Ideas for better online game experience

Planning and discussing Freeciv Longturn gaming
User avatar
Corbeau
Elite
Posts: 1291
Joined: Mon Jan 13, 2014 11:13 pm

Re: Ideas for better online game experience

Post by Corbeau »

Warriors are not "men with clubs". They are a unit of designated professionals that have no other jobs than to fight.

"Men with clubs" are people working the fields around the city. Which is exactly why an enemy unit can't move through that kind of land unopposed even if there are seemingly no professional units in the area.
--
* 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
Veteran
Posts: 72
Joined: Sat Jun 03, 2017 5:27 pm

Re: Ideas for better online game experience

Post by pungtryne »

Corbeau wrote:Warriors are not "men with clubs". They are a unit of designated professionals that have no other jobs than to fight.

"Men with clubs" are people working the fields around the city. Which is exactly why an enemy unit can't move through that kind of land unopposed even if there are seemingly no professional units in the area.
You must be right. I've heard farmers are very good at anti-tank warfare, and that tanks are very vulnerable to farming equipment.
User avatar
Corbeau
Elite
Posts: 1291
Joined: Mon Jan 13, 2014 11:13 pm

Re: Ideas for better online game experience

Post by Corbeau »

Yes, you'd be surprised what a well-placed pitchfork can do to an armoured vehicle.

And my post isn't self-standing, I was replying to a post before that, my little goldfish.

My main point stands: when travelling down the road in peacetime, you can pass 1000 km in a day (just did that, three times). An invading army does not do that. Ever. Not in their wildest dreams. Period.
--
* 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
Veteran
Posts: 72
Joined: Sat Jun 03, 2017 5:27 pm

Re: Ideas for better online game experience

Post by pungtryne »

Corbeau wrote:Yes, you'd be surprised what a well-placed pitchfork can do to an armoured vehicle.
I remember clearly when tanks running down Yugoslavian roads, all the farmers came running to stab it with pitchforks. Oh, wait, did I just make that up because I like to argue?
Corbeau wrote: And my post isn't self-standing, I was replying to a post before that, my little goldfish.
I'm not "your little goldfish".
Corbeau wrote: My main point stands: when travelling down the road in peacetime, you can pass 1000 km in a day (just did that, three times). An invading army does not do that. Ever. Not in their wildest dreams. Period.
That's because we assume here that the invading army will meet resistance in form of defending troops. If the infrastructure is defended in Freeciv, you can't use it just like in real life. If a country (or area) has no military units how much are they going to be slowed by some random local resistance? Not enough to be significant to be represented in Freeciv in my opinion.

You seem to think that if a land is undefended by military units, somehow someone will just organize some resistance against a superior power. Well, people don't just run into a certain death. Sure, organized resistance happens, for example guerilla war and we have a representation for that, the partisan unit, but this is different from 100 farmers trying to stop superior force. In the case were defence is impossible, a sane government will in most cases lay down weapons as to not sacrifice lifes inecessary. It requieres some special form of morale/ideology/religion to fight to death against a force your doomed to lose against. And even though there were some local resistance fighting to death against a superior, I again don't think it's significant enough to be included in Freeciv.
louis94
Hardened
Posts: 270
Joined: Thu Apr 25, 2013 10:17 pm
Location: Belgium

Re: Ideas for better online game experience

Post by louis94 »

Dudes,

Please take your hands off your keyboard, go for a walk, calm down. It's not worth getting angry. It's just a game.

We're already at LTW 7, and every game can have different settings. There's room for games with restrinfra on and games with restrinfra off.

Cheers,
Louis
User avatar
Corbeau
Elite
Posts: 1291
Joined: Mon Jan 13, 2014 11:13 pm

Re: Ideas for better online game experience

Post by Corbeau »

I'm not angry, I just like debating :D

"No military units" in Civ doesn't correspond to "no military units" in reality. Civ is an approximation. You don't operate every pipeline to every household and you don't organise units such as territorial defence or militia or first echelon of army reserve or national guard or a hastily patched up bunch of volunteers that got their weapons from a local police station or anything else that usually does happen in reality.

And don't start with the war in Yugoslavia topic because I'd bet real money that I'm far more acquainted with its details than anyone on this forum.
--
* 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...
User avatar
Corbeau
Elite
Posts: 1291
Joined: Mon Jan 13, 2014 11:13 pm

Re: Ideas for better online game experience

Post by Corbeau »

BTW, if there is a moderator in the house (unlikely, but one is allowed to hope; I did volunteer a few times, but nothing happened), these posts can be separated into a different topic.
--
* 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
Veteran
Posts: 72
Joined: Sat Jun 03, 2017 5:27 pm

Re: Ideas for better online game experience

Post by pungtryne »

Corbeau wrote:"No military units" in Civ doesn't correspond to "no military units" in reality. Civ is an approximation. You don't operate every pipeline to every household and you don't organise units such as territorial defence or militia or first echelon of army reserve or national guard or a hastily patched up bunch of volunteers that got their weapons from a local police station or anything else that usually does happen in reality.
No, but a military unit in Civ does correspont do "a significant number of military units" in real life. A significant number of military units isn't something you just stop with something hastily patched up.

