Plans for the second scenario game

[wieder]

This game will have advanced start. The players will have cities, some units and technology. The actual scenario has not yet been decided but WW1 is a strong candidate. The ruleset will be modified to support this type of game but it should be mostly familiar to those playing Freeciv in the past.

You can post suggestions about the scenario, ruleset and units here. You can also suggest winning conditions and objectives for the game. A WW1 game could be a team game but there could be independent countries not in the teams. If the players want it, it could also be something else.

This game will probably start only once SG1 has ended. At the moment the start is estimated to take place in the first quarter of 2018. Maybe in February or March. Most likely not in January.

[Sketlux]

Yeah, WWI sounds great! Best thing I dont have much to do about it I updated the version in 2016 massively.

You can find the version here with a list of changes:

http://forum.freeciv.org/f/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=1994

For others scenarios you can check out this list:

http://forum.freeciv.org/f/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=809

There WWI has 665 downloads!

A team game sounds great. The political/miliatry constellation I set would be the one of 1900. Triple Alliance against the Entente cordiale wich is a little bit different to the constellation we have in 1915... But it would leave a few countries that can choose their side for players who are undecided what to opt for. Also I think the consellation of 1900 is much more balanced. (Italy is part of the Triple Alliance/Central powers, Turkey is not in)
.
But I have to warn every player that expects a fair and balanced game. It wont be! It will be a role game with weaker and stronger nations. The neutrals can choose what is better for them, joining one of the big blocks or form the moribund third party!

A feature is also that people with little time can also choose middle/small size nations although I strongly recommend to give the main nations to better players for balance reasons...

There are also some micro nations that can probably be played by only one player.

But I can already promise a geografically complex game with many fronts and theaters, submarine warfare and so on...

Is it possible to limit the selectable nations?

[Sketlux]

Would it be possible to introduce destruction of city improvements? Enabling by that strategic bombardment by bombers.

[wieder]

Ok, cool! Having the map almost ready sounds very good!

It's probably not possible to destroy city improvements by bombers. Spies can do that, however.

The techs should probably be set to very close to WW1 level when the game starts and research should be really slow.

Maybe not possible to limit the selectable nations on the web site but we can deal with that by letting the players to pick the actual nation (or what big block they want to participate) with forum posts. If they don't make a forum post then thy will be givin a nation.

[kevin551]

...The techs should probably be set to very close to WW1 level when the game starts and research should be really slow...

For a scenario game like this I would like science to be turned off entirely.
I would also like city growth and settlers to be removed. The war is an ugly, slaughter - a battle of attrition - it's not about growth.

I agree the main alliances should be the triple alliance versus the entente cordiale.
Each of these 6 countries should have a king unit, that cannot move.
Three are in Paris, and three are in Berlin. When one of those two cities falls the game is ended.

Start with a phony war - 16 turns of cease fire - no fighting allowed. Time to position your troops and plan.
Revolution length is set to the maximum. Break the ceasefire and your government falls. Then 20 turns of anarchy.

Create 2 lines of special forts along the Franco - German border. On the French side call them 'Verdun' or 'Maginot' forts. Perhaps 'Siegfried' on the other side.
These forts have all the normal properties of a fortress, but also add a happiness bonus to the holder.
As each fort is lost, your cities will become more and more unhappy.
Capturing a fort from the enemy doesn't transfer the happiness bonus (unless it was originally theirs and has been recaptured, in which case it restores it.).
This would be a great game for tunnel troops and tunnel bombs.

At the start of the game, the main cities should be set to be content.
The war will probably end due to civil war in one of the major countries, not because of military victory.

The winners in the game will almost certainly be those who didn't take part in the fighting.

[Sketlux]

For a scenario game like this I would like science to be turned off entirely.

Disagree. For game reasons and for realism reasons. You need more options other than military tactics or productivity increase. But it has to be a very costly and long research process. Something that after 20-50 rounds brings some swing into the battle or deadlock, something you can work on your backyard.
Also, WWI made huge technical improvements between cavalry attacks in 1914 and tank appearances to then end to the end of the war. It would be historically incorrect not to depict the development.

I would also like city growth and settlers to be removed.

The big players will have enough cities, so why forbid something only small nations would use. Not dogmatic on that matter but here I would like to hear more opinions. In the East the map gets depopulated, here the nations would benefit without hurting the main game.

Each of these 6 countries should have a king unit, that cannot move.

Paris is too close to the front! Meanwhile Berlin is too far away. Also, imagine France being kicked out of the game after a couple of turns although it retained most of its cities. Its not a good idea.

Start with a phony war - 16 turns of cease fire - no fighting allowed. Time to position your troops and plan.
Revolution length is set to the maximum. Break the ceasefire and your government falls. Then 20 turns of anarchy.

Sorry, but Im not waiting two weeks to attack someone. The default governments are for most nations Republic or Monarchy. Not very efficient governments, specially since you have many cities. I think with the deficit you start and the bad government you are punished enough. Then everybody can switch and depending on their empire size it will take longer or shorter but not that long...

Sorry for not giving more positive opinions about your suggestions but I see more dangers than benefits but Im still open for ideas.

[wieder]

Lots of maybes.... Just some ideas, feel free to shoot them down if you feel they would not work


Maybe we could set the science to allow the nations to research few techs during the war. Reasearching those would be optional. The other techs, stuff that was not invented during WW1, would be made too expensove to research.

