Longturn.net

ifaesfu

Player

From: Huelva - Spain

Posts: 93

Website

Re: LT31 will start soon

I think to limit the time to be logged in is essential. We could see if we wish or we can allow players to chat, observe, etc
Anyway, the time limit to make your movements should be finished to allow to observe.

Wieder's questions in #74 and the past show that there are many players who won't respect any written rule. It doesn't matter it's clear or not.
However, if the admins can be 100% sure that someone has broken a written rule and they are able to impose a fair punishment, then we could run the risk.

Kryon

Administrator

Posts: 370

Re: LT31 will start soon

How is RTS defined? Attacking enemy units? Moving more units to support a city under attack? Moving workers inside homeland to block enemy movements?

I totally agree that defining and stopping RTS is very hard and it is NOT necessary because when we limit the online time then the RTS problem is also solved. RTS will be allowed but will be possible only if both players are online at the same time which won't be likely if we limit online time. Assuming we do, a player could wait for the opponent to log out and then do his moves.

However, it'd be better if we limit unit move time instead of log in time to allow for city management and chat. In that case, my solution would not work.

Last edited by Kryon (2012-10-30 18:54:11)

elrik

Player

Posts: 108

Re: LT31 will start soon

Hmm... it is probably 100% client side solution but what if we disable sounds completely and remove focus on movement option?;) it won`t be easy to catch enemy move then:)

And one more time i ask about possibility of limiting use of observer command to one nation only? Maybe with time restriction too

the other possibility is to hide server log and possibility to check if someone is online or not:) it sounds very interesting to me:)

Last edited by elrik (2012-10-30 19:59:02)

Lord_P

Player

Posts: 166

Re: LT31 will start soon

Interesting....but rather than fiendishly complex rules and programming, cant we just solve this with some democratic moderation?:

-Make sure everyone knows whats cool and whats not and discuss this often for the benefit of noobs

-While a /kick_player vote would be too extreme for such a long game a /moderate_player vote, that flags a player as "a bit of a dick" if passed and requires them to explain themselves to a moderator, would be sufficient

-An increasing scale of penalties to applied when evidence is produced or moderator is convinced rules have been broken: A warning (In case they didnt know the rules...) - Deny points from game (Why win by cheating if it gets you nothing) - Kick from current game (Have to wait months to play again but not banned completely. This was probably a better option for Terror given his contributions) - Total ban (For the totally evil).

In other words, people like to push the limits of what is possible but they also like to be part of a community and will probably stop being a dick if everyone tells them to...

Lord_P

Player

Posts: 166

Re: LT31 will start soon

That and a random turn limit of about 4 hours +or- 1hour and randomised turn change +or- about 1/2 hour, with no indication of how much is left.

monamipierrot

Player

Posts: 171

Re: LT31 will start soon

Interesting....but rather than fiendishly complex rules and programming, cant we just solve this with some democratic moderation?

I agree. And ok for the different degrees.

One more thing: what I didn't like in LT30 was the fashion of saying "I know SOMEONE is doing SOMETHING but I don't tell because of SOME reason" while the SOME* is almost never explicited.
This behaviour has been adopted by many players,  in public chat/forum but also in private messages (to me: you know who you are ).
Although it may be explained with the urge of "being discreet", it often made things worse because:
1. Being vague always spread misunderstanding and worsen conflicts
2. Same with "irony" or "sarchasm", expecially when they are not caught by 100% of people.
3. People not involved because of little knowledge/experience (say, 90% of all), will not understand what is going on and will react in a bad way
4. There's no allegation, no suspect, no corpse... and no trial. So, nothing worth speaking about, am I wrong?
5. All this secrecy may be understood not with "discreetness" (even about sacred game-related-secrets) but with cheating-related-secrets. In short, if you're not clear with accusation, you will be the 1st to be suspected of being cheating. It's more or less as if you had lot of knowledge about drug-dealing-related crimes. If you're not a policeman I may think you are a drug-dealer or at least a drug consumer. Same here: I read many times that "someone" is using "some script" to do "some things". Which script? Why? How do you know that? The only answer is that YOU ALSO know those scripts.

Being CRYSTAL CLEAR about RTS and other issues is the 1st step if you want to fight them.

