Ideas for better online game experience

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

Post by accomplishednoob »

Corbeau wrote:Do you see banning gold transfer as good for the game?
Since admins noticed players are abusing the transfer system, so it must be a good thing.
In general, I will enjoy more if political interaction is reduced in favour of increased (honest) war. But as I said before I will play whatever is suitable to majority of players and variety of settings/scenarios in different games is already exciting enough to keep me satisfied.

off-topic:
Corbeau wrote: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.
probably? You already said it. :lol:
It was also windy here in Shiraz for a few days and there was rain in the middle of summer, which is sort of strange for a semi-desert place like this. Now that you know where I am from, please re-evaluate your statement and tell me how on earth I can be a racist specially in a European context?
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Corbeau
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Re: Ideas for better online game experience

Post by Corbeau »

pungtryne wrote:
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.
We were discussing road movement and restrictinfra.

I said that an army can'tmove through enemy territory at standard road speed, ever.

You pulled the Denmark example.

When you say A, then I reply B and you reply C, you can't conveniently forget that you ever said A. What are you, a goldfish?

As for Denmark, Germans didn't make drastic breakthroughs on th front line. They simply invaded the capital. An where the hell did they use rails? They were actually resisted and slowed down on their conventional lines of attack and if it wasn't for the marine and paratrooper assault, it would have lastd much longer. The Danes put resistence only a few km after the border and hindered the German advance.

As for the restrictinfra thing, if you don't know how war works, then no, you don't understand why it's very realistic. An invading force comes. You put a minor detatchment of local militia, basic arms. They set an ambush, fire a few rounds then run away. The invading force needs to stop, reform, surround the defensive position and only when that is cleared, move on. It takes time and they are usually slowed down at every intersection.

The thing with Civ is that you don't build "a minor detachment of local militia", you only build units that represent a large army. That's because Civ is a game, an approximation of reality, and some things (small detachments) are neglected and represented by other things (restrictinfra and also ZOC, I wonder what you thought what those are about)

But I definitely agree with you in one thing: I'm obviously and idiot for trying to explain something complex to someone whose train of thought can't pull more than one wagon.
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pungtryne
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Re: Ideas for better online game experience

Post by pungtryne »

I agree that an army can't normally move at "normal" speed in enemy territory. But that doesn't mean that they can't use the roads at all. In the situation a country is totally undefended, they theoretically could move as fast as they can. Freeciv of course is a game, and the representations are different than real world. A unit surely doesn't represent a few untis. On the other hand, I disagree that it represents a large army, this would be aburst (Ever heard someone in freeciv say, "I made a large army, I have 1 archer!"?). Exactly what number represents is hard to say, again because this is a game. Does a unit represent a company? A battalion? A division? One way to see it is that when a city of size 1, with 10.000 inhihabitants can produce an unit without population loss, a unit has to represent far less than 10.000 man. Maybe 500? That would be a battalion. It's not unnatural at all to protect the beginnings of your roads (what is your borders) with a unit, and ZOC-rules assures that you can't use tiles close to you. ZOC is for me a good representation of the game that if there are defending units, you can't just pass as you wish. What you call "placing out minor detachments" could be said to be represented with the ZOC rules.

For the Danish invasion, the first place where the german soldiers broke the border was in Gedser havn, where a column of motorbikes quickly drove towards Storstrømsbroen. That's about 50 km. This happened so fast that the Danish hadn't time to react, and by the time they could, the germans had already taken down the telephone lines.

For the rails, a small german patrol secured Padborg Rail station for german troops to enter Denmark. Now this wasn't far into Denmark and yeah rails are very hard to use, unless you control it all the way to the front. This is why I earlier wrote "I can see arguments for restricting rails".

They were stopped by the border, that's right, and in freeciv, this can be represented by the first boarder city that, if it have troops, have to be taken to pass it, unless the roads/rails goes around it too far enough to avoid ZOC. Then there is usually more cities inside, and what if these are totally unprotected like people often do in freeciv? What resistance is left? Sure real life nations use to be smarter than many freeciv players and makes this a kind of theoretical excercise, but come on, if someone did that in real life it would be the same.

Edit: A tiny note is that I like unitwaittime as it disallows double-move at end turn. Anyone know if this is enabled on longturn.org? Also I'm wondering if diplomats really should let other units ignore ZOC. It doesn't sound right to me. Anyone else having thoughts on this?
wieder
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Re: Ideas for better online game experience

Post by wieder »

Restrictinfra is more like a game feature instead of something that should be completely realistic. As I already said, it doesn't prevent one turn conquers but forces to make better plans if an attack to inner cities is the actual goal. It also makes the game less random by removing "easy" access to the capital city. In some longturn.org games half of the nations were destroyed by conquering the capital and resulting civil war. We also lowered the chances for civil war because that was just too easy.
wieder
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Re: Ideas for better online game experience

Post by wieder »

Unitwaittime is 10h on longturn.org. This only solves half of the problem with double turning. You can still build a road on enemy territory 10sec before the end of the turn and then use that road right after tc to attack the enemy city/units. Another reason why restrictinfra is usually enabled there.

