Longturn Forum

Would be really cool if as many players as possible could tell how this is. The question is, how many turns should the game last before the winner is known with high certainty? For example in LT38 we probably know the winner while all the players kind of still have a chance. Maybe a very slim change for team red but still...

1) 70 turns (one of the ladder wars was decided by T70)
2) 90 turns (very fast game with plenty of fighters/battleships becoming available by T90)
3) 120 turns (most of the recent games have been decided by T120)
4) 150 turns (not unusual for some games to be decided by T150 but usually the game is decided by that time)
5) 180 turns (LT31 had a turn limit with 180 turns and the game was still kind of undecided when ended. banks / libraries gave only 25% bonus)
6) 200 turns (highly unusual for LT game)
7) 220 turns (LT32 took about this long but the banks / libraries etc. all gave just 25% bonus and there was also techs lost from original owner when stolen)
8) 250 turns (no LT game has lasted this long)

Opinions are more than welcome.

Personally I don't see duration as an issue, but complexity (number of cities and units to administer) and time consumption. This is why I'm in favour of restricting empire size for LT40 (and btw I'm willing to do a test game).
While duration and complexity depend on each other in a way, they might be decoupled to some extent.

Depends on several things. I wouldn't even call the starting stages ( building up, founding cities before encountering other players) "the game". Only the middle and the end are really relevant when it comes to deciding what is "too much". And also, what Fran said. If it takes moving dozens of units and spending an hour every turn, then it would be good to end pretty soon. But if the pace is slow and involvement is low, as far as I'm concerned, it can last forever.

The number of the turns will also affect the number of idlers but yeah, the most important aspect is to know how long games people would like to play assuming there are not that many idlers.

LT40 will be different with the limited empire sizes. Also, the max empire sizes for LT40 are not yet carved into stone and can be changed. We could also make slightly smaller empire sizes and a smaller map to limit how much stuff should be moved and played each turn. Currently the empire sizes are 25-35 depending of the government.

Good general question.

I too think the big games get too big and take too much time (to play well). But I think 2 LT games a year is about right (even though I may only play one of them). So that means around 180 turns.

The best was when edrim was running Ladder Wars. Then was smaller games (instead of one big game) and based upon ranking so was a good place for noobs to fight other noobs.

It's true that the late game usually takes too much time.

We could try to make also the traditional games smaller. Maybe just with some other setting that with the one we will be using for LT40.

Would you like a smaller map with smaller empire size steps? Now the step for example democracy is 32 and that's also the base size. With LT31 that was 16/16 and it was kind of too small for those who want to conquer the world. Then again the maps could also be smaller but the risk is in my opinion that those who want to conquer might just end the game sooner. Good or bad, you decide...?