Uh, same with extra-game rough/hostile communications/comments, of course. They can make dozens of old and new players (and maybe new administrators or new developers) fly away from LT, which I think none of you want to happen (am I wrong?)

Back to RTS/cheating: I never noticed something really wrong during my LT experience (except for Terror hijack) while I confess I once reacted with some RTS moves during LT29 (and I'm sorry: I didn't realize it was bad, not mentioning even forbidden). I will respect a clear written rule with as many DETAILS as possible (as Wieder asks) because I really can't see the exact red line before RTS.
I think Wieder requests have to be taken seriously, expecially if he's true that we can't implement patches aginst RTS or other issues in a few days (please tell if that's not true).

monamipierrot

Player

Posts: 171

Re: LT31 will start soon

That and a random turn limit of about 4 hours +or- 1hour and randomised turn change +or- about 1/2 hour, with no indication of how much is left.

Pardon my naiveness, what's the porpouse of randomised TC, if we already have the 10 hours stop for moving units?

elrik

Player

Posts: 108

Re: LT31 will start soon

(...) while I confess I once reacted with some RTS moves during LT29 (and I'm sorry: I didn't realize it was bad, not mentioning even forbidden)(...)

Did you see one of my previous posts? Its not RTS itself what is wrong. You had good luck and you caught someone in the middle of the attack. But what is there is someone who is online 24/7, using string-shared view and reacting that way always? I will tell that one more time, i am ok with the fact that someone plays better than me, can use keyboard, units better same as i am ok with the fact that Korean people will always kicked my ass in Starcraft;) I just don`t like situation that some possibilities(like f.e. being online) can make my skills meaningless.

(...) Pardon my naiveness, what's the porpouse of randomised TC, if we already have the 10 hours stop for moving units?

Double TC moves... You can now build fortress, attack just before turn and then cover that with new units just after turn, there are more possibilities:)

IllvilJa

Player

Posts: 51

Re: LT31 will start soon

One thing in LT that contributes to increase the advantage of double TC moves is the fact that virtually all units seem to have their movement allowance tripled in comparision to 'vanilla' freeciv.  If movement capacity was tuned down to the 'vanilla' settings, units can do less, even when considering double TC moves, and thus double TC becomes less of an issue.

Having vague and unclear rules of what's allowed is dangerous because not so often the thin border between what's considered all ok and what's considered absolutely unacceptable have the VERY strange property of MOVING depending on whether or not the player would benefit from or is being hurt of the RTS-ness of a given situation.  I'm still having the position that rules either should be clear or should be removed entirely.  Otherwise the rules and the admins trying to enforce the rules becomes yet another tool for domination (and I assume the admins themselves would prefer NOT be part of such a tool...).

Having a system where the community concensus and a community vote is used to determine if someone 'is a dick' seem very dangerous to me.  How do we prevent that system from becoming YET another domination tool where some players gets a position that allows them to violate the rules from time to time while other players are forced to stick strictly to the rules (or even innocently gets punished for rule-breaking even if they respected the rules 100%).

For the record, I'm not arguing against restrictive rules because I'll violate those rules if they are not removed, but because I'm considering the aggressive tone associated with (sometimes incorrectly assumed) violations against those rules to be far more harmful the game than the "problems" the rules tries to address.  Or to put it in another way: the aggressive tone I'm referring to is the primary reason I don't 'market' longturn to other people except for very few of my closest friends and my family.  Seriously, the aggressive tone used sometimes is a HUGE barrier to introducing the game to others.

Heck, I can already now tell you all that I'll respect the rules when interacting with others but when others play against me, I won't notice they gain an advantage against me due to them breaking rules and thus I won't report it or yell about it in chat/forum whatever (exception is hijacking accounts, that's plain unacceptable and if I observe THAT I'll report it at once and be VERY obnoxious about it in all channels available...).  To put it in other words, if someone does RTS intervention against me when I attack him I'll just regard it as a player interacting with me (those inter-player-interaction things happen in online games, I've been told... ) and I'll probably just send him a "Oh you are online, howdy!" in the inline chat and then we continue the RTS warfare.

And again, as said, I won't do RTS intervention against others attacking me if rules are writteng that forbids it.  Of course, this will put me at a tactical disadvantage, that I allow others to do against me things I won't do agains them but I'll rather do that than contribute to the too hostile tone used in discussions.

