wieder wrote:The biggest issue with LT33 seems to be that 75% of the players are not really trying to win but only to survive. In the end this is not a very good strategy since it's inevitable that the big players will grow so big that they will conquer everyone at some point.
Erm... Sorry, but I don't see a causal connection between those two sentences. Could you clarify a bit?
To my knowledge, in LT33 there were three big blocks with varying levels of aggression and the one coming on top is actually the *medium* one.
What would make you attacking more in the early game and conquering nations instead of living in peace?
Absolutely nothing. I have no desire to wipe out my neighbours; possibly to get into a better position by grabbing a city or two, but I'm not interested in a total war, at least not at the early stages of the game.
However - and this may be the answer to your question - this is possibly because a war is very expensive resource-wise and waging one without major and decisive gains will throw you back very much. One of the reasons of my stagnation in this game was the war with Bamskamp and Maho because of which I had to redirect a huge amount of my resources to keep them at bay, do the occasional attack and/or reconquer what I have lost. And today, after two months of fighting, I am one town ahead (and two of mine reduced to minimum).
One of the problems is game mechanics: it takes a few turns to build an average military unit; for example, instead of ONE unit, you could build a marketplace, which would give you extra money until the end of the game. Same goes for bank. So, the tradeoff: if you build a marketplace and a bank, you have permanent benefits. If, instead, you build two or three units, they may be destroyed in the blink of an eye and three units are really not enough to wage a successfull war anyway.
So, I'm assuming that the other part of your question is: what is to be done about it.
First of all, the sub-question is,
should anything be done about it. Well, some people may be surprised, but I would say: yes. For me, Civilization is a historical simulation and it is obvious that in previous eras of humankind there have been many more wars than in the FreeCiv games that I've been playing so far. Which means that FreeCiv is lacking a significant aspect of realism and for me, personally, that is a downside.
So how to repair it? Well, a part of the answer is in what I already said: unless you get something significant from the war, you have actually lost; not completely lost, but you have suffered a non-neglectable loss. So, unlike reality, where wars can end up in a draw with neither side losing much, in FreeCiv, a draw means that both sides actually *lost*, if nothing else, resources they could have used to build many city improvements that would have helped them advance in the long run. Which means you better be WELL prepared before starting a war, because if you are not, the chance of losing are very high.
So, basically, what would have to be done is make wars *cheaper*. As it is now, the only way to wage a war is go full frontal, all or nothing, because if you don't win, you may as well retire because it will be very difficult to recover. To prevent this, you have to make units cheaper, maybe not powerful attackers, but defensive units definitely. To balance things out, those cheap units should have very low defensive power, but should be able to plug the holes in your defences in case of emergency.
Apart from making the war cheaper, you would have extra manoeuverability. As it is now, you only make gains if you capture an enemy city. If you don't capture, then you don't gain anything an all units you had have
gone towaste.
Having cheap units would enable you to occupy territory, block resources and, if the units get killed in the process, who cares? They are cheap. But they fulfilled their role.
Also,make both attack and defence less expensive. Make city walls less user-friendly; easy to build, but more expensive to maintain. Also, cities without them shouldn't automatically lose population when unit inside defeated. As it is now, attacking a city is a loss no matter how you look at it: defender loses population and the attacker doesn't gain anything if he destroys a city. Losses all around, not many gains. And you wonder why nobody is attacking?
I'm actually surprised how in 20 years of existence there haven't been more significant changes to basic Civ ruleset. Because everything in the original Civ is set to conform to a single-player game. When you play against the computer, you are the centre of the universe and it makes sense to balance building a marketplace and building a single unit, there is no need for realism. However, multi-player environment is much more dynamic, with less stereotypical playing and much more options.
I've been toying with the idea of a different ruleset for a while now, but many other things get in the way so I simply fail to sit down and finish it. Also, my lack of coding knowledge and full understanding of how the effects.ruleset works is also a big barrier (and roughly half the questions I asked in various forums were left unanswered). I have the basic concept written somewhere, but we can discuss it somewhere else.
What would you like to become easier on the next game? I don't mean giving more x abilities for unit y but in general, what kind of playing should be easier or harder? Would it be good if the unhappiness wasn't that hard to manage? Would you like to make it easier/harder to get gold? Would it be good if defending/attacking would be easier/harder?
Gold is good. Restrictinfra should be on, else you play a game of Risk. Triple movement is definitely too much. I'd like no tech exchange, but also much more reduced cost for technologies already discovered by many players (so that an alliance can coordinate research so that people in the back of the row can gain techs more easily). No penalty for exchanging gold, much more difficult inciting revolt, allow exchange of cities (simply because it's realistic; imagine WW2 without this possibility; abuses can be dealt with in many ways).
And DEFINITELY make civil war less likely. What is happening now in LT33 is beyond rediculous.
