Suggestions for the next Ruleset.

kevin551 · Post by **kevin551** » Sat Oct 14, 2017 2:53 am

The early game in SG1 is now about over.
Much quicker than normal, because we started with some developed cities and some science.
So time for some comments on this stage of the game.

1/. Food and science are too fast. Growth is way too fast.

2/. The early combat is seriously degraded from normal freeciv and pre-the-new-admin longturn games.

Warriors are now essentially useless, because they are relatively way more expensive than their opponents. (phalanx, horse, archer).
The new version of longturn is like playing chess without the pawns.

Catapults are also rendered useless because of the lack of veterancy, and the movement restrictions.

3/. The power factors for promoted workers are way too high.
A green worker can move 2 tiles and do 2 units of work.
A vet worker can move 2 1/3 tiles and do 3 units of work.
A vv worker can move 2 2/3 tiles and do 4 units of work.
An elite worker can move 3 tiles and do 5 units of work.

The increase in ability to work should be proportional to the increase in movement.

4/. Revolution length is set to 1. It should be 2 to provide some penalty and risk to changing governments.

Post by **wieder** » Sat Oct 14, 2017 11:26 am

Thanks for the feedback.

SG1 effectively has pretty much the same ruleset as LT38 has.

1) How fast should it be? would you prefer the old setting where the cities always get 10 food with granary or is there something else that should be changed? The harbours were reverted back to the old values in LT39 and split into 2 different buildings for LT40.

2) The idea with warriors costing the same while the other units had the costs cut was to balance the number of the units built. Back in the days almost everyone was building pretty much only warriors and the better units were not used that much. This of course comes to the old topic about encouraging the players to do something. Some consider it bad to make for example the phalanx unit less expensive because that kind of encourages the players to build something else than warriors. However we could switch back to the old(ish?) values for LT39 if the players want it?

The catapults and cannons now have the citybuxter flag meaning that they get double firepower when attacking cities. Back in the days they were built as v (with barracks) but no double firepower. We can of course switch back to the old values if that works better for the gameplay. The old catapult had attack of 6 and the new one has 5. The new ones are crappy against units outside cities but quite good against units in cities.

What about movement restrictions? The catas should be able to go on some terrains and also attack non native terrains (with keyboard commands at least) and move elsewhere with roads. Not sure but I think this is the way it has been for ages?

LT32: veteran_work_raise_chance = 12, 9, 9, 9, 7, 7, 7, 5, 5, 5
LT38: veteran_work_raise_chance = 9, 6, 6, 6, 5, 5, 4, 4, 3, 0

I suppose this is right?

About the move/work ratio, I'm not sure how it's exactly defined on the ruleset but I think it's veteran_power_fact and veteran_move_bonus and they should match to each other. Not sure but changing that might also change the power factors for other units too?

The revolution length was planned to be 1 because this was supposed to be a short game. Will be 2 for LT39 but 1 for LT40. It was a surprise that the revo len was 0 (random) for SG1. We need to check that from the save game next time. Could be 2 for SG2, yeah.

Sketlux · Post by **Sketlux** » Sat Oct 14, 2017 12:58 pm

I agree with 1) and 2) and 4). 3) doesnt border me, those 2 mp are annoyingly slow! So veterancy helps!

Big problem of this scenario is tech trading. Since I havent traded one single tech in LT38 I thought it woudnt happen here. But its simply catapultating the game forward to my discontent and we are moving too fast towards steel. At this rate I would suggest not building all those wonders and just end it the conventional way.
Also, you can unrestrictedly form alliances. Not a good thing. Before someone says Im a hippocrat, I took advantage of all those things but it doesnt mean I like it.

Post by **wieder** » Sat Oct 14, 2017 1:16 pm

How to restrict growth? One way to do it might be changing the sizes of the boodbox. For example keeping the current sizes for city sizes 1-8 but switching from 40 to 50 after that. One of the reasons why the cities grow so fast is that the settings are tuned to make early growth happen much faster. Currently there were comments about the early cities growing too slowly. Also, there have been attempts to make it easier and more reasonable to grow the cities beyond 8.