Elrik, I really doubt someone online 24/7 makes our skills irrelevant when we try to defend ourselves against them, I sincerely do.  Interesting point regarding having the sound off, I'm always play with no sound when playing Freeciv, Longturn is no exception.  I intend to keep doing that, no matter whatever disadvantage that gives me....

maho

Player

Posts: 161

Re: LT31 will start soon

regarding RTS vs PBM - I think, that we could think about going further into RTS, instead of avoiding it.

What I mean, is, that if we're able to make units use their movepoints, and refill their movepoints in 24h (Book did something like that AFAIR), then we're able to make eg. TC every half hour or even more often.

In such way, no more waiting for TC and doing special things in that hour - you have TC every 30 minutes, nothing special in that, and no matter how often you're online, you can move your units not more often than once per 24h.

elrik

Player

Posts: 108

Re: LT31 will start soon

true, its a great idea, but are its problems already solved? As i remember this path was not working really good:

1. some problems with healing units and fortress - do you remember those knights with 20 or more move points?:)
2. it was a problem connected with TC too but you could move units at the turn start for 1 move point then for the rest before the end. just after tc you got that first point back.

And what about production and such stuff? TC each 30 minutes means that within 8 hours you miss ~16x city production:) Should we just make prices bigger?:)

Marduk

Administrator

From: Rotterdam, Netherlands

Posts: 151

Re: LT31 will start soon

regarding RTS vs PBM - I think, that we could think about going further into RTS, instead of avoiding it.

What I mean, is, that if we're able to make units use their movepoints, and refill their movepoints in 24h (Book did something like that AFAIR), then we're able to make eg. TC every half hour or even more often.

In such way, no more waiting for TC and doing special things in that hour - you have TC every 30 minutes, nothing special in that, and no matter how often you're online, you can move your units not more often than once per 24h.

That is a cool way to play longturn, but it becomes a very different game. As soon as such patches work we can have an RTS-LT and a non-RTS-LT server, so people can choose the game style that suits them.

Marduk

Administrator

From: Rotterdam, Netherlands

Posts: 151

Re: LT31 will start soon

LT31 starts tomorrow! I haven't heard any practical proposals for addressing RTS in LT31 so that means we stick with what it says in the rules: RTS is not allowed, even if the definition of RTS is not very precise.

If we get complaints about RTS behavior or catch someone with a smoking gun, he'll get a warning. Maybe he didn't know it was not allowed, or he didn't know that his behavior constituted RTS. But after the warning he's expected to understand it, and next time he may get kicked out.

Practical proposals for addressing RTS in future games are still welcome, especially if accompanied with a working patch.

maho

Player

Posts: 161

Re: LT31 will start soon

true, its a great idea, but are its problems already solved? As i remember this path was not working really good:

Probably not. But they can be fixed or written from scratch (AFAIR Book wrote it for previous version of freeciv).

BUT - we had 24h turn and 10h refill time. My proposition is very different - 1h turn and eg 12h refill time. I think it makes things easier.

1. some problems with healing units and fortress - do you remember those knights with 20 or more move points?:)
2. it was a problem connected with TC too but you could move units at the turn start for 1 move point then for the rest before the end. just after tc you got that first point back.

Then it could work like that: once you start moving your unit, you have eg. 10 minutes to finish moves. Next moves are zeroed and filled in few turns.

And what about production and such stuff? TC each 30 minutes means that within 8 hours you miss ~16x city production:) Should we just make prices bigger?:)

Prices bigger or multiply production times. And I don't think that missing 16x city production is a problem. That things can be planned very well. Better than moving units.

o01eg

Player

Posts: 59

Re: LT31 will start soon

regarding RTS vs PBM - I think, that we could think about going further into RTS, instead of avoiding it.

Why? I think that TBS civ better for a long and slow games and I don't want the longturn become faster.

maho

Player

Posts: 161

Re: LT31 will start soon

regarding RTS vs PBM - I think, that we could think about going further into RTS, instead of avoiding it.

Why? I think that TBS civ better for a long and slow games and I don't want the longturn become faster.

