Corbeau wrote:
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".
I could just as well say that when a defender is well prepared, no attack will be able to stop him.
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.
There is no absolute need, one could easily play without. You can be defensive about it too, for example, you can make your road and city set up in a way that doesn't give full access to the roads through ZOC rules. This can be archived by making it so that to pass a city, or a fort, a foreign unit has to 1. take out the unit or 2. move out of the road to pass.
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.
The other way around? War as means to build a nation? I don't understand. And why do you say I want easy conquest? I want the game to be balanced.
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.
I think a player should be prepared all the time that he might be invaded, that's right. I also think it should be fully punishable when someone let's their guard down. In this game you have to try to get to know the intentions of your neighbours, their strengths and their likeable targets. If you build unprotected rails right next to a player that has the power and will to attack and put you in sudden death situation, then I think you are playing the game wrong. And I don't think the game should be changed because of that. That is, I don't think sudden death situations we have to day are undesirable. The problem arises when, usually newer players, don't see the implications of their actions (or lack of actions).
It's really hard to talk about realism and Freeciv (often because players set themselves in unrealistic situations), but I think that often when sudden death situations happen in freeciv, you have the real life equivalent of the complete unrealistic scenario that a nation doesn't pay (sufficient) attention to his neighbours and happily live life while neighbour makes huge troops to just roll over the unprepared victim.
Playing against humans can be though, and one really has to expect the same nastinesses as in ordinary world politics. Those that want a gentler game are maybe at the wrong place from the start.