Admin(s) behaviour and the Freeciv community in general

[cazfi]

(shouldn't take many hours with any ruleset)

About a year ago I wrote something about 50 hours. Meanwhile with an apparently working ruleset I think 200h is more realistic, but admittedly this includes the time to learn Lua from scratch and overwrite default.lua signal handlers in script.lua just to see how stuff works.

So this does not count as blindly following the document.

[Corbeau]

Firstly, I apologise for inaccurate terminology. Of course I meant Freeciv Web, not the whole Freeciv project. My question was addressed generally because I'm not completely sure who is managing what. Either way, I got my answer. On many levels.

(And, just curious, what's with the offtopic about 2.6 rulesets?)

Anyway, this is a public service announcement. I will be leaving Longturn Web games because I don't feel it would make sense spending more hours on those games knowing that the admin can ban me any moment based on obviously false and unsubstantiated complaints by users who apparently have issues. Even worse things happened before so I don't think I have cause for hope so I better quit while I'm ahead.

So, the details.

First, I believe some of you know that I was already banned from the game earlier this year. Why? Because in a discussion here on the forum I wrote, literally: "Andreas, you are a PR disaster". Because of this, I was banned from the game server where I was playing four Longturn games. Some time after that, Andreas got pissed off by god-knows-what and killed all seven running LT Web games. Then he changed his mind, started "Game 8" and "Game X" and later on the "city challenge Game 11". How long those will last is anyone's guess. Also, he proclaimed "general amnesty" for banned people (I don't know of anyone except me) so I was able to play those games "legally".

Then he seemed to calm down, but then the Longturn.org crew started preparing two new games - LT39 and LT40 - and, obviously, started informing people about it, among other places, here in the forum. Since I believed it's good that the community is informed and that people who like to play have an opportunity to play - and choose from - more games, I advertised it on Freeciv Web Discord channel.

The next morning the information was deleted.

I asked if it is forbidden to inform players of new Longturn games, didn't get a relevant answer, moved on. A few hours later, when I came back online, I discovered two things:
1. I was removed from the Freeciv Web Discord server
2. I received the following message from Andreas: "This is a complaint from another player about you. If I get one more complaint from other players about you, then I will ban you again." Attached was a screenshot of this "complaint" by a player called Schwartz and I am enclosing it in the attachment below.

For the record, I am also attaching the relevant parts of log of private conversation between Schwartz and me so that everybody can inspect how abusive, trolling and insulting I've been toward him. I removed some OOC parts, you can take my word for it and believe they don't shed any new light on this, or you can ask Schwartz to publish them, I'm fine with publishing my part. Yes, I also made screenshots. With so much paranoid delusions in the air, better to be safe than sorry. Although, since I'm mentioning it, screenshots can also be faked, so, no reason to believe anything, right? RIGHT?

Now, probably each of those things individually wouldn't be a problem. Stuff happens on the internet, people get banned for stupid reasons, get unbanned, people have misunderstandings, some of them clear them up, some of them don't, but what the hell, we don't have to all get along nicely, as long as we tolerate each other's inadequacies, things can be settled or at least we can grudgingly coexist. But all of this together make a nice bundle of paranoia and stupidity I am definitely not going to spend more hours in a game only for everything to be amputated by an unstable admin based on complaints by a psychotic player. (I mean, the guy told me he came to Freeciv to investigate how "real-life intelligence agencies communicate by moving forces across the Longturn map and that certain game strategies mess this up which is a problem for them"... or something). If Andreas was a normal admin, I could probably explain stuff and reason with him, but previous cases don't give cause for such hope so I'm afraid it''s a hopeless case. There are more LT games incoming, my time is limited, so like I said, better to quit while I'm ahead. It's just a game. (Repeat: it's just a game... it's just a game...)

Which is basically sad because, actually, I'm the one who persuaded Andreas to introduce Longturn to Freeciv Web, I coordinated bug and feature fixes. I think it's safe to say that there wouldn't be any Longturn Web if it wasn't for me, at least not his year. And I very much wish that it lasts as long as possible because it is a great tool for attracting people to Freeciv in general, but I fear that with such admin setup and also by some lying, deceiving and manipulating schemes happening within the games (if you have ever talked to Lexxie, you know what I mean), it will simply drive people away and make them sick of all this. I wouldn't want that because I want Longturn style generally to prosper and have more games and more players.

And the most amazing thing here is the fact that a person who (as far as I know, PLEASE correct me if I'm wrong) was most responsible for creating something as great as Freeciv Web is so much unstable that the greatest threat for the project is himself. In my region we have a saying that roughly translates as: what good is a cow that gives 10 litres of milk only to kick the canister and spill it all.

