Ideas on How to make sure Lt31 is not as frustrating as Lt30

Joe9009 · Post by **Joe9009** » Mon May 28, 2012 1:50 pm

So having read lots of the forums on Lt30 it appears that most of the player banded together against the top rated alliance. It is clear this was really annoying to top tire players. But in any strategy game where diplomacy is around this will usually happen. For instance in a family game of risk usually one of the parents will win until the kids grow up enough and realize the only chance they have to win is to band together and fight the power. When this happens parents never win again.

The Kids have grown up. Now the top tire players have to have a new strategy. I have a suggestion that would nullify the parents vs kids phenomenon. If top tire players make sure that only a few of them are in any one alliance no smart rebel leader can make the case to the whole world to unite against any one alliance.

This would be good for the game for a number of reasons here are a few.

1. Mentoring. This would force Top Tire players (not me) to play with new players (me) making new players better faster.
2. Competition. In any economy more company trying to make a better product force each other to be better or die. Die in the company sense not really at least most of the time. This will raise the game playing level of the over all game. That is just good for everyone, fun for all.
3. More Forum participation. With no more that a few top tire players in each alliance the alliance's will Have some healthy smack talk. (Team aczern is going down!-- Oh Yeah in your dreams team kryon will be dead before someone builds stone henge.) All posted by newbies who naturally get behind there own Top tire players.

This is not how most top tire players want to play but unless they find some other global strategy it is the best option.

johnhx · Post by **johnhx** » Mon May 28, 2012 3:45 pm

I’ve also been reading the LT30 forum about alliances. I would like to see a penalty for being in an alliance. I would suggest a 5% gold penalty per ally per turn. So, three allies would each lose 10% gold every turn. I would also ban tech sharing outside of an alliance. It might be worth considering a few other rules such as every ally must agree when someone wants to join and when they want to leave. Alliances would be inclusive so you can't join one civ without joining all the others in the same alliance, or is that the current rule? That would certainly make people think twice about joining an alliance with five members. A 20% gold penalty for all.

As for mentoring I, for one, am not interested. If you want advice feel free to ask but after that you are on your own.

edrim · Post by **edrim** » Tue May 29, 2012 7:54 am

johnhx wrote:I’ve also been reading the LT30 forum about alliances. I would like to see a penalty for being in an alliance. I would suggest a 5% gold penalty per ally per turn. So, three allies would each lose 10% gold every turn. I would also ban tech sharing outside of an alliance. It might be worth considering a few other rules such as every ally must agree when someone wants to join and when they want to leave. Alliances would be inclusive so you can't join one civ without joining all the others in the same alliance, or is that the current rule? That would certainly make people think twice about joining an alliance with five members. A 20% gold penalty for all.

As for mentoring I, for one, am not interested. If you want advice feel free to ask but after that you are on your own.

Do you think that staying in alliance is has so many benefits? Some of players in alliance will not set ally ingame for very long time, maybe to the end of his nation. There is many reasons for it. If you want not to share techs outside ally it will be like citytrading, alying and cancel alying everyturn between players with oportunity to make war without penalty. I dont see any fail in LT30, i used to stay in small powerfull alliances, sometime we win somtime we loose against common alliances but it was still fun. For me it is honourless to merge many players to kill few players alliance, but i dont care.
This is lol when in game of 30, ally with 14 players is winning. Thats why we set winning alliance limit, but nobody thought that many alliances can merge and set only his representative to winning list.
This is another thing when large amount of players are connect to kill any of outsiders but wining only because they are staying online 24h/day. Last game i played it was the same but we win because of some nasty tricks.
There was first mass LT game and we need to learn how to play in so large amount of players, thats all. Next time IMO it will be two big coalitions because nobody will limit his size of ally in start of a game, when everybody can set a winning list after killing most dengerous players.

So strategy for next game: take as many players to your ally as you can and see what will happen.

friddelprimpf · Post by **friddelprimpf** » Tue May 29, 2012 11:52 am

johnhx wrote:I would suggest a 5% gold penalty per ally per turn. So, three allies would each lose 10% gold every turn. I would also ban tech sharing outside of an alliance. It might be worth considering a few other rules such as every ally must agree when someone wants to join and when they want to leave. Alliances would be inclusive so you can't join one civ without joining all the others in the same alliance, or is that the current rule? That would certainly make people think twice about joining an alliance with five members. A 20% gold penalty for all.