Maybe building settlers could cost something like 8 population. I usually prefer not to turn off stuff but instead make them really expensive.

Maybe there could be 5-7 days of not figting in the beginning. I'm not 100% sure how it was in real WW1 but the fighting could start at different times In T4 on front X and on T7 on front Y.

Since people know how WW1 proceeded the earl setup should be be similar to that but the later phases should allow the war to prceed as it really happened or the players to try something else.

Some units need to be adjusted to WW1 level. There were fighters but those should be made less powerful for this scenario. And tons of riflemen...

[Sketlux]

Well, when I think of WWI a lot of things come into my mind:

-Zeppelin bombing; no grafics (although I tried a little http://forum.freeciv.org/f/viewtopic.ph ... 0&start=10)
-Tanks, though no Mark I ...
-submarines, we already have them

Here it gets maybe interesting

-Shock troops like the Arditi or the Sturmtruppen
-Poison Gas
-Flamethrowers
-Unrestricted submarine warfare
-Haber–Bosch process
-synchronization gear

I don't know the capabilities and restrictions of longturn but could be included as inventions?

Giving:

-shock troop tactics: bonus for infantry (and maybe artillery) when attacking fortresses? (same with flamethrowers)
-Poison gas: make artillery stronger
-Flamethrower: make infantry stronger when attacking fortified positions
-Unrestricted submarine warfare: make sub stronger
-Haber–Bosch process: reducing the cost of artillery
-synchronization gear: make figthers stronger

These are small inventions but they could be cheap an optional tech that end in dead lock in the tech tree.

In terms of units, what are the restrictions of my imagination?

[Caedo]

Maybe we could set the science to allow the nations to research few techs during the war. Reasearching those would be optional. The other techs, stuff that was not invented during WW1, would be made too expensove to research.

Making techs really expensive proably isn't easy to do – you'd either have to manually put high costs into techs.ruleset for each of them and use a tech_cost_style that uses them, or give players an insanely high Tech_Cost_Factor effect once they research a certain tech. If the intent is to keep those techs out of the game, why not remove them and everything associated with them completely?

Maybe there could be 5-7 days of not figting in the beginning. I'm not 100% sure how it was in real WW1 but the fighting could start at different times In T4 on front X and on T7 on front Y.

Sounds difficult. The most workable idea I'd have for this would be nation-specific Has_Senate effects that prevent players from declaring war until a certain turn has passed.

The immersion-breaking problem will be year numbers – Freeciv 2.5 doesn't allow splitting a year into multiple fragments, so the war would probably last over a century. I don't know how it would handle Turn_Years being 0, in which case we could do some voodoo scripting to make it only increment the year number every X turns, or, alternatively, once every time certain technologies are researched.

Also, on behalf of the people who got a bit confused when SG1 started, I suggest that this time, all ruleset changes relative to a supplied ruleset (presumably civ2civ3) should be cleanly listed in one place, along with a link to the corresponding supplied ruleset's readme in Freeciv's github repository.

[wieder]

Changing the cost of the techs on the ruleset is not a problem even while it looks like lots of work. We have done that before for some games. We only need to decide the correct values and make the unwanted techs too expensive. Probably easiest way would be setting sciencebox to 1000 and then lowering the costs of the wanted techs. That way there is no need to actually remove anything. Removing is kind of risky.

I agree that listing the changes would be needed for the future games. The LT rulesets are heavily modified civ2civ3 branches and lots of stuff have been changed. The idea with the changes is that the games could be played in about 150 turns and everything could be done in that time. Buildings are cheaper and there have been efforts in trying to balance stuff for a multiplayer game. This is why not too many Great Wonders actually exists on the rulesets. Instead there are small wonders everyone can build. Also stuff like inspiring partisans are removed because they can be *really* exploited.

One could say that the LT ruleset is almost a new one. On LT39 the ruleset will take back few steps and will be slightly more traditional. LT40 on the other hand is an experimental game - or kind of - with tons of features many people have wished in the past. SG2 might use a modified version of the LT39 ruleset when it's launched. Hard to say.

One reason for changing the rulesets is keeping the game fresh. You need to figure new ways to win the game. The old strategies may not work with new features. There is of course a downside to this since people need to learn new stuff in almost every game. The core idea however should be the same. It's a game about civilizations.

[Sketlux]

How many turns would sciencebox 500 equal if the country isnt severely damaged? I personally have no problem to go from WWI to WWII after 30-60 turns.

[Caedo]

Well, if we want to seriously go full on WWII, we'd have to go beyond Europe and include at least the United States and Japan.

[Sketlux]

It was meant technologically. The East Coast of North America is already included in this scenario. This scenario is already big. It even goes to the Kaspian Sea! It was meant more as an alternative history where the war doesnt simply stop after 4 years but goes on...

[Caedo]

So I took a look at the year number thing, and apparently, it's actually impossible to properly do this automatically from the ruleset – the effect requirements that can be used to increase Turn_Years can be created with lua script, but not removed again. The only possible thing would be to have the year increase every time a certain tech is researched, simply by having a Turn_Years effect requiring that tech in the world, which is then negated by a dummy nation, tech or building created through lua script.

In other words, it's a complicated mess.

[Caedo]

I propose that, unlike the ruleset for SG1, city vision radius should not be lower than city work radius. I simply see no purpose in it, and the current implementation for unseen workable tiles doesn't really make sense anyways.