The 2x moves indeed make the green units to move really slowly. This wasn't thought about when the ruleset was changed from 3x to 2x. Maybe not that big issue with 3x? Cannons and catapults have 2 moves. Artilleries have 3 and howizers 4.

Tech trading... Yes, that wasn't checked. Apparently the server settings are saved o the save file and no longer can be changed by just changing the .serv file. Next time we will know better.

I'm not sure how to prevent allying without restrictions. Unless making this a team game.

kevin551 · Post by **kevin551** » Tue Oct 17, 2017 4:29 pm

Sketlux wrote:... its simply catapulting the game forward to my discontent and we are moving too fast towards steel...

Yes. I too am disappointed by the pace of research. It was obvious from the test game that this would be a very fast game, with only 1 viable strategy.
It's a shame this is a good map.

Wieder - my comments about catapults being useless in the early game, refers to the part of the game before construction.
Perhaps catapults / cannon may have a use later.

Post by **Corbeau** » Mon Oct 23, 2017 2:31 pm

Actually, I'm not sure science is too fast. It may seem so at the beginning while we are at low.-cost techs, but it will slow down eventually and you should keep in mind that the number of cities will not grow significantly as it was the case in other games.

Post by **wieder** » Sun Nov 12, 2017 12:05 pm

How is the science now? About 20 more turns have passed since the last post here. Is the game still going to end in about one month?

kevin551 · Post by **kevin551** » Sun Nov 19, 2017 9:03 am

-
The game is progressing even faster now. There are about 2 weeks left.
So time for some more comments on the second stage of the game. (Before gunpowder)

1/. Food and science are too fast. Growth is way too fast. Small Wonders are too cheap. Wonders are too expensive.

2/. Warriors, which were useless in the early game, became the standard unit in the mid game. Cheapest unit for Leonardo's to upgrade.
Sadly despite now having a huge army built really cheaply, the game will end long before I use them.
Hence the cost of warriors cannot be decreased, to match the cheaper units in the early game.

The swordsman / trireme combo is way too powerful in the early game.
This combo can bypass the restriction on slow travel in enemy territory and quickly capture cities.
Despite this the many idlers in this game were mostly left alone?

Knights are unusually powerful. Normally this unit is worthless because it appears just before gunpowder.
But in this ruleset they are so cheap, 25 gold, and have extra vision.
They are worth building just to put on a fortress and gain the extra tile of vision.
The other mounted units Chariots and Elephants were too expensive and had no advantages.

I still think the veterancy for workers / engineers progresses way too fast. But yes, it uses the same power factors as regular units. We certainly don't want to reduce those. It leads to everyone having workers of level 4 and above, but no-one having a troop above level 3.

Post by **wieder** » Sun Nov 19, 2017 11:42 am

Thanks for your feedback.

1) Since SG1 us basically using LT38 ruleset, food and growth are tuned for a regular LT game. How much slower they should be for the next SG game? I need to ask this because I'm not playing and because of that have really no idea about how the settings should be changed. Also, how many turns should a game like the upcoming SG2 last?

2) The warriors are a tricky one. Would you like to have them changed like they are now in LT40? In LT40 warriors are obsoleted by pikemen. However in LT39 warriors are only obsoleted by musketeers. The trick for making mass upgrades less worthy is implemented with a new setting to Leonardo's. All the auto upgraded units will now lose one veteran level in SG1, LT39 and LT40. Did you already build the Leonardo and notice this or is this not enough to make the mass upgrades less useful for offensive army?

Just maybe the warriors could cost 8 instead of 10 if they were obsoleted with swordsmen maybe? Or with pikemen. Obsoleting with swordsmen would give the players a decision about going to early wars with swordsmen or having the cheap units until a later time.

Yeah, the swordsmen/triremes are really powerful. The idea was to allow attacks from sea in case someone leaves rivers unguarded. However I'm not sure how many players have understood that this should be done

Another matter are the swordsmen. They are really powerful units and it's very hard to say what should be done to them. In LT39 they will be like they are on SG1 but on LT40 swordsmen no longer can attack from the sea.

