The winners for LT34 (military and space race)

[wieder]

"If you are going to write rules, you should make it clear 7 winners "when game ends".. not during the game.."

Mmm2, you are right. This is about the number of the winners when the game ends. During the game there is really nothing preventing you from allying with as many players as you wish. The limit for the winners (and the survivors) is for the end. It's there for discouraging huge alliances. The huge alliances and alliances working together can't be prevented really but let's see if this will help us with that. At least it should be more likely that teams working together understand how the other party can't be rewarded with a survivor status. At least not all of them.

"Survivor players would be different than Losers because Survivors would neither win nor lose any ranking points."

Will this work also if the game ends with a space race victory? With that there can be an unlimited number of survivors and possibly even just one winner if the nation launching the space ship refuses to include his/her allies. With the space race victory there is a chance to backstab "If no victory post is made in time and the ship is successful, the game will only have one winner." In any case we need to have a clear victory post for the space race victory (if that happens:) because without it there might be great uncertainty about who actually won.

"I'm not sure what your new classsification means. It seems like it's exactly the way things are now,"

It's true that this will not change things that much. However something will change. First we will have more winners and slightly bigger alliances. Second you can't have an unlimited number of winners with a military victory. Only one if you choose to have the max number of actual winners. To compensate and for actually making a space race victory possible, there can be an unlimited number of winners with the space race victory. So yeah, things are not changing that much but there are some changes.

"There's nothing stopping the veterans from having a group of ten as well, if that's what they want to do."

Would you (you like anyone/everyone) like to have some limitation for the veterans to team up? It might be nice to have that but I'm afraid that we would be changing too much at once if we did that.

"I suppose trust is a different matter."

Yeah, reputation matters

It would be nice to be able to ally with your enemy in the next game.

[wieder]

""Survivor" is really a winning player who gets 0 points... why not give "survivors" at least some credit?"

How to give people scores is Kryon's decision. In my opinion survivors already get some credit because they managed to survive.

On the other hand I get it that there should be something for those players who have less fortunate early game and still wish to play the game with some real objectives. Game scores are one thing but I have no idea of how to get those for all the players.

One way to give a "survivor" score for everyone would be calculating how many turns they managed to stay alive. This would be simple and it would just need the end turn and the turn for when someone was RIPped. The problem is that there is no automation for this.

"btw: why there are some beauracratic rules still needed like making conditions that game ends at T200, or game ends when only 8 players remain and everyone else RIP - this kills the game in my opinion...."

I don't like pre defined end turns but ending the game at some point should be allowed before there are less than n number of players left. 50+ player games have huge maps and they would still be huge if the number of tiles was reduced. It would take way too much time, for most people, to win the game alone. However the rules allow you to win alone if this is what you want and if you can pull it off.

[mmm2]

wieder, i deleted thread about new rules for game. at this point it is all repeated information. only new suggestion i had is to make workers/engineers not able to make roads/rails on enemy territory - that would at least fix the problem that players jhh and ifaesfu complained about in past games and cited as reasons for quitting.. i'm sure everyone would agree to this modification, but question is who will do the small bit of programming to fix it...

[evan]

Ok,
that's great that you're going to have survivors as a separate category where you don't lose points. I read everything, but i'd got the impression it was only a nominal difference.

Wieder said:

"Some people say that even one survivor is too much. Anyway, this sounds better than having 10+ "free" survivors."

But surely there's a compromise somewhere inbetween? The point is not only to give weaker players a reason to keep playing, but also to maintain an element of uncertainty. Once the game's outcome is clear, a lot of the enjoyment fades away for a lot of the players. Those who enjoy the wargaming aspects probably don't mind, but for the rest of us...

Having more than one 'official survivor' adds to the game, and takes away very little. I would suggest 3 is a good number.

If the final forum decisions are at the actual winning players' discretion, little countries might join in the fight, hoping to keep their borders. Or make other ingame decisions like ceding territory, etc, to maintain neutrality.
I suppose it would be possible to use ingame scores if there were many claiming 'official survivor' status, but it's more fitting that the victors decide, based on who they think contributed to their victory the most, or are just most deserving.