There is also the possibility thinking about a penalty on techs/gold got via diplomacy as the ruleset in 2.3 already allows. This would make it almost impossible to share one tech to 15 other players. In combination with a little tech-upkeep, it wouldn't be possible to have no science output, as 9 of 10 in a huge alliance have.

Lord_P · Post by **Lord_P** » Tue May 29, 2012 3:45 pm

Johnhx wrote: As for mentoring I, for one, am not interested. If you want advice feel free to ask but after that you are on your own.
and: I would suggest a 5% gold penalty per ally per turn.
Kryon wrote: Another idea I had suggested was to have team captains (top players) who select their team members

There will always be new players who will look to join someone else and could do with a bit of leadership and experienced players would probably help them if it gave them an advantage.
So how about a system where there are no EQUAL alliances but where Master/Client State alliances can be entered into. Top players could offer such an alliance to inexperienced (or militarily defeated) players and in return for the protection and support of an alliance they get a percentage of the accepting players trade output.
Add the condition that no client state can be accepted as a winner and only players who feel they cant win but just want to play on to the end for experience/fun as subservient gold farmers to the powerful players would ever accept.
Is such a single direction treaty possible? Or could the Master/Client status and the direction of tribute be calculated on the basis of a simple measure like score?

Lord_P · Post by **Lord_P** » Tue May 29, 2012 3:48 pm

(This is of course how real Empires are built)

kevin551 · Post by **kevin551** » Wed May 30, 2012 2:50 am

Joe9009 - after a longturn game the losing team is always frustrated. If you read the forum you will see a post I wrote called longturn history just below this one. Complaining by the losing team is normal. LT30 is not exceptional. I would expect the same in LT31.

edrim · Post by **edrim** » Wed May 30, 2012 6:57 am

kevin551 wrote:Joe9009 - after a longturn game the losing team is always frustrated. If you read the forum you will see a post I wrote called longturn history just below this one. Complaining by the losing team is normal. LT30 is not exceptional. I would expect the same in LT31.

Yes, because winning is compared with nasty tricks which opponent side is not accepting. Thats why loosers usualy are frustrated.

monamipierrot · Post by **monamipierrot** » Thu May 31, 2012 10:50 am

Lord_P wrote: There will always be new players who will look to join someone else and could do with a bit of leadership and experienced players would probably help them if it gave them an advantage.
So how about a system where there are no EQUAL alliances but where Master/Client State alliances can be entered into. Top players could offer such an alliance to inexperienced (or militarily defeated) players and in return for the protection and support of an alliance they get a percentage of the accepting players trade output.
Add the condition that no client state can be accepted as a winner and only players who feel they cant win but just want to play on to the end for experience/fun as subservient gold farmers to the powerful players would ever accept.
Is such a single direction treaty possible? Or could the Master/Client status and the direction of tribute be calculated on the basis of a simple measure like score?

It looks like this is what everybody want. There are only technical issues, I guess. But wow, "real" politics in the game. My dream.

johnhx · Post by **johnhx** » Thu May 31, 2012 12:00 pm

I think Edrim is suggesting people will make and break alliances simply to share techs. In that case I would make the penalty 100% of their gold and research for everyone involved for the first turn after forming an alliance. I think that would slow a few people down. After that would come the gold and science penalty for each alliance.

I don't want to be misunderstood here. I'm completely in favour of making an alliance of equals in pursuit of self interest. I have only recently joined Longturn and I look forward to making new friends, and probably a few enemies. I'm simply not interested in being forced into huge alliances over which I have no control because that is the only way to survive. As for real politics I look forward to the chance to stitch up the French at every opportunity.

edrim · Post by **edrim** » Fri Jun 01, 2012 8:45 am

johnhx wrote:I think Edrim is suggesting people will make and break alliances simply to share techs. In that case I would make the penalty 100% of their gold and research for everyone involved for the first turn after forming an alliance. I think that would slow a few people down. After that would come the gold and science penalty for each alliance.

I don't want to be misunderstood here. I'm completely in favour of making an alliance of equals in pursuit of self interest. I have only recently joined Longturn and I look forward to making new friends, and probably a few enemies. I'm simply not interested in being forced into huge alliances over which I have no control because that is the only way to survive. As for real politics I look forward to the chance to stitch up the French at every opportunity.

After readin your posts it is known thats you are new here, your proposal will only slow down middle and small groups, big alliances will have one small player with one city to tech changeing, why are you inventing so unnatural innovations to this game, every of your invent have big bugs, and usualy better for big alliances then smal ones.