The knights. Too powerful or too cheap? Sounds like they are no with usable values.

Chariots are kind of less used units and not that important, but the elephants were intended to become the reserves of ancient nations. They are not that expensive and can quickly travel to cities under attack. As reasonably good defensive units this was the purpose for them. Good defensive units you can move fast. And as a bonus they have mediocre attack qualities so that you can use them for further away targets if absolutely needed. This maybe doesn't work as intended?

The veteran levels are also for games with 120-150 turns and the units gain promotions fast. Maybe could be lowered if the next SG game is going to be a longer one. For LT39 and LT40 the values will be kept as they now are on SG1.

Post by **Corbeau** » Sun Nov 19, 2017 9:17 pm

I would just like to remind everybody that I was proposing the tech tree to start late and finish early. Roughly, start with Gunpowder, end with electricity and stretch the whole game through the techs in between. If that happened, we wouldn't have had the main problem with this game

Please add this to my file and consult it during the next discussion

cgalik · Post by **cgalik** » Mon Nov 20, 2017 3:09 am

I didn't play SG1 but I don't think the worker's upgrades progressed fast enough in LT38. It was like T100 or something before any of my starting workers became elite 3. But since Kevin has the other viewpoint probably can just leave them right where they are.

I agree warriors could be obsoleted earlier. Otherwise just standard practice to build a bunch of them and have them drink in a bar until Leo's call's their name.

kevin551 · Post by **kevin551** » Tue Nov 21, 2017 4:55 am

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Here's the trick for using warriors.
1/ sell all level 1 barracks
2/ build 40 green warriors cost 10 shields each.
3/ build Leonardo's cost 200 shields
4/ after 20 turns disband 40 green musketeers for 20 shields each. gain = 800 - 600 = 200 shields
5/ the cost of maintaining those 40 units is offset by never having to build a level 2 barracks.
6/ you also get to have a huge defensive army, just in case there is ever any actual fighting.

It's a defensive strategy, which lost out in this game to the simpler 'build Copernicus and universities' strategy.
To make this an offensive strategy add the Sun Tzu wonder, keep the level 1 barracks and upgrade v2 warriors into v musketeers.

There never was any fighting, so the warriors waiting to upgrade, the muskets waiting to disband, and the caravan drivers waiting to build Bismark Tower are all drinking in that bar!

Post by **wieder** » Tue Nov 21, 2017 12:37 pm

Yeah... Maybe for SG2 pikemen will replace warriors?

Also, should the defense be less powerful in SG2?

Sketlux · Post by **Sketlux** » Tue Nov 21, 2017 2:44 pm

Starting technology should be favouring defense. Techdevelopment should lean towards offensive weapons (fighter, bomber, tanks). They should probably get higher attack values. Can techs alter the strenght of units? If I develop for example "poison gas" as a tech with dead end , can I get stronger artillery?

Post by **wieder** » Tue Nov 21, 2017 2:56 pm

I guess there could be new units replacing the old ones. There are no new sprites but that's maybe not a problem really. You could have 2-3 artillery units each stronger than the previous one.

Also I guess that the game should not end with some wonder but instead old fashion way.

The post ww1 techs could of course be really expensive ones.

Post by **Corbeau** » Tue Nov 21, 2017 3:58 pm

wieder wrote:Yeah... Maybe for SG2 pikemen will replace warriors?

Also, should the defense be less powerful in SG2?

Wait, pikemen and warriors in WWI scenario?

As for defence... No?

Sketlux · Post by **Sketlux** » Tue Nov 21, 2017 4:43 pm

Thought the same

Post by **wieder** » Tue Nov 21, 2017 5:23 pm

Indeed, the warrior - pikemen shouldn't affect SG1 with the advanced start but the ruleset change for that feature should be made for SG2 because the same ruleset may be used for future games. Better be prepared for those

Caedo · Post by **Caedo** » Tue Nov 21, 2017 7:12 pm

I believe warriors shouldn't be upgraded to a defensive unit, but an offensive infantry unit (Archers or Legion/Swordsmen maybe). They're DefenseOK, not DefenseGood.