I don't think the victors should be able to say no 'official survivors', in that case the top 3 non-RIP ingame player scores get 'offical survivor' status and don't lose points.

So, to put it more clearly, the top 3 non-RIP players don't lose points, but the winning players can overrule that by substituting their allies.

Each winner in LT33 got 995 points, which is quite a lot, so it would make little difference to them.
Assuming for example that the three 'official survivors' had an LT ranking score of 1000, they would normally have each contributed 12.5% = 125 points to the winners.
125 x 3 = 375
375 / 6 winners = 62.5
So the winners now only get 932.5 points.

I can think back to many points in the previous game where a system like this would have made a big difference. Players will make different calculations and decisions, right from the beginning, and all the way through.
So I don't think it would just lead to vassal states on the side of the big alliance groupings.
Smaller countries will see the possibility of fighting back through larger, viable alliance groupings.

Wieder asked:

"Would you (you like anyone/everyone) like to have some limitation for the veterans to team up? It might be nice to have that but I'm afraid that we would be changing too much at once if we did that."

Your previous suggestion of using the square root of the ranking score and a limit of 200 was great. I think the admin just needs to fine tune it each time. For example this time there are 82 ranking players, compared to 67 last time, so maybe 200 is too restrictive.
I think you should adjust it so that it's not really an issue for weaker and middle ranked players' alliances. They have enough to worry about.
But better than that - If you combine these 'super-veteran-players-alliance-restrictions' with the new 'official survivors' change, then veteran old buddies can still play and fight together in the same group.

These might seem at first like big changes to some people, but aren't they really just fine tuning for a better gaming experience for everyone.
The voting system is not working for technical reasons at the moment anyway.
So in this situation isn't it good to have an admin who can put together a coherent, consistent set of elements.
Everybody wants each game to be unique, they're just understandably concerned about experiments that turn out to be mistakes.
But these aren't changes to the game's internal mechanics, just the external, diplomatic dynamic.

Complex but not complicated. Kind of like the freeciv game itself.

I've been using the phrase 'official survivor' to avoid confusion with non-RIP, but perhaps something like 'Neutral', or 'Neutral Status' would be good.

[Corbeau]

Here is an outsider suggestion about survivors, just an idea, IF you'd want to tolerate "surviving", simply to dinstinguish between "solid survivors" and "barely survivors".

There are winners. They get X points (however it is determined). Choose the winner with best in-game score. Give points to survivors based on their in-game score, proportional to the in-game score of the best winner.

Example
Winner gets 100 LT points and his in-game score is 500.
Survivor with in-game score of 100 gets 20 LT points.
Survivor with in-game score of 50 gets 10 LT points.
...and so on.

I'm not sure, I wasn't really paying attention, but I overheard that losers actually get negative points. If that is the case, you could stretch survivor points between winners and losers.

Example 2
Winner gets 100 LT points and has in-game score 500 . Loser gets -20 LT points. (Difference is 120 so you stretch in-game score over that)
Survivor with in-game score of 250 gets 40 LT points.
Survivor with in-game score of 100 gets 4 LT points.
Survivor with in-game score of 50 gets -8 LT points.

[wieder]

Anonymizing the players can't be done for LT34. I'm fairly sure it can't be done for any game but at least not for LT34.

It feels like we are getting off topic when speaking about the winners and the survivors. The reason we have a limited number of winners (and also survivors) is to prevent the games from having lame endings with too many players simply agreeing about the winners. With a 50 player game it wouldn't be that nice to see a group of 20 players to decide how they have won the game and then killing the rest, assuming that the remaining 30 were not able to form a stronger group.

Without the limits there is a risk of having just two alliances fighting each other. Or one huge alliance against few small ones. This would be boring but forming as big as possible alliance would be the smart thing to do if there was no limits. This is of course still possible with the limits but at least the people allying know that they all can't be considered winners by the majority of the players unless they fight each other or some of them give up and become conquered.

We have the limits for making the game interesting. It looks like those are needed if the game is not a team game and we want to see more than two or few alliances. This is the most important reason for having the limits.