I didn't mean it to be faster. Note, that RTS can be slow enough, to satisfy PBM-fans needs, and make RTS-like game without advantage of being always online.

akfaew

Administrator

Posts: 622

Re: LT31 will start soon

Can anybody suggest generator settings for the 1 player/island map we agreed upon? Whatever I try turns out shitty.

Everything except the settings seem to be ready. Here is the list of players that will participate in LT31:

Archaea::Assyrian:
CaptainAwesome::Soviet:
Eisenstein:::
ForgetDeny:::
Grendel::Syrian:
IllvilJa::Swedish:
Joris::Mongol:
Kes_Of_Kobo:::
Kryon::Turkish:
Leo::Tibetan:
Lord_P::Palatinate:
MalibuJack::Amazigh:
Marduk::Chinese:
MbawsaRitchie::Palestinian:
Modeemirotta::Holy Roman:
Ramses::Egyptian:
Richard_lynx::British:
Rommel::Swiss:
Shogun:::
StewartFip::Hawaiian:
Temmikael::Viking:
Trodan:::
Vendicar:::
Xercise::Iranian:
akfaew::Nimiipuu:
bamskamp::Raramuri:
cgalik::Slovakian:
chomwitt::Hellenic:
chuck::Quebecois:
det0r::Maori:
edrim::Pashtun:
el_perdedor::Cornish:
elpollodiablo::Austrian:
elrik::Polynesian:
fepf::Saxon:
fox::Siberian:
gayashiva:::
ifaesfu::Spanish:
jhh::Japanese:
johnhx::English:
jumangee:::
kingofnerds::Vampire:
kull::Portuguese:
kyrilus::Breton:
maho:::
matthewbauer::Carthaginian:
meton::Teutonic:
mmm2::Bosnian-Herzegovinian:
monamipierrot::Knights Templar:
mrsynical::Etruscan:
mwm:::
nah::Chola:
naldarn:::
o01eg::Barbarian:
ollikka:::
pipo::Norman:
qamil23::Tatar:
rsnk:::
slicer::Norwegian:
soon::Armenian:
troxalias::Greek:
tzaeru::Asturian:
viznut::Mixtec:
wieder::East German:

akfaew

Administrator

Posts: 622

Re: LT31 will start soon

I havent touched the rulesets, it would be great if anybody can take a look: http://akfaew.jasminek.net/lt/lt31.tgz (identical as for lt30)

monamipierrot

Player

Posts: 171

Re: LT31 will start soon

I think LT30 settings were ok, except for more water, which I think has already been voted to 50%.
Island game is good for having a balanced game, not a fun exploring/conquering game. I'm for less balance and more fun.

Grendel

Player

Posts: 46

Re: LT31 will start soon

It seems setting landmass to greater than 30 or so does not work well for generator: island maps.  I think this turned out best:

island, landmass 20, tilesperplayer 600, 61 players, starpos single

Similar to what you posted but more water in between and a bit more randomly spaced islands. 

I will email screenshot and the ruleset files I worked on a little while ago.  The only significant changes I recall making were removing the effects for the buildings that were removed due to the poll.

Should we be changing settings that have not been voted on though?  Generator was fractal for lt30 with no poll to change it.

Last edited by Grendel (2012-11-03 21:24:39)

monamipierrot

Player

Posts: 171

Re: LT31 will start soon

Should we be changing settings that have not been voted on though?  Generator was fractal for lt30 with no poll to change it.

My vote: NO. Keep fractal.

Kryon

Administrator

Posts: 370

Re: LT31 will start soon

We had a previous discussion on map style. Some sample maps can also be seen: http://forum.longturn.org/viewtopic.php?id=112

I am OK with both fractal (as long as landmass is 50 or less) and islands (as long as the islands are not too small). I think it'd be best if we could place 2 players per island.

Last edited by Kryon (2012-11-04 09:46:34)

monamipierrot

Player

Posts: 171

Re: LT31 will start soon

We had a previous discussion on map style. Some sample maps can also be seen: http://forum.longturn.org/viewtopic.php?id=112

I am OK with both fractal (as long as landmass is 50 or less) and islands (as long as the islands are not too small). I think it'd be best if we could place 2 players per island.

