LW2 - thoughts

mrsynical · Post by **mrsynical** » Sun Jun 01, 2014 5:59 am

Assuming we have another ladder war. Here are some thoughts based on LW1

* I don't know what happened in other games, but it seems it is will be very hard to RIP players in LW1 game. We can consider reducing map size slightly, and maybe also have less players in LW*a games. Maybe the LW*d game could have the largest pool of players?

* Walls should cost more shields to build and should require upkeep (at least 1 gp, maybe 2 gp).

* 2x explorers at the start please. Maybe an extra worker to help speed things up??

Post by **wieder** » Tue Jun 03, 2014 8:16 am

Some quick comments.

Marketplaces are actually quite bad in this ruleset. You only get 25% boost from those. It would be much better if the boost would be 50% like it was in the past. While 25% may be somehow more balanced, "overbalancing" is not good idea since it makes the game less fun and promotes too much the military and production side of the game. While it's possible to make the economy really grow with 25% boost, doing that takes too much time compared to simply boosting production in the early game.

How I see it is that you should be able to buy buildings with gold. If the games are supposed to be short, the ruleset should allow players to build more stuff in less time. This would also help RIPping players.

edrim · Post by **edrim** » Tue Jun 03, 2014 11:43 am

Anybody against to delay start of LW2 signing in to 1.09.2014, vacation starting soon and there will be no allies to give delegation ingame when we are not know who is our neighbour.

I am going to 3 weeks starting about "D+14 Ending create first wave of polls." I will be back in D43 when LW2 should start but i will not be able to sort things out, like placeing players to specyfic boards on and off polls, etc.

We can start signing in to LT33 quite soon and see if there is good amount of players ready to play.

edrim · Post by **edrim** » Tue Jun 03, 2014 11:48 am

Once upon a time i have a nice talking with akfaew about terian changeing in LW.

There is a setting in ruleset that can give us terian changeing in every TC, like 1 tile every 100 tiles are changeing up or down in tile way. We can try it by changeing 1% tiles every TC and if it will be ok we can leave it for next games, if we changeing will not be as big as we want we can up this % for next games. I like idea of flooding grounds, changeing costal line or moving hills and mountains ingame, what do you think?

Post by **wieder** » Tue Jun 03, 2014 6:47 pm

Starting 1.9.2014 would work for me. Probably for lots of players since people are usually quite busy during the summer. Some with the national sports, some with doing summer stuff and some just doing stuff and stuff.

Changing terrain might really spice up the game, but with that kind of setting I would really like to see city walls to have the current cost of 30 shields while also allowing the players to terraform with regular engineers. Geo-engineers are too far away in the tech three and changing terrain would really somehow require the player to be able to terraform.

Skip the rest of the message if you are not interested about general suggestions for ruleset changes. It's more like thinking out loud anyway

Would it be possible to have a vote about the random TC for LT33? In LT32 all the TC RTS going on really changed the game. Especially if there is restrictinfra since pre-forts change the ownership and so on.

What it comes to the trade settings, I would vote no for losing techs (also when techs are stolen) but I would vote yes for some kind of cost for "free" techs. Even with a relatively low 30% cost for the player giving the techs, it would definitely make the top players think twice before giving techs. I consider tech trading an important part of the game but unlimoited tech trading with no "waste" may result with some serious problems for people without good contacts.

Also, I don't know if it would be possible with the current settings, but one idea in addition to the 30% tech waste cost would be allowing trades with allies only while allowing allying with anyone. This would also make you think twice before giving free techs since the possible enemies would be also learning from you if you wanted to trade techs. There are of course ways around this but it would most definitely make gifting techs more risky.

mmm2 · Post by **mmm2** » Wed Jun 04, 2014 4:06 am

September 1: Start LTex24 with tests for new settings
October 1: Ltex25!! with retests...
January 15 2015: Lt33!!

The Ladder wars are nice, but still LT and LTex are what most players are interested to play the most!!