The ranking scores are for Kryon to decide and they take place once the game is over.

Limiting the number of the winners is there in order to make the game interesting for those who are playing it. During the actual game. Limiting the number of the winners and survivors not only gives us more conflict but also more diversity and more options for diplomatic actions. The number of the winners+survivors can also be seen as something that let's us to have an almost guaranteed number of competing alliances.

Instead of the number of the winners+survivors I could ask about how many teams you would to see? In the first message for this thread there would be at least 6 competing teams for a 60 player game. Probably 7 since not everyone is going to go for max members instead of max winners.

[mmm2]

yes you are right, "survivors" is generic, it's like saying someone is "player"... You could call Corbeau and Evan saboteurs and moles, maybe that would be better term than "survivor"? I give them credit for playing good games, but they should either have been included in team win, or as losers. Especially Evan, was definitely allied and sharing vision with winning "team", but now in future games we will not be sure whether to call that "survivor" or teammate.

[wieder]

In a way the survivors will become some kind of vassal states :S

Who would want to survive as a vassal state? Some probably but maybe not everyone.

[edrim]

I didnt read all of this discussion very carefull but I will put my 50cents to discussion.

For me best situation now is to stop limitation on number of winners, because it is stupid to have this limit:

• strong players winthin a limit is much more powerfull then weaker once
• nobody is able to prevent veterans joining together
• nobody is able to prevent creating big wolfpacks
• giving valuable for winner players oportunity to save their points it is a good thing

because:

• old players know each other and know who can trust or not
• every player can be a veteran, just show yourself in good way and you will be invited to alliance next time
• wolfpacks are more danger to themselfs then to other, because leak of information and all this things happen inside this group (if wolfpack are creating many players within this group may feel unconfortable waiting for backstab, because they thinks thay are out already, so they can make backstab earlier)
• in this case players which will not deserve for surviving will be terminated, for me it would be only two survivors in LT33

Playing with space race should end with only space race winner, so all players in ally should send best (quicker) spaceship in same time, or only one winner will be included, because saying - I am announce those players who are with me in spaceship is stupid when some of them are only with one city defending in last legs.

[mmm2]

"Survivor" means losing player that isn't rip.
So it seems sign upS are on pace for 60 players..
In that case there would be 8 winning survivors and 2 losing survivors.
So once there are only 10 remaining alive players game will automatically end?

Btw: I didn't realize before that losers get -1 point. Is that really true? If not there is no significance to being 9th place (survivor) versus finishing 60th place.

[wieder]

""So once there are only 10 remaining alive players game will automatically end?

No. It will only mean that the game can end with winners and without a space race victory. It's still possible to have just one or few winners. Assuming that someone can pull that off.

The game will automatically end when there is only one player left, all of the remaining players are allied or when a space ship will reach the target.

I miscounted With 60 players there could be either 8 winners and 1 survivor/vassal or 7 winners and 3 survivors/vassals.

I must say that Edrim's idea of having just one winner with the space race is an interesting one. Maybe we should do that? It might actually make the alliances less stable and give the allied players an honorable way out from the alliance

[mmm2]

Wieder,
You are mixing terms. First you used term survivor which was too generic already, but now you are mixing it with "Vassal"... I don't think there is a clear definition of what you are talking about. As I understand it, Vassal is player like Archont (originator of idea), who plays like a noob and instead of trying to improve wants special "vassal" recognition so it is against rules to attack him... But last game, you seem to say Evan was Vassal, or no? Evan is definitely not Vassal/Noob,- he played great and never lost a single city.. "Survivor" is most general name you could have thought of, why not call it "player"? If you wanted to make "survivor" into programmed game concept, you would not be able to, because it is too generic and undefined, don't you agree? So if you wanted to referee "survivor" rule, how would you do this??

btw: what it is really starting to seem like is that the veteran team of 7 can have 3 noobs, or 8 with 1 noob ..

"survivor"==="noob"?

[wieder]

"You are mixing terms. First you used term survivor which was too generic already, but now you are mixing it with "Vassal"..."

What I mean is that there are two types of players alive when the game ends. Those who won and those who didn't but managed to survive.

