be very realistic. Meanwhile transferring ownership of cities is allowed, though I can't remember the last time a real country offered one of her cities as a gift. :lol:

P.S: After I wrote above lines, now I feel I can't resist the temptations of mocking traitor Merkel who offered her country to muslims: "Germany belongs to Islam and Islam belongs to Germany". Maybe my logics only applies to sane countries of the past, not dangerous commies like Merkel.
wieder
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Re: Ideas for better online game experience

Post by wieder »

What I mean that in the real war between Germany and Denmark, both parties were "online" at the same time. This applies to all wars. The defender can defend in real time. With Freeciv games the defender is usually not online when attacked. or may not be online. In a real war the defender could move units to the war zone, attack troops moving on roads and possibly kill them. With Freeciv games there is no risk of that of the enemy player is offline. To compensate this, there is restrictinfra. It's not the only reason for it but one of the reasons.

Now restrictinfra can block you from capturing multiple cities at once but it does not prevent that from happening. You only need to plan the attack more carefully. First take city A, then city C because taking that allows you to remove restrictinfra from tiles leading to city B. The enemy can plan to block this and in my opinion this requires more strategical thinking compared to situation where you basically just look at the map, go inside with a spy and brute force yourself to less defended cities.

On longturn.org we have some very good players playing the game and restrictinfra is there to also balance the game. It makes stuff harder for the advanced players and usually easier for the newcomers. Skill should matter but it's also a good idea to try to make the game enjoyable for both new and old players. We are also using tiredattack and stack kill is enabled. Possibly unreaslistic, but they are there to improve the game.

Realism is good and stuff on Freeciv games should be based on realism. However if some piece of realism makes the game unplayable or not that much fun to play, it should be adjusted for better gameplay. Nukes are a good example of this. In real life there is no bullet proof SDI but on Freeciv there is. It just makes sense to add features like that if they improve gameplay.

For the bottom line I would repeat that not having the enemy to defend the roads in real time is not realistic and it's one reason for using restrictinfra.
wieder
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Re: Ideas for better online game experience

Post by wieder »

Gold trading is not allowed while tech trading is? Wow, this is new to me. Also sounds strange even while I probably understand why it's like that.

On longturn.org we have usually this kind of setup:

- tech trading off
- a very small chance of stealing techs while conquering, like 10%
- gold trades have a 10% tax
- restrictinfra is on
- stack kill is off
- unreachable units do not protect others
- city tradings is not allowed
- the cities have bigger work areas compared to standard games
- units have 1-3x moves. mostly 3x but in special cases less than that
- citymindist is 4 or 5. LT40 will have as big as 6
- rails do not have infinite moves. only maglev has
- roads take 1/3 move, rails take 1/9 move
- tiredattack is off meaning that unit with 1/3 move will attack with just 1/3 strength
- early engineers can do terraforming and geo-engineers are not needed for that
- there are very few great wonders and they have been mostly replaced with small wonders everyone can build
- tech leakage is at 100% and no not require embassy
- all diplomatic actions (gold trade/map trade) need embassies you only get with a diplo/spy
- caravans can't make trade routes but just help building wonders
- rapture growth is off
- granaries are adjusted for almost rapture like growth if managed properly
- units like workers and migrants can be captured
- building forts in 1 turn is not possible. you need to build pre-fort first (does nothing but allow to build fort)
- and the less used units are adjusted to be more interesting. lots of small changes

Not all games are like this but you get the idea. Lots of effort has been do to make the game balanced enough for both new and veteran players.
pungtryne
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Re: Ideas for better online game experience

Post by pungtryne »

Wieder, I think you have very good arguments and it sounds very interesting ruleset really. Will look more into this almost-rapture thing, unless you can explain it a little more.

I would like to try one of the games on longturn before I say more for/against aspects of it like restrictinfra.
wieder
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Re: Ideas for better online game experience

Post by wieder »

The almost rapture like growth is implemented by adjusting granary sizes.