Post by **wieder** » Wed Jun 04, 2014 9:01 am

"January 15 2015: Lt33!!"

Where did you get that info and why so late? Or was that a suggestion for the starting date of LT33?

One thing I have been planning to ask but for some reason didn't is the overlapping of LW and LT games. Some people like to play just one game at a time while other might be interested to play two or even more. Are there plans for launching LW and LT games simultaneously or starting the other while the current game was still running?

My guess is that there will be two games running at the same time since some players only want to play LW and some LT??

pipo · Post by **pipo** » Wed Jun 04, 2014 1:17 pm

LTeX24 sounds pretty good right now, but I can wait till September 1st. I think we should have a permanent LTeX running but I forgot the reason we do not have one. Automatic kick out (say after 3 idling turns) and respawn on demand should work good, even during vacation time.

kull · Post by **kull** » Wed Jun 04, 2014 9:26 pm

Next month i will be in vacations but after that i will be glad to start playing as well....guys please start another LT soon also!

I agree with Kryon.

taulover · Post by **taulover** » Wed Jun 04, 2014 10:46 pm

Does anybody know when Freeciv 2.5 will be out? Also, what version will LT33 be?

kevin551 · Post by **kevin551** » Thu Jun 05, 2014 3:28 am

The first beta release of Freeciv 2.5 may be quite soon. How long it takes to get to final release is guesswork. Starting LT33 on September 1st with version 2.5 seems hopeful and potentially problematic if the initial bugs haven't been ironed out.. The suggestion by mmm2 seems more realistic.

see http://gna.org/patch/?4772 posted yesterday by Marko Lindqvist
"One of the "big issues" still remaining before 2.5.0 can be released is that new default client, gtk3-client, is not in good enough shape. Given that it seems ... it alone would be blocking the otherwise ready release for a long time. So, at this point I propose still keeping gtk2-client as the default client in 2.5."

edrim · Post by **edrim** » Fri Jun 06, 2014 6:11 am

Kryon wrote:Why do he have to use 2.5? We can play LT33 using 2.4

Please port 2.3 settings and servers for 2.4 (we wil play it only one game).

kevin551 · Post by **kevin551** » Sun Jun 08, 2014 7:34 am

edrim wrote: Please port 2.3 settings and servers for 2.4

I think Edrim is asking me to port the settings because I already offered to do that a few weeks ago.
I can do it later this week.
I suggest the new ruleset is tested in ltex first before being used in a game.

edrim · Post by **edrim** » Mon Jun 09, 2014 7:55 am

Kryon wrote:Great but can we at least start the signups for LT33 meanwhile?

I am against makeing long term signups, people will signup and forgive about this for long time.
I know we can send emails to confirm signups but once we will make half a year signups for LT33 it is not good.

kevin551 wrote: I think Edrim is asking me to port the settings because I already offered to do that a few weeks ago.

I am not asking you, for me it is dumb to port to 2.4 for only one game.
This is not easypisy work to port it. We have not easy authorization and delgation system. We need to check if everything going stable not to let game die after about T100 when someone will use units in strage way.
Of course i may be wrong and this is a piece of cake for someone to do it right.

All who can port it to 2.5 are welcome to start doing it and we can try it in RC playing LTeX.

maho · Post by **maho** » Mon Jun 09, 2014 1:11 pm

edrim wrote:Anybody against to delay start of LW2 signing in to 1.09.2014,

I'm a bit against. It's equal for me if I play during vacation or not, and I'm afraid that I will forget completely how to play freeciv until Sep :/

maho · Post by **maho** » Mon Jun 09, 2014 1:16 pm

wieder wrote: Would it be possible to have a vote about the random TC for LT33? In LT32 all the TC RTS going on really changed the game. Especially if there is restrictinfra since pre-forts change the ownership and so on.

