New multiplayer games on longturn.org

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wieder
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New multiplayer games on longturn.org

Post by wieder »

After 38 longturn games (+ some smaller ones) there will be more than one game starting this fall.

LT39 is a more traditional Longturn game with 23h moves and with more standard Freeciv ruleset. The game will start in 7-8 weeks. LT39 will be a game with continents and the ruleset has been adjusted for a balanced multiplayer experience. Allied victory is possible and it's also an option to end the game with a space race. City trading is not available, tech trading is off and gold trading is enabled. You can't join after the game has started.

http://longturn.org/game/LT39/

If you want to try something different, go for LT40. It will start in 10-11 weeks and the map is continents that will be unknown to everyone as the game starts.

It's a game with a limited empire size. Lots of new city improvements and some new units. Tech trading is possible with diplomats and spies. City trading and gold trading are available. Allied victory is NOT possible. Single player space race victory is the most probable way of ending the game. Conquest victory is possible but extremely unlikely with 1 winner. All surviving players will be ranked with in-game score.

No new players can join after the game has started. There is also no compensation for late start but chances are few players will be able to pick an idler spot in T1, assuming that there are players who didn't start playing. Usually about 10% of the players have been idling.

http://longturn.org/game/LT40/


For a small scenario type of game there is Scenario Game 1. The map based on 19th century Germany and it will start in about 11 days if there are enough interested players. The max limit for players for this game is 17. This is ia new concept for longturn.org and if there are not enough players the game will be postponed.

http://longturn.org/game/SG1/


Longturn.org games need a native Freeciv 2.5 client and can't be played on a browser. At least Windows and Linux clients are available and you can ask for advice if you have trouble installing those. The rulesets are also available if someone is interested in testing them in advance.

There has been about 20-50 players / game and these games are designed to take about 150-180 turns to be completed. The max limit of players is 126.

For more information ask here or check the longturn.org forum at http://forum.longturn.org/index.php
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Re: New multiplayer games on longturn.org

Post by Corbeau »

Ok, let's continue here instead you-know-where, and, skipping the jokes about introvert Scandinavians (actually, come to think of it, passing through Norway was a pleasant surprise because I suddenly realised that when you smile at Norwegian girls in the street, they actually smile back; I was a bit disappointed when I got to a mirror and realised my hair was abominable due to a long trip and that they were actually smiling at that, but still, I was never able to get that kind of a smile on the Continent, bizarre hair or not)...

Anyway...

I understand the intention, but those numbers you mentioned elsewhere are maybe a bit too much. 900 tiles / ~40 uncontested cities per player is the other extreme of "too violent". "No conflict" also means "no cooperation", which is less fun, and in the end it could amount to an array of simultaneous single-player games with occasional raids to curb your competition's progress.

Again, all this is only in my view, off course. I have a feeling that I'm constantly complaining anyway :)
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Re: New multiplayer games on longturn.org

Post by wieder »

It's better to have someone "complaining" all the time :) After all these games are for all the players and without feedback it's really hard to know what's good and what is not working that well.

What do you think, how many cities / player would result with a reasonable rush to grab land o fight for it? Only monarchy is able to have 35 cities without additional unhappiness.

Despotism 25 cities
Tribalism 28 cities
Democracy 30 cities
Monarchy 35 cities
Fundamentalism 30 cities
Federation 34 cities
Republic 32 cities
Communism 30 cities
Nationalism 28 cities

All the locations are not that great, of course. We could also enable poles and render some of the tiles not that nice. If the number of cities/player goes much below 30, it's almost inevitable that there will be more wars where some of the players are eliminated. Not saying this would be bad thing. I'm not sure what would be the close to perfect balance between wars for land, co-operation and improving the civilizations. The normal settings with 450 tiles usually allow about 20 cities and without the city limits there are quickly wars... As you know.
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Re: New multiplayer games on longturn.org

Post by Corbeau »

Well, I can't really be sure about the numbers, but keep in mind that some people will immediately lag behind and not grow to their fullest before others take up "their" space, so there will be more than "average" space for an "average" player..

So, to make a completely off-hand, ad-hoc, approximate to the bone calculation, let's say that 1/3 of players end up with "half the average" cities, 1/3 end up with the average, that leaves the remainig 1/3 with 1.5x of the average land and cities, with some ending up with probably more, and all of this even before getting into a serious conflict. So it would be ok if people with 2x average cities aren't crippled by revolts due to nation size. Slightly problematic, yes. Needing extra resources, yes, But cripppled, no, not nice. I've seen that you've prepared a drastic cut-off after the "first unhappy" citizen due to size. And, actually, I'd accept a maybe smaller "first unhappy" number, but I'd leave a less sharp cut-off. Don't dictate to people how they should play. But I've been repeating this forever.

Also, in all these years, I still fail to see the sense in having a large citimindistance. If someone wants to have his cities close, let him have it. With the limitations - settler costing 2 population, unhappiness due to size - it is a trade-off that someone should be allowed to take, if he is willing.


And, for the record, i'm not against war. But I want to be able to make a decision to (not) go to war depending on the particular circumstances, not having to make the decision simply because I know thatanything else will mean my demise by default.
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Re: New multiplayer games on longturn.org

Post by Corbeau »

wieder wrote:All surviving players will be ranked with in-game score.
Just checking, what exactly does this mean? That in-game score (the number) will be simply added to their LT ranking?
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Re: New multiplayer games on longturn.org

Post by wieder »

Maybe space for 25-30 cities would work for that kind of setup. That might be something like 600-700 tiles / player.