If you want to slow down everyone why dont you proposal to disable roads, it will slow down game a lot.

In every next game will be some separated alliances which will think thats they can win, and one or two big groups of player to be a pack of wolfes.
One time wolfes will win and other time small groups of players that will be able to coordinate all of alliance in this 1hr limitation of playing.
I am happy with it (limitation of playing). Staying ingame 24h/day is as wrong as password sharing and delegation abuse.
When player wants to make his move without his enemy attention he should do it, but in this case it will be TC wars overpowered. We know how TC wars can be nasty:) I hate it too.

johnhx · Post by **johnhx** » Fri Jun 01, 2012 3:20 pm

New to Longturn does not mean new to Civ, or FreeCiv.

I don't see how a 5% penalty per alliance favours big alliances. Reading the LT30 forum I was concerned about people like friddelprimpf who survived the game but is declared “a loser”. You also seem to have thrown out the best player Longturn has ever had because he hacked accounts after being overwhelmed by an outrageous alliance of players who weren’t good enough to beat him on their own. I feel you need to learn from these things.

I’ll say it again. I have nothing against alliances per se and I will probably enter one or two myself, if I stay around, but I think there should be a graduated penalty to discourage big alliances. The fact that you have already imposed a limit of 10 civs suggests I have a point.

monamipierrot · Post by **monamipierrot** » Fri Jun 01, 2012 6:15 pm

johnhx wrote:New to Longturn does not mean new to Civ, or FreeCiv.

I don't see how a 5% penalty per alliance favours big alliances. Reading the LT30 forum I was concerned about people like friddelprimpf who survived the game but is declared “a loser”. You also seem to have thrown out the best player Longturn has ever had because he hacked accounts after being overwhelmed by an outrageous alliance of players who weren’t good enough to beat him on their own. I feel you need to learn from these things.

I’ll say it again. I have nothing against alliances per se and I will probably enter one or two myself, if I stay around, but I think there should be a graduated penalty to discourage big alliances. The fact that you have already imposed a limit of 10 civs suggests I have a point.

I would be totally against this penalty for several reasons:
1. Alliances are already difficoult to manage. Big alliances even more.
2. There's nothing wrong in alliances. And if a bunch of the best players couldn't win because 25 noobies gangbanged them, blame them and their diplomacy/politics (let's assume we ignore cheating accusations, cause I really don't know anything about that).
3. I'll say it again: the best game is NOT a game where the best player wins. The best game is the one in which EVERYONE has a chance to win.
4. It will not work: alliances still will exist on a given-word basis (I propose to change the name from "Alliance" - a pact between 2 players - to a "Coalition" - a gang of allied players).
5. Please not another complicated addition on already complicated and irrational set of new and somewhat inconsistent rules.
6. The best way to have a funny game is to improve user-created RPG attitude. If I'm not wrong, the winning alliances (or "Coalitions") of LT30 are somewhat pro-RPG, while the loser ones were not. So they naturally found a common enemy (the unknown evil-coalition which has no name and no face, and which everybody named "Terror" because of one player) and fought it. I bet in LT31 everybody will somewhat RPG and this way the game will find his way. Let it free, don't put such limitations.

And - the only reason I also found LT30 frustrating is that for some very unlucky reasons I had to keep peace with all my neighbours and simcityzing all the way. I fought less than 20 battles. I had no chance. But I bet lot of players didn't find it frustrating.

Post by **wieder** » Fri Jun 01, 2012 9:00 pm

To Johnhox: I just got some information about the attack against "Terror's Group" or TG from now on. After TG practically destroyed Kevin and his alliance, they were attacked by The Noobish Squad or TNS foro now on. That attack was stopped for a few turns and the lands conquered byTNG was recaptured by the TG and vice versa. After the core members of TNB gathered their forces they were able to crush TG. That happened because of that one horrible error made by the TG. You would know the details if you were playing the game.

Now it has been said that TNS got some military help from outside the original 10 players but that was actually not true. That kind of help never materialized. Now since you didn't play the game you can rely only on hearsaying but we can tell you that there really wasn't additional military assistance after the Kevin's group was practically gone.

johnhx · Post by **johnhx** » Sat Jun 02, 2012 9:32 am

wieder: You are right when you say I didn’t play this game and can only go by what I read. I simply formed the impression that a number of people were unhappy with the way the game was played and with the result. If you think TG was beaten in a fair fight that's good enough for me.

monamipierrot: Your making my point for me! You seem to blame their defeat on a failure of “diplomacy/politics”. In other words, they didn’t join the right alliance. I don't want to be forced into joining an alliance I don't want to be a part of on threat of being “gang-banged”, as you so eloquently put it.