I remember random endturn and I think it didn't work. There was still strong RTS League. I think the best would be something which I suggest from long, long time (but I have to time to make it myself), which is - delayed orders. Except few units (explorers, diplos) - you have 0 movepoints at beginning of the turn, and you place an order, but it's executed when you unit is filled with movepoints. In such way - no matter how strong will you scout on the end of the turn, you will have the same chance of doing things as player who logged in 23 hours ago.

maho · Post by **maho** » Mon Jun 09, 2014 2:59 pm

Kryon wrote:Why not start LT33 ASAP? It has been 11 months since LT32 started and almost 3 months since it ended (and much more than 3 months for me since our team died early). Please start next LT game soon.

I agree. Fuck holidays, let's play freeciv.

Post by **wieder** » Mon Jun 09, 2014 3:16 pm

Are you sure delayed orders wouldn't result with a completely different gameplay?

It would be impossible to send out units for gaining additional vision before making decisions. Also, you couldn't move your units inside cities if the opponents would build some roads on your lands. That would also mean that blocking the enemy would be The strategy successful players would be using. Spreading explorers just before TC to block the reinforcements from arriving would be incredibly great strategy for anyone wanting to do some serious TC RTS. Yeah, it would give the TC players some serious advantage if they scouted just before TC and made the moves only after that.

Another problem would be the order of executing the orders. If the player A is attacked by the player B and both know it, the end result might greatly vary depending on who gets the units moved first. The one who gets to move in the reinforcements of the one who gets to attack.

Another issue would be making the attacks from the sea extremely risky. It wouldn't be possible to attack with just few units in order to see what the enemy has inside of the city. You would be forced to use lots and lots of units for any naval attack. Naval attacks are already quite rare. This would almost end those since you would probably either fail with too few units or lose your entire army when the city is destroyed and all the attacking units would be in one huge stack on the ruins.

Another issue would of course happen with diplos and spies able to move. You wouldn't be able to kill those with military units if there were gotos set for the diplos/spies/explorers. And yeah, of course killing them with military units during the turn would be also impossible...

Firing nukes would be really hard since they might hit anything on the way.

Attacking with airplanes? How would that work if you couldn't see what's out there? Scouting for subs would be really hard.

Then again naval attacks might work when landing on the shores. Just land and let the order of executing the orders at the next tc decide who is going to win.

I'm not saying that I wouldn't be interested in playing a game like that or at least trying it out, but it would be a completely different game with a completely new way of playing the TC RTS.

mmm2 · Post by **mmm2** » Tue Jun 10, 2014 12:19 am

most important modification is to limit the time for each player to move per turn, so at the very least they can't be online all 23 hours of the turn.
So for example:
If timeout was set to 5 minutes, then player could login for 2 minutes to move, and then still be able to login again later with the 3 minutes remaining.

Taking this one step further, we could make the time within the last 20 minutes and first 20 minutes 2x or 3x more valuable, so that time would be accelerated faster (because obviously moving at end of turn for 2 for 1 moves is much more valuable!!)..

i guess this is another one of those good suggestions that just needs to be implemented by someone who has the time for it. .there many other solutions which are also good - it will be up to developer who does this to pick which solution is best and most feasible to implement with time spent.

I think this modification is most important, not because it prevents RTS, but because it will limit the obsessive players who are spending sometimes 5+ hours for RTS (I won't mention names

. Longturn is still freeciv, it's meant to be few minutes each day to play, not for hours and hours...

kull · Post by **kull** » Tue Jun 10, 2014 12:34 am

can someone explain me ("i am a big noob") what is necessary to port freecivto the version 2.5? Just to know about what you guys are talking about....

thanks

edrim · Post by **edrim** » Tue Jun 10, 2014 6:16 am

Maybe setting 10 hours "no movement for all units" could work.

If you are moving one of your units just before TC you will not move all your units just after TC and 10 hours from your last movement.

You can say that you wanted only to make some defence movement just before TC, yes, but it is still RTS and you will be punish for 10 hours. If someone wants to move his units just beofre TC (because it is his time in a day for movement) he will be delayed for 10 hours too.