The idea with empire_size_step 1 is that you need to develop the cities after hitting certain limit. Without a very hard limit it's not that hard to go for war and never really develop the cities. Then again this could be what we want. With this you can do war and exceed the empire city size but you need city improvements and some lux settings for it. And also Shakespeare's. I'll check what would happen with half for empire base sizes and maybe one more unhappy after every maybe 3 cities.

The problem is that there is only one setting for empire_size_step. Would be nice if it was possible to do x cities before unhppiness, then y additional cities and after some limit y would be smaller. For example 20 cities first, then unhappy after every 5 cities and after 40 cities the step would be for example 3. Don't know if that's possible, however.

The large citymindist together with a bigger work area for cities effectively change the moves to close to 2x. In previous games the cities were able to work 3 tiles away and the citymindist was 4. On LT40 the cities can work 4 tiles away and citymindist is 6. With previous games (without roads) it took at least 1 1/3 moves for a green warrior to move from a city to city. With LT40 settings it takes 2 moves. Effectively it's like the map is slightly zoomed 2x setting. The biggest change comes with increased city work area. There are now about 50-60% more tiles for the city to work with.

The citymindist is a limitation similar to end production of 10 shield warriors with gunpowder. We could allow building warriors to the end of the game and also let the players build the cities conencted to each other. With 10 shield units people could train allied units. With a small citymindist the attacking enemy could do some nasty tc attacks. First build a fort just before TC to change the ownership of a tile and then build a new city connected or almost connected to the other city. This would be done independent of how the enemy built his/her cities. A bigger citymindist doesn't only limit players from placing cities but also prevents TC RTS.
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Re: New multiplayer games on longturn.org

Post by wieder »

The in-game ranking is not connected the traditional LT ranking. It will only list the players and how they did on the game. This is based on in-game score for practical reasons.
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Re: New multiplayer games on longturn.org

Post by Corbeau »

wieder wrote:The large citymindist together with a bigger work area for cities effectively change the moves to close to 2x. In previous games the cities were able to work 3 tiles away and the citymindist was 4. On LT40 the cities can work 4 tiles away and citymindist is 6. With previous games (without roads) it took at least 1 1/3 moves for a green warrior to move from a city to city. With LT40 settings it takes 2 moves. Effectively it's like the map is slightly zoomed 2x setting. The biggest change comes with increased city work area. There are now about 50-60% more tiles for the city to work with.
All this is true. But you simply didn't explain why allowing cities to be built closer to each other should be fobidden. If creating closer attack bases (an enemy city one tile away) is the problem, then make it so that pre-fort *doesn't* give tile ownership, but only fort. So when you build a fort, you may as well use that fort and don't have to build a city.

But, in all, you are crippling a game aspect that is so strategically important that it represents the core of the game - city building - just because of one particular semi-abuse that can be countered by other means, at least partially.
The citymindist is a limitation similar to end production of 10 shield warriors with gunpowder. We could allow building warriors to the end of the game and also let the players build the cities conencted to each other. With 10 shield units people could train allied units. With a small citymindist the attacking enemy could do some nasty tc attacks. First build a fort just before TC to change the ownership of a tile and then build a new city connected or almost connected to the other city. This would be done independent of how the enemy built his/her cities. A bigger citymindist doesn't only limit players from placing cities but also prevents TC RTS.
I don't understand the reference abuot Warriors but since you bring it up, let me say that I never understood why Warriors aren't obsoleted by Phalanx, why is it necessary to wait will Musketeers to get rid of them. It's as if people *want* to have the option to mass-produce such cheap units and then to Leonardo the hell out of them.
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Corbeau
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Re: New multiplayer games on longturn.org

Post by Corbeau »

wieder wrote:The in-game ranking is not connected the traditional LT ranking. It will only list the players and how they did on the game. This is based on in-game score for practical reasons.
For the record, this may also result in general carnage. If someone wants a better score, he will go to greater lengths to conquer and destroy all weaker nations. This is why I was suggesting to count only rank (1st, 2nd, 3rd etc.) based on score.This would create the same motivation, but to a lesser extent because in some cases it will be obvious that you can't overcome the one ahead of you (for example, he has 1500 points and you have 1100 so it doesn't matter if you get 200 more or not).
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Re: New multiplayer games on longturn.org

Post by wieder »

When building a city you can also move the borders with it and that way render the restrictinfra meaningless. The pre-forts do not change ownership so you need at least two turns to build the city, grow it with migrants/immigrants/settlers/colonists and move the borders in order to gain unrestricted access to that city. The same could be done on coastal areas with triremes, worders and settlers.

And it's not just about attacks but also grabbing resources. With a very small citymindist you can simply take the resources from the enemy by building cities close to them. After all the work area is 4 tiles away.

You can compare this to some traditional ruleset where the work area is 2 tiles away and the citymindist is 3. On LT40 it's basically doubled.

At an earlier time phalanx obsoleted warriors but I think it was changed from that to current version on civ2civ3 after people complained the lack of cheap units. Not sure if we should actually change that back.
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