Best results with fractal is when landmass=30 or less: for some reason there are more chanche that instead of a giant pangea-continent you can find 2 or more inhabited or uninhabited continent.

kingofnerds

Player

From: Sunrise, Florida

Posts: 28

Website

Re: LT31 will start soon

didn't we have a problem in LT30 with the onset-barbs or something like that where it caused the game to crash? barbarians/pirates started showing up. Has that been fixed in the current ruleset?

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==== In the end, Nerds with Linux will rule the world ====

kingofnerds

Player

From: Sunrise, Florida

Posts: 28

Website

Re: LT31 will start soon

I didn't see anything when looking at the ruleset that says they will be spawned, but just in case I missed something, here are all the lines in the ruleset where barbarians are mentioned:

default.lua:-- Get barbarians from hut, unless close to a city or king enters
default.lua:function default_hut_get_barbarians(unit)
default.lua:    notify.event(owner, unit.tile, E.HUT_BARB_CITY_NEAR,
default.lua:  local alive = unleash_barbarians(tile)
default.lua:    notify.event(owner, tile, E.HUT_BARB,
default.lua:                  _("You have unleashed a horde of barbarians!"));
default.lua:    notify.event(owner, tile, E.HUT_BARB_KILLED,
default.lua:                  _("Your %s has been killed by barbarians!"),
default.lua:    alive = default_hut_get_barbarians(unit)
game.ruleset:; Barbarian leader ransom in gold
game.ruleset:;     (human, AI and barbarians) which already know the tech.
game.ruleset:      "barbarians", "DISABLED", FALSE
terrain.ruleset:;   - NoBarbs          = Barbarians will not be spawned here.
terrain.ruleset:flags                = "NoBarbs", "NoCities", "CanHaveRiver"
terrain.ruleset:flags                = "Starter", "NoBarbs", "CanHaveRiver"
units.ruleset:; "CollectRansom" = Unit can collect ransom when killing lone barbarian leader
units.ruleset:;                 barbarians this is used as lifetime instead. If this is zero,
units.ruleset:;		  the same time; barbarians cannot use this at present
units.ruleset:; "BarbarianOnly" = only barbarians can build this unit
units.ruleset:; "Barbarian"	= can be created as barbarian
units.ruleset:; "BarbarianTech" = can be created as barbarian, if someone has
units.ruleset:; "BarbarianBoat" = can be created as barbarian
units.ruleset:; "BarbarianBuild" = can be built by barbarians
units.ruleset:; "BarbarianBuildTech" = can be built by barbarians if someone has
units.ruleset:; "BarbarianLeader" = this unit is the barbarian leader (only one)
units.ruleset:; "BarbarianSea" = can be created as a sea barbarian
units.ruleset:; "BarbarianSeaTech" = can be created as a sea barbarian if someone
units.ruleset:roles         = "DefendOk", "Hut", "BarbarianBuild", "BarbarianSea"
units.ruleset:                "BarbarianTech", "BarbarianBuildTech", "BarbarianSeaTech"
units.ruleset:roles         = "DefendGood", "Partisan", "BarbarianTech"
units.ruleset:roles         = "DefendOk", "BarbarianSeaTech"
units.ruleset:roles         = "AttackFast", "Hut", "Barbarian", "Hunter"
units.ruleset:roles         = "AttackFast", "HutTech", "BarbarianTech",
units.ruleset:                "BarbarianBuildTech", "BarbarianSeaTech", "Hunter"
units.ruleset:roles         = "AttackFast", "BarbarianBuildTech", "BarbarianSeaTech",
units.ruleset:roles         = "AttackStrong", "BarbarianTech", "BarbarianBuildTech"
units.ruleset:roles         = "Ferryboat", "BarbarianBoat"
units.ruleset:roles         = "Ferryboat", "BarbarianBoat"
units.ruleset:[unit_barbarian_leader]
units.ruleset:name          = _("Barbarian Leader")
units.ruleset:graphic       = "u.barbarian_leader"
units.ruleset:sound_move    = "m_barbarian_leader"
units.ruleset:sound_fight   = "f_barbarian_leader"
units.ruleset:roles         = "BarbarianLeader"
units.ruleset:One Barbarian Leader appears every time there is a barbarian uprising\
units.ruleset:When a Barbarian Leader is killed on a tile without any defending units,\

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==== In the end, Nerds with Linux will rule the world ====