In a normal civ2civ3 game a city with granary gets 10 food to the granary when the city grows. Now the growth may need the granary to reach 20 food, or with bigger city sizes 30 or 40. With city requiring 40 food it will take "lots" of time to reach 40 food on the granary since when the city grows, the granary always has just 10 food. Same 10 no matter what the city size is. I have understood this was added to make the cities grow in a more linear way.

On longturn.org games the cities always get 50% food on the granary, no matter what the city size is. With a city size 20 you get 20 food when the city grows and this allows really fast growth depending on how much you want to focus on that. With courthouse + granary there is no waste on food. In theory cities can start growing very turn from size 8-12 depending on how many grass tiles or wheat you have there. Of course in real game that usually makes no sense since you can't use mines and stuff but it's a possibility. Also, in a real game there are usually unhappiness issues preventing that fast growth.

In a real game normal cities usually could grow every second turn after reaching size 8 but unhappiness issues make that harder than it sounds like with 50% granaries. It's more like possibility people have been used to grow some special cities.
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Corbeau
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Re: Ideas for better online game experience

Post by Corbeau »

accomplishednoob wrote:
Corbeau wrote:Wieder, I prefer the games to be realistic because that's what the games are all about ;) The main reason we don't want "sudden death" is because it repels players, and one of the reasons it repels players is that it isn't based on reality.

When in doubt, always ask one question: is it realistic / does it make sense ?
I disagree. Realism for sake of realism is misconception. realistic ≠ fun.

Example from the current trend in freeciv.org:
Admins banned gold transfer though it seems to be very realistic. Meanwhile transferring ownership of cities is allowed, though I can't remember the last time a real country offered one of her cities as a gift.
Do you see banning gold transfer as good for the game?

As for city transfers, it happened many times, mostly as part of treaties. Last example: Hong Kong. A lot more in older history. Most of the time as part of post-war treaties, but not always. Besides, the game allows it as possibility just as it is possible in the real world.

Also, players giving up and gifting their whole nations to others: check history of Quebek. Also East Germany. It will also be interesting to see what happens with Kosovo and Moldavia.

As for Merkel, we better not continue this discussion because it will probably end up with me calling you an idiot, bigot and racist so... What's the weather like in your place? Here at Nordkapp it's very windy and fog descended suddenly, but they say it will clear up by tomorrow.
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Corbeau
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Re: Ideas for better online game experience

Post by Corbeau »

Oh, Pungtryne, about Denmark being overrun in six hours... If you actually did some reading before making claims, you'd have realised that German army didn't advance 300 km in those six hours. They advanced less than 50 (in reality, around 20 except in a very few locations), but what made the war so short was simltaneous landings by paratroopers and navy that went directly to Copenhagen.

Yes, I understand that the art of thinking and reading is often hard to master, but it can be very helpful with not making random claims that, when checked, make you look like an idiot. Guys, internet! Use it!
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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...
pungtryne
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Re: Ideas for better online game experience

Post by pungtryne »

Corbeau wrote:Oh, Pungtryne, about Denmark being overrun in six hours... If you actually did some reading before making claims, you'd have realised that German army didn't advance 300 km in those six hours. They advanced less than 50 (in reality, around 20 except in a very few locations), but what made the war so short was simltaneous landings by paratroopers and navy that went directly to Copenhagen.

Yes, I understand that the art of thinking and reading is often hard to master, but it can be very helpful with not making random claims that, when checked, make you look like an idiot. Guys, internet! Use it!
I never said they advanced 300 km in six hours, so as you say, art of thinking and reading is often hard to master. Maybe you should try harder? If anyone looks like idiot here it's you that constructs a strawman against me. But they definetively used rails and took a sudden death on them, that was my claim. I would call it "rushing headlong into enemy territory", while you claimed an army doesn't do that.

Whatever the definition of "headlong into enemy territory", the Germans without doubt invaded very fast, and created a sudden death situation, which is what often happens with the standard ruleset for rails in freeciv.
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