Help for how to play with native client and with LT rulesets?

[wieder]

If there are issues with playing, especially for those people coming from web-multiplayer, I could list some help here.

The client is quite different from the web version, but it's also very flexible. There are lots of settings you can use to make it suit your needs and preferences. If there are issues, please post them here and we can figure out how to deal with them.

Also, the ruleset it different from the multiplayer ruleset. If there are some areas that need explaining, we can also do that here. You can ask about how to do something or how to deal with some stuff and get answers here.

There are no stupid questions. Just incomplete answers

[Corbeau]

Of course there are stupid questions and usually I'm the one to ask them

[Caedo]

What exactly is the purpose behind the reduced city vision? If people want to keep their cities empty, that's their problem, isn't it? No need to force them to use one specific playstyle.

On that matter, can we get a full, proper list of all the changes relative to civ2civ3?

[HanduMan]

What exactly is the purpose behind the reduced city vision?

No purpose. It's a bug but people here refuse to see it as such.

[wieder]

We had some lists for ruleset changes but it got complicated after some games. Comparing the current game to the previous one, to the one before that and to civ2civ3... The current LT rulesets are quite different from civ2civ3 and not too many people ever played that. Some kind of list should be done at some point, yeah.

The city vision was indeed a bug in the first place but like few other bugs, it ended up being a feature because it was offering something that was found useful. The cities actually can work on the tiles that can't be seen but they can not be changed without actual vision.

In the past too many games have ended when people kept cities empty and open for anyone to conquer. With restrictinfra off it was even worse. Very easy to kill entire nations in a turn or two. The players can actually still keep the cities empty but at least something should be moved close to them to allow the worked tiles to be changed. Usually workers will do the trick.

We can of course change this setting if people really want it to be changed. Personally I would encourage the players to build better defenses since that's something too many players neglect

Other bug originated features are low ranges for nukes and no v siege units with barracks. Those proved to be useful once the units were reconfigured.

[Caedo]

I believe if players neglect something, that's their problem. By doing things like this, you are forcing them to do a certain thing, which takes away from the possibilities. That way, the game will end up railroading everyone into one single playstyle, which I'd say is going to be really boring.

[wieder]

Pretty much all the rules are somehow limiting possibilities. We only need to decide what kind of limitations make sense and what makes the game less interesting. Kind of similar limitation is the citymindist that is also limiting options from the players. There has been long discussions about that too. Another one is the restrictinfra. Some arguments point out the it limits the possibilities for attacking the enemy and it should also be a choice if the players have virtually no defenses with restrictinfra off.

SG1 might be a bit different but in a normal LT game there is plenty of start units the players can use for maintaining the vision.

set startunits=ccccwwwwwwx

With 6 workers and an explorer it's really easy to keep the vision for the cities even if they are empty. The workers also can provide some kind of defense if taken inside the cities. From this point of view it might make more sense to increase the number of start units instead of increasing the city vision.

Anyway, this is not something that's carved on stone. On LT games stuff can be changed if there is a good reason to it and if enough players want the change. In the past there were polls but those didn't work out too well. Poll A affecting stuff XYZ and poll B affecting stuff ABZ and possibly conflicting on Z. Today this stuff is decided by game admins and any competent player can become a game admin. As far as I know, the admins have been asking about the changes on the forum or on the game chat.

[HanduMan]

Caedo: See?

If a city has a designated working area and I, as a player, cannot assign a worker on any tile inside that working area then it is a bug. Unless the tile renders unworkable by some setting in ruleset, of course. The discussion about keeping cities occupied or not is off-topic when we are talking about city working area and vision.

[wieder]

The city working area / city vision relates to to keeping the cities occupied. Maybe there could be another way for encouraging that? This has worked in the past because there is an actual penalty for not keeping any units around.

There are at least two ways into looking at this.

1) the cities should be able to access any tiles they can work on and the units should not make the visible area any smaller that the working area is. A city is independent of units and could be considered as a fully self sustaining entity.

2) the cities alone do not have the resources for controlling all the tiles they could work on in the normal situations. The cities need some help from the units for the workers to go for the far away tiles.

I can see how this could be understood as a bug since it was originally an unintended bug that later proved to be useful.

How about this? We set the city working area to the same value the city has. However you get a working area + vision bonus if you have a unit inside the city. Effectively this would be the same as it's today but without the working tiles in the dark.

[HanduMan]

Effectively this would be the same as it's today but without the working tiles in the dark.

But it would not. You see, currently the cities can work those unseen tiles when the city grows and the game decides the distribution of workers on behalf of the player. But the player can not assign workers there. That is why this is definitely a bug.

If you really want to push players into keeping their cities occupied then your proposal ("How about this") sounds about the right way to do that.

[wieder]

What I tried to say it would be effectively the same thing. Not exactly the same thing. With this bug/feature the game will allow the players to work on those tiles and that gives more options. It's true that the devs, when they heard about this stuff, told me they never thought anyone would use it like that. In the future Freeciv may actually have official support for a setting like that.

The "how about this" approach would "do it right way" but it would also limit the possibilities the players have. No problem in switching to that but I wonder why it would be better

Yes, I understand it's kind of more clean way to implement it but it also limits what you can do.

[Caedo]

I believe this unnecessarily complicates rules either way and new players might be very confused by it – especially if, as is the case right now, informations on all the special stuff is scattered around a dozen different places.
In supplied rulesets, there is already the penalty that an empty city's incite cost is halved. This, however, is only really a matter if using spies to go behind enemy lines was more common anyways, which I am under the impression is not.

My approach would be to keep the whole vision and working radius matter seperate from units being inside the cities. If you really find it necessary to force players to occupy their cities, there could be something like increased corruption in unoccupied cities. However, instead of a punishment, there could be a minor reward for having units there, such as a bonus point of trade on the city center. That would create an incentive, but make it way less intrusive.

Of course, with various government effects and improvements, that one point could evolve into a total of four additional points on certain terrains that don't have trade normally, but still.

EDIT: Does 2.5 have MaxUnitsOnTile?

[wieder]

I think MaxUnitsOnTile is available with 2.6 but not yet on 2.5.

The incite cost is not quite what does the trick here. Some govs do not allow this to happen in the first place and it's kind of same as with conquering the cities. No penalty before someone actually attacks there.

Having a trade bonus might work. Then again someone might say that not having a unit inside would mean that there is a penalty for not having unit and some trade is lost.

Maybe the units could give one extra shield to the city center? Trade might also do the trick but it could also give bigger bonus for those govs with +1 trade bonus for each tile already producing trade.

[Caedo]

Like I said, I still believe the best way to do it would be to not have the rules directly care whether you have a unit in the city or not at all. With restricinfra, it's not even that necessary to keep your cities occupied until the advent of paratroopers.

Also, I believe this whole discussion has derailed the actual purpose of this topic. Shame on me for causing that.

[wieder]

I really like offtopic since that's usually something where the new fresh ideas are:)

I have now changed the city vision to 18 on LT39.

The trade bonus could also be used for rewarding and making it easier to grow beyond size 8. The size 8 has been a problem in the past games since the cities need several buildings if a gov without martial law is used. Rewarding the players for that seems quite nice.