LW2 - thoughts

[edrim]

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....

You have to write and test function for connection to players passwords and delegation system.

[kevin551]

You have to write and test function for connection to players passwords and delegation system.

That is not what I expected when I offered to update the ruleset. So my apologies.

The good news though is that having looked more closely at the changes for freeciv 2.4 here http://freeciv.wikia.com/wiki/NEWS-2.4.0 there is really very little new in the actual gameplay whereas player authentication has been revamped.

I also checked the time scale between the development of the first beta of version 2.4 (date of the network protocol freeze) and the actual final release. It was 18 months. I do not think we will be using version 2.5 this year.

for me it is dumb to port to 2.4 for only one game.

I agree. Which seems to suggest using version 2.3 for the next game because 2.5 might not be ready until next year.

[mrsynical]

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

I am guessing ... the format of the rules/config files are slightly different and needs to be transferred to new formats. There are often new/changes to buildings, units etc.

[kevin551]

I am guessing ... the format of the rules/config files are slightly different

No need to guess the list of changes is here http://freeciv.wikia.com/wiki/How_to_up ... 2.3_to_2.4 and here http://freeciv.wikia.com/wiki/How_to_up ... 2.4_to_2.5

Edrim was correct in suggesting updating the ruleset to 2.4 was easy. Perhaps 2.5 is harder.

[wieder]

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

This is probably the best suggestion yet. The problem with this is of course making it very hard for a one player to defend against a team of 2 players. The 2 player team could build some TC roads, and the the units of the second player for actually using those roads after the attack. This however may not be a huge issue. What might be a problem is the IRL stuff and the 10 hour limit. There are situations where you go out at Friday night, make the moves in the evening and double turning the units you didn't move because you may risk coming back only after the next TC. A time possibly too short for a delegation. This doesn't probably happen too often but I remember doing something like that few times and without actually harming anyone with double turns.

For example I have 8 workers and I really need a road connecting 2 cities with a distance