If you don't organise your units to different roles (I do), I recommend you try it. It makes a significant difference if you look at some units as for example defendors of a city, or a tile or whatever, others as offensive units. For example, if I were to invade a country without roads leading to it, I would probably assign an alpine troop as first echelon, while heavier but harder to defend units like artiellery comes later. If you don't do this, and send artillery first, and defensive units later, you won't have nearly as good chances at success. Hastily patched up vonlunteers that got weapons from a local police station can maybe be viewed as riflemen you emergency buy in a city without barracks?

It really boilds down to playability, not realism. While I agree that full access to railroads is pretty dubious when it comes to realism, to have full restrictinfra feels like not only sacrificing realism, but also dumbing the game down on the defense side. Building roads and railroads is such an advantage that it's a nice balancing feauture that they also are dangerous. It forces you to think twice about how to make road/railroad network instead of making it a no-brainer to build road/railroad everywhere. It's possible to split restrict rails and restrict roads, and I think I'm positive to restricting rails, or even better maybe make them for example 1/9 movement points. It is weird that units can move infinite on railroad while planes have very limited movement in comparision.
User avatar
Corbeau
Elite
Posts: 1291
Joined: Mon Jan 13, 2014 11:13 pm

Re: Ideas for better online game experience

Post by Corbeau »

pungtryne wrote:
Corbeau wrote:"No military units" in Civ doesn't correspond to "no military units" in reality. Civ is an approximation. You don't operate every pipeline to every household and you don't organise units such as territorial defence or militia or first echelon of army reserve or national guard or a hastily patched up bunch of volunteers that got their weapons from a local police station or anything else that usually does happen in reality.
No, but a military unit in Civ does correspont do "a significant number of military units" in real life. A significant number of military units isn't something you just stop with something hastily patched up.
Yes, and we are apparently having different discussions. I keep repeating "not stop but slow down" while you are repeating "stop".
Hastily patched up vonlunteers that got weapons from a local police station can maybe be viewed as riflemen you emergency buy in a city without barracks?
Not at the present cost.
It really boilds down to playability, not realism. While I agree that full access to railroads is pretty dubious when it comes to realism, to have full restrictinfra feels like not only sacrificing realism, but also dumbing the game down on the defense side. Building roads and railroads is such an advantage that it's a nice balancing feauture that they also are dangerous. It forces you to think twice about how to make road/railroad network instead of making it a no-brainer to build road/railroad everywhere. It's possible to split restrict rails and restrict roads, and I think I'm positive to restricting rails, or even better maybe make them for example 1/9 movement points. It is weird that units can move infinite on railroad while planes have very limited movement in comparision.
This is your personal view. I don't know how many Longturn games you have played, but people who have played more than you and me combined say that "no restrictinfra" is a sudden death situation after which the victim doesn't want to play anymore. And no, it's not about "not being dumb to set up your road network". You absolutely need a road network, you can't set it up "strategically defensive" in order to "slow down a potential attacker". When an attacker is well prepared, no defence will be able to stop him. It's only a matter of numbers. Roads are an integral part of a civilization. If you are playing Civilization, you build roads. If you are playing Warcraft, then you submit everything to conquest.

You want easy conquest. To you, building a nation is the means to go to war. To me it's the other way round. Gamewise, both methods are legal as is the either restrictinfra variant. The only thing is: no restriction is less realistic and leads to sudden death which is also unrealistic for larger empires.

You want a quick conquest, where the defender should be prepared all the time because, if he isn't, he will perish within a few turns. But, again, if the attack is well prepared, no defence will be able to stop it. It's a game of numbers.

I want a more realistic situation where it takes time to conquer a territory (as long as the land is large), just as it happened throughout history. Both variants are playable in its way, but, like I said, one is called Civilization and the other is called turn-based Warcraft.
--
* 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...
wieder
Elite
Posts: 303
Joined: Thu Jul 27, 2017 10:43 am

Re: Ideas for better online game experience

Post by wieder »

Using the roads on enemy territory is not that simple really. In real life the enemy can protect the roads in real time and move "units" there to fight the attacker. In a Freeciv game the defending party is usually not online when the attack happens and as a result can't fight the attacker in real time.

One way to see the restrictinfra setting is simulating this aspect of war. In a real war you can't just move into enemy territory and see all the locations of the defending "units". With Freeciv that's the standard. There are no hidden units outside the cities. The exceptions are the stealth units and submarines. Without land units hiding there it's just not the same.

On longturn.org we are now using rails that use 1/9 moves. The unlimited moves only come with maglev rails and that's pretty much end game anyway.

Another problem with having no restrictinfra are the turn change (tc) moves. You can move the workers to enemy territory just before the turn ends, build some roads and then use those roads right after the new turn has begun. To prevent this you should be online at the tc and fight in real time - or have the server setting preventing the enemy to use the roads on your territory.

Not everyone can be online at the tc and RTS (real time strategy) is not something that would make Freeciv a better game. Quite the opposite.
Post Reply