[Corbeau]

And, finally, I can just say: you can't go wrong by going to Longturn.org. Sometimes they are stubborn and make me mad, but they test games, they start them, they play them and they finish them with respect.

[wieder]

Hi lexxie!

You can find the latest LT40 setup here:

https://github.com/longturn/games/commits/master/LT40

and the other games can be found by changing the game number if someone wants to check the link.

The LT40 ruleset is currently in testing phase and there are most likely errors waiting to be fixed. Just out of curiosity, were you planning to run local test games or something like that? All feedback is of course welcome. LT40 is a game where we will play with more experimental setup with all the possible changes that make pretty much any sense to implement. This is one of the reasons why there are that much stuff

LT39 is more like a regular LT game but it also has a custom ruleset or modified one. Not sure what to call that.

[wieder]

Apparently something was moved to somewhere while I posted the previous message. Anyway

We have had some guidelines on longturn.org about "trolling" and behaving. Nothing too serious and probably all buried on the forum. Here is something.

- insult your enemy
- remember that in the next game you might ally with the person you are fighting with meaning that don't insult too much
- writing stuff on the game chat is quite popular
- learn from the enemy
- attack is a good insult if you can't find the words

Everyone is a real human player and you might ally with pretty much anyone in the future.

I'm not sure how it works on freeciv web but on longturn.org you can use all the exploits you can find. Pretty much only staying online 24/7 and hacking is forbidden. If you find an exploit you can use it but it would be nice if you would publish that exploit after the game so that it can be fixed. It's ok if you steal from allied cities with diplomats and that way make them immune to the real enemy. At least until spies.

Some people call the embassy making a bug or something like that because you can't remove the embassy once it's established. Creating unwanted embassies is one strategy and is usually considered hostile if not agreed beforehand. This however is similar to players attacking each other with military units. Remember to protect your cities against unwanted embassies

[Corbeau]

Some people call the embassy making a bug or something like that because you can't remove the embassy once it's established. Creating unwanted embassies is one strategy and is usually considered hostile if not agreed beforehand.

This is slighty going into too much detail, but if you check the log, you'll see that Schwartz actually agreed on creating an embassy. So no, there was no "using an exploit". He never said a word against creating an embassy.

[wieder]

Well yeah, I really wouldn't call creating embassies an exploit but more like an act ow war in some situations. Speaking generally of course.

Lots of discussions on the longturn.org forums and people sometimes get frustrated. There are no formal feature requests but just plain old chatting and talking and while not all ideas get implemented, far from it, the new suggestions sometimes make it to the games.

However the legendary Carrier Pigeon unit has not yet been implemented. Not even on LT40

[Corbeau]

And, for the record, I have been officially banned from all instances of Freeciv Web (including PBEM, haven't checked single-player ) and my messages in the Web Longturn in-game chats have been deleted. (I simply said "I am leaving, more info on the forum, check out Longturn.org")

[wieder]

All I can say is that while Corbeau may sometimes really "insist" some features or stuff, he usually makes very good points and reasoning with him greatly helps to understand the logic with the Freeciv games and rulesets. For example, we are currently talking about implementing tech trading with spies and diplomats and talking with him helps to understand how this should be implemented. We may not agree on several design choices but when I'm "forced" to list the reasons why something should be done in some particular way, it helps me to understand how to do this and also helps to see if there are serious flaws in the logic the ruleset changed are based on.

In the perfect world we would be able to just create the perfect ruleset that would make this great game even better but it usually takes lots of thinking and talking about how to do stuff. For example, LT40 has lots of features that were kind of suggested or inspired by Corbeau and lots of other people involved in the creative process.

At least for the longturn.org games having people with very different opinions and views greatly helps to make the game better.

If someone has questions or comments about the rulesets, please leave us feedback. Positive comments are welcome but it's also very good if you can tell what's not working right or what's broken or unbalanced. Or maybe if someone thinks the game is too balanced, that's also good to know. You can leave me private messages if public posting is not something you would like to do.

LT40 was created because Corbeau but not only Corbeau told us that the game was too much focused on war and expansion. Now we are trying something different. The web multiplayer takes a different approach to this and uses more standard rulesets to create cool games for those who want to be familiar with the ruleset. On longturn.org the ruleset changes make every game fresh because of the changes. I'm not saying one would be better than the other. They are just different and give the players more choices.

So this is why I feel that also negative comments are very welcome.

[Corbeau]

Thank you for the kind words Next time I'm in Finland I will find you and I will k... buy you coffee...

However, I disagree with one small thing:

"On longturn.org the ruleset changes make every game fresh because of the changes."

My motive for changing rulesets is not making them fresh, but making them better and more realistic. Any simulation of reality is an imperfect one, as is the case with every ruleset. If I found a perfect - or best possible next-change-makes-it-worse - ruleset, I'd stick to it no matter how stale it becomes over time