In the recent games we had too many survivors and those players were effectively considered as some kind of winners or as players who didn't lose. It really doesn't matter what they were as long as surviving is some kind of reward and merit for those who are playing the game.

I was calling those players as survivors/vassals but not just as vassals. I could say survivor/vassal/better-than-ripped but it would really change nothing. They may have been effectively vassals for the actual winners or they are just rewarded with a survivor status. Or maybe the winners just don't care because they have won anyway.

Then again I can hope that by calling those players vassals there might be less people who would like to be called as that and that would make them to seek for victory and not just surviving the game ;OP

[mmm2]

Evan was part of your team, he shared vision - I would consider that being in your team/alliance. You made a deal with him to be part of your team in exchange for not being recognized as winner. So I was thinking that this type of deal making for being part of team in exchange for winning was only allowed 1 of these types of deals per team? Isn't this what was reason for creating this rule? I still don't get why Evan who was part of your team and sharing vision/etc wasn't recognized as winner. Why invent new term survivor for Evan, instead of just making him winner?

Also, why do you leave so many badly weakened players like Soon alive.. all those noobs are almost dead. You want to say that you have to kill all the players, except just one? By any chance, would that one happen to be the one that you made deal with to be mole or saboteur? why not just include them in win, are you that greedy not to include one additional player, and can't afford the extra winning slot???

I will be interested to see what kind of creativity you have to answer or side-step this one

[wieder]

"Why invent new term survivor for Evan, instead of just making him winner?"

I'm not really commenting about Evan now but in general. There are a limited number of slots for winners and it has been obvious that people take the not-killed status as a reward even while it's not counted as a victory. There wouldn't have been more slots for winners in LT33.

"Also, why do you leave so many badly weakened players like Soon alive.."

I guess we just didn't really care and wanted to end the game because we pretty much already knew the winners. However while this could be practical, it will allow a loophole with an unlimited number of survivors. Because some consider not-ripped-status as a reward.

"By any chance, would that one happen to be the one that you made deal with to be mole or saboteur?"

This is one idea. Someone may want to betray the team and this makes the game more interesting if there is some kind of reward for that player.

"why not just include them in win, are you that greedy not to include one additional player, and can't "

Because the winning positions in alliances are quite often filled in early game and there probably wouldn't be any more winning positions left even if the alliances were allowed to have one more winner. A less desirable position might help with that.

"I will be interested to see what kind of creativity you have to answer or side-step this one smile"

Also remember that you can have 7+3 instead of 8+1

[mmm2]

You counted Evan as "survivor" when you didn't count him as winner. It was clear Edrim made deal with Evan not to be counted as winner in exchange for sabotaging Akfaew's team (isn't that what your term "survivor" is?). Btw, Edrim offered me the very same deal to be part of team in exchange for not being counted as winner - there is nothing illegal about this, but why do we need to invent a new game term "survivor" to describe this???

This is big change.. Before you would either kill the backstabber or put him on team.. now, you are saying, that there is third option to make him "survivor".. are some players too afraid to damage their spotless reputation by backstabbing a backstabber, so that you have to invent new term "survivor"....? Why wouldn't you just invite Evan to be teammate in exchange for helping you, instead of offering him nothing in return for his assistance, and then giving him 0 points while everyone else gets +1 point?? Be warned in future games, that certain players are offering such deals, regardless of if "survivor" is defined or isn't

[maho]

One less wouldn't hurt. There will be other games.

Would. We're so different in meaning of freeciv that noone can be more different, but it would be pity if you leave LT. It took few years to stop loosing players - it would be a pity to start loosing them again only because they want to play different game .

Let's change rules to be good enough to everyone - both wolves and lambs. Killers and crofters.

[maho]

Second thought: maybe let's define game-end criteria, without deciding about winning/loosing, and let decide who is winner, looser, survivor, non-survivor, and who will get what points, to ranking creators?

So eg. Kryon will promote sole winner, Corbeau will give the most points for amount of temples built at all, and MMM2 will give points for beholder's feeling that someone mardukized his neihgbour? .

Third thought: I will write post about completely different way of winning.