It's not like it's always enabled. LT39 starting relatively soon may have restrictinfra turned off but tired attack turned on.

Anyone able to explain why gold trading is turned off (completely??) on the web freeciv game? We are using a tax (10% for teamless and 50% for team games) for gold trading. It has been working quite well because not too many people want to see even a small portion of the gold wasted.
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Alien Valkyrie
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Re: Ideas for better online game experience

Post by Alien Valkyrie »

wieder wrote:Anyone able to explain why gold trading is turned off (completely??) on the web freeciv game? We are using a tax (10% for teamless and 50% for team games) for gold trading. It has been working quite well because not too many people want to see even a small portion of the gold wasted.
The problem here is multi-accounting. Freeciv-web has this system where you get compensation gold for joining later, and multi-accounters have used gold trade to get tons of gold to a single civ.
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wieder
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Re: Ideas for better online game experience

Post by wieder »

That's a nasty problem. Adding gold to compensate late starts will definitely make that kind of issues more tempting. Also very hard to check if a 300 player game has players with multiple accounts.

Is there a need to use a diplomat/spy to get an embassy in these games? In longturn.org games you can't make gold or any other type of trades without an embassy and the only way to get an embassy is to use a diplomat or a spy. Also there is no "bonus" for starting late. No new players are added to the game after it starts and you can only get an idler position if there are any.
AndreasR
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Re: Ideas for better online game experience

Post by AndreasR »

LongTurn games on Freeciv-web are setup to allow for large games with many players, and to make it easy for new players to begin playing their first turn immediately when joining (so no multiple-months of waiting in pregame - awful!). This means that players who join the game late are given a compensation in gold for joining late, to give them a chance to compete in the game. Players who cheat, for example by creating multiple accounts will be disqualified and can not win the game. I want to make it easy to setup large games, because it will not be worth the development and administrative effort to setup LongTurn games with few players, for example on longturn.org the game LT40 only has 4 interested players so far, and LT38 only has about 20 players, which is far too little to be of any interest. I try to focus development effort where the most players are interested, and so far that seems to be single-player games on Freeciv-web.

Looking at the progress, competition and overview maps for the LongTurn games on Freeciv-web so far, I think the games are quite balanced, so this isn't really a big problem as described previously by some. Most the the 7 LongTurn games on Freeciv-web have no clear winners yet, and many of the games have been going on for months.
wieder
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Re: Ideas for better online game experience

Post by wieder »

Yes, that's one major difference. While Freeciv-web games are for 300 players, longturn.org games are designed for 20-30 players. Will work with more or less but that's pretty much the optimal. It's very good to have games for different types of audience.

LT38 was and is a summer game and during that time there are less players than usual. It's also a two team game because of that. Easier to delegate and less time needed for making diplomatic deals.

Next we will start SG1 which is a scenario game. We probably close the signups early because for a slightly experimental game the optimal just might be less than for a "normal" game.

LT39 will be a more traditional game for those who are looking for allied victory. Will start in few months. LT40 on the other hand will start probably after LT39 has started meaning that it is going to happen even at a later time. Stuff happens very slowly there and it's not for a casual player :)

I'm not saying more gold shouldn't be given to new players if they start late. It's just another view on this and also great if it's not really an issue. I was more like wondering why tech trade is enabled while gold trade is forbidden. It's pretty much the opposite on longturn.org.
Civothy
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Re: Ideas for better online game experience

Post by Civothy »

Would it be possible/feasible/desirable to try and make a mini- "sandbox" for players newly joining an existing LongTurn game? Here is what I mean by that:

Let's say a player joins a LongTurn game on turn 50. Maybe they get a little extra gold to compensate, but the big change is they get to play 50 turns in very short order. In effect, they are beginning at turn 1 and will be able to play as many turns as they want/can until they get up to turn 50, at which point they have "joined" the main timeline of the game and play as normal.

While new players are in this accelerated timeline we must enforce some restrictions. For example, they can expand their territory as they like, but they cannot enter any other players' claimed lands. In order to prevent someone form positioning a huge army on a border all of a sudden we might need to add further restrictions, but this is a starting point.

Neighboring players must also be informed if a new player contacts their borders. It would not be fair for someone to suddenly have a new force on their doorstep seemingly appearing out of nowhere -- which in truth is exactly what would be happening.

I'm sure there are other aspects we need to consider that players with more experience than I have (which is pretty much everyone) can help with. However, could this sort of thing work? Maybe it would help fix the problems new players have when coming to an existing LongTurn game.
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