By RPG I assume you mean Role Playing Game. That is the last thing I want to see Civ become. If I wanted RPG I would play something else. If you think that's where Longturn is going I might as well leave now.

monamipierrot · Post by **monamipierrot** » Sat Jun 02, 2012 10:30 am

johnhx wrote:monamipierrot: Your making my point for me! You seem to blame their defeat on a failure of “diplomacy/politics”. In other words, they didn’t join the right alliance. I don't want to be forced into joining an alliance I don't want to be a part of on threat of being “gang-banged”, as you so eloquently put it.

By RPG I assume you mean Role Playing Game. That is the last thing I want to see Civ become. If I wanted RPG I would play something else. If you think that's where Longturn is going I might as well leave now.

I think you missed the point.
I didn't say "they missed the right alliance". They just couldn't imagine a really obvious thing: that many "weak" players will join alliance against them because they were the most aggressive ones. They have been the big bad wolf, and just didn't count how many small lambs outiside there. This is because it never happened before LT29. Is it good or bad? It is free. Fair enough.
Speaking in general, to win in a 70+ players game you can't simply ignore diplomacy/politics. And diplomacy could be VERY a complex thing, not just a matter of "hey! A, B, C and me will be an alliance!". As it becomes VERY complex, you can't just rely on "rational" thinking (e.g. I'm 100, you're 200, and so we can join to be 300, and beat other alliance which is only 250). You'll have to care much more about psycology, "commerce", intelligence, different ideas of managing war/peace and so on. In a matter of turns, this situation may build by itself in something that may be called "RPG" (for me a RPG is a free universe in which players build their own game simply by playing, if you call it otherwise, choose another name): i.e. you may be known to be the defender of the poor, or to be a un-hearted terminator. You may want to have a UN or a sheriff to control nations' behaviour in or outside an alliance, or you may prefer some lassaiz-faire. You may want to be a leader of a Commonwealth (UK) or to be a lone-wolf (Switzerland), to be a simcitier or a warmachine. In my opion this freedom will be the salt of LT30+.
So I'm for throw away limitations, of any kind. The game will find his own way.
I already posted this for LT30, but I will repeat the same for LT31: in my opinion there should be ONLY ONE winner. Otherwise, no limit to the number of winners. But to decide to have one single ugly number >1 of winners, destroys freedom in the game, and freedom is what made Civilization the greatest strategy/building game ever.

mrsynical · Post by **mrsynical** » Mon Jun 04, 2012 6:25 am

monamipierrot wrote: I think you missed the point.
I didn't say "they missed the right alliance". They just couldn't imagine a really obvious thing: that many "weak" players will join alliance against them because they were the most aggressive ones. They have been the big bad wolf, and just didn't count how many small lambs outiside there. This is because it never happened before LT29. Is it good or bad? It is free. Fair enough.

This has happened before. You aren't inventing sliced bread. I believe this was the first game where 30+ people allied (from multiple "alliances") then picked 10 people from that extended group to form a winning team. It is a shame that many people in this game didn't actually plan to "win" but happy to just go along for a ride.

Without an alliance penalty (something as simple as techloss) the winner group will probably who ever gets the largest alliance fastest.

monamipierrot · Post by **monamipierrot** » Mon Jun 04, 2012 8:07 am

mrsynical wrote:It is a shame that many people in this game didn't actually plan to "win" but happy to just go along for a ride.

Again. It is a shame (?) that the most experienced players (Terror & Co.) didn't take the same advantage, and didn't try to build a slightly more open alliance and not to wipe out each of the small fishes.
I didn't see the action, cause I was in the antipodes and just heard rumors, but I can bet that if they didn't attack Jhh, the other alliances may not have join together. It is a matter of psycology. Not even Hitler attacked Switzerland.
Uh, and "You" is not the correct addressing of LT30 winning alliance, when answering me. I actually have just been annihilated in some 30' by the biggest allied army in the history of LT, without using nukes. I'm not used to call my enemies "Us". Let's call them "Them", ok?

monamipierrot · Post by **monamipierrot** » Mon Jun 04, 2012 8:29 am

Another thing/k.
In this and other posts, some people referred to the alliance/playing mechanism that would tend to favour not the best players, but the 2nd one (or even the worst one), e.g. children vs. daddy in Risk!, the stupid blonde in a TV reality show, and so on.
I find the explanation interesting but I would not call it a "law", and even less a "game theory law". A social game is also, always, a game of psycology and intelligence. In these games most of time you don't know what happens exactly. Those mechanics are difficoult to apply. So, there's no other way to decide which is the best player than this: the best plaer is the one that wins. Full stop.
If one thinks he's the best player BUT he has been defeated by the 2nd one only because this other one managed to have a alliance against him... BLAME AND LAUGH AT HIM!!!!!!
If his "2nd best player theory" is true, then he could have used it for winning, by PRETENDING he was the 2nd best player. Ooops, he forgot to do it? Nuked. I love this world.
Actually it is that obvious that even children know it. The big bad wolf is always the common enemy: I would call this the basis of EVERY diplomacy. If you behave as the BBW, you know what you deserve. Try to paint your fur in white and cry "Baaaaaaaaaaaa!" loud, saving your jaws for the final battle. Next time you'll win, hopefully.

Again, again and again: only 1 winner or no winner limits.

monamipierrot · Post by **monamipierrot** » Mon Jun 04, 2012 8:32 am

mrsynical wrote:Without an alliance penalty (something as simple as techloss) the winner group will probably who ever gets the largest alliance fastest.

I don't agree, but I actually AM for some limitations on tech trading. Only, techloss penalty is simply odd and complicated, IMHO. Much better would be to implement some tech maintenance, which actually makes sense.
Maybe the best idea would be to make research for a tech easier if it has already been researched by someone. It will slow down the tech rush.
IF it wouldn't be that complicated, I would ask for a mechanism in which you gain bulbs by being "in contact" with that tech, e.g. fighting (or even better, winning) against a unit available with that tech, or conquering a city with that building and so on. But this would also require that bulbs are tech-wise... quite complicated, I guess.

munk · Post by **munk** » Mon Jun 04, 2012 4:27 pm

seems to me that if you want just one winner and don't like the advantages that alliances create, the solution should be to go back to the old 2009 reWonder idea of disabling diplomacy altogether and perhaps sealing off the techtrade hacks by disabling diplomatic unit's ability to steal tech and disable the chance of gaining a tech when taking an enemy city.

wella: you would then have to research all your own tech and win by yourself. problem solved. (:

monamipierrot · Post by **monamipierrot** » Mon Jun 04, 2012 5:55 pm

munk wrote:seems to me that if you want just one winner and don't like the advantages that alliances create, the solution should be to go back to the old 2009 reWonder idea of disabling diplomacy altogether

...mmm... If we put ONE WINNER, the problem with alliance simply cease to exist: alliances should break and people will start to fight each other.
If this doesn't happen, we can force it to happen with some trick (I hope not with game banning)!
But the best way is to put just 1 milligram of RPG, e.g. "The Master God of the Gods of LongTurn is thirsty of the blood of players and need The One to give him the Scalp of all the other players, otherwise he will be very very angry and a piano will fall on the head of each player left."

ifaesfu · Post by **ifaesfu** » Mon Jun 04, 2012 6:16 pm

munk wrote:seems to me that if you want just one winner and don't like the advantages that alliances create, the solution should be to go back to the old 2009 reWonder idea of disabling diplomacy altogether and perhaps sealing off the techtrade hacks by disabling diplomatic unit's ability to steal tech and disable the chance of gaining a tech when taking an enemy city.

wella: you would then have to research all your own tech and win by yourself. problem solved. (:

I'd like to play a game as munk has described. I'd only allow alliances for the right use of the armies (shared vision, allied units can share tiles, etc)

pekka · Post by **pekka** » Mon Jun 04, 2012 8:26 pm

Hi all. Long time no see.
I have some suggestions how to improve game. I think there should be no benefit forming alliances larger than the winner-limit of the game. If only an alliance of 10 players can win game, then only size 10 alliances should be allowed. And only players within an alliance should be able to share tech. To avoid tech-trading by dissolving and forming alliances each turn, breaking an alliance should be limited, or even impossible. Add some of the rules that have been discussed in other threads concerning tech-trading by stealing tech from a friendly and cooperating player. Then the game will be more balanced.

Second, you should let Terror in again. Just admit it, he did spice up the game. If he had not posted that post on JHH blog, declared war on all, and sunk our trireme that was bringing our diplomat to him, then he may had won this game. Instead my diplomat ended up in Aloril city..

You have to balance the rules in such a way that both farming and ultra-agressive expansionist strategies are both viable options.