[edrim]

Btw, Edrim offered me the very same deal to be part of team in exchange for not being counted as winner - there is nothing illegal about this, but why do we need to invent a new game term "survivor" to describe this???

LOL, i did it because you yelled to me many turns that you want to join, i knew that you will backstab me in first possible moment, so i accept your offer, said you can be live and sent a explorer to you for end this patetic agreement, you killled it because you are unpatient, once you keep your deal I wasnt able to hurt you and you could backstab us in better moment.

You are known as a batrayal guy, only new players cant belive that can be someone like you ingame (did you played here with xapple nick before? It could explain a lot) and treat you in normal way even they are warned it will end in dractic way for them.
You wanted to betrayal chomwitt in this game saying that you will join railroads, but wasnt able to do it beause of lost your all country in one turn.
Please stop using names in this thread, we are talking about future, if you want to write your pathetic accusing go to LT33 forum and try to discuss there.

If you want to keep using this player did this and another player did this we can start saying everywhere how you betrayed all your neighbour at least once a game, every time.
You cannot even keep your betrayal plans longer then 5 turns and you backstab as soon as possible. You want to have this opinion here so be it. But please dont be angry when nobody except very new players will make any deals with you in future games.

I am trying not to push opinion of players from one game to another, because everytime is different situation but you backstab me (and all other players) so many times that I will make an exception for you.

[wieder]

"Why wouldn't you just invite Evan to be teammate"

As was already said, all the winning slots were full and having an unlimited number of survivors has become a loophole. It was not yet exploited to the max but eventually that might have happened. Oh well. Maybe it actually was exploited almost to the max on LT30

You also said how the max alliances are quite big in LT34. This is of course true but we need to remember that there are two very good reasons for that. First, cutting away the unlimited number of survivors is actually making them smaller compared to the last few games. Only the core alliances were smaller in the past games. Second, most people seemed to like LT34 as a relatively short game and having a slightly bigger (core:) alliance size helps with that. With restrictinfra and with workerparalysis time it won't became blazing fast anyway.

"Be warned in future games, that certain players are offering such deals, regardless of if "survivor" is defined or isn't smile"

There will be no winners if there are too many players alive. Sure, it can be a tie but no winners. Unless of course someone wins with the space race. Speaking of that it could be a good idea to have only one winner with it. No matter how many allies the winner has

"So eg. Kryon will promote sole winner, Corbeau will give the most points for amount of temples built at all, and MMM2 will give points for beholder's feeling that someone mardukized his neihgbour? smile. "

What should matter is a good game and the journey to the end. It might be interesting to hear from players like Runner and Rango if the ruleset for LT34 will make them to return or not. Maybe Corbeau could ask them or maybe not At least we should have much less power to the alliances and trading is less important. If we pick the islands map (still looks the best for this kind of game) there would also be no question about where the borders should be. I mean that even the first time players should understand the concept of the "natural borders" if everyone starts on an island of his/her own.

For the islands map we would only need one player, who is not playing, to check the map so that all the islands are connected with shallow ocean. Meaning that all the world should be reachable with triremes. Someone everyone could trust

[edrim]

With restrictinfra and with workerparalysis time it won't became blazing fast anyway.

Sorry Wieder but I am not going to play with this settings compared, so please count me off if it will pass.
When worker paralysis is on I am not able to do anything in war on restricinfra, because I am not able to get up on night to build roads, but this player who can check every TC has to big adventage against me - he can build a roads on my night time (this 2 hours paralysys will not stop him), but I cannot build a road on my daytime because of worker paralysis and he will kill my units.

For me restrict infra is madness but this two settings are totaly wrong way who will give all day players very big boost.

[wieder]

What if the workerparalysistime would be the same as the unitwaittime?

What problems we would have with that and would those be worse than having 5 minute workerparalysis or no workerparalysis at all?

I wonder if it would be possible to prevent ships from affecting workers with the workerparalysistime.

[wieder]

And it turns out that there will be no workerparalysistime for 2.3 and this is a 2.3 game...

[mmm2]

did you played here with xapple nick before? It could explain a lot.

only two names I've used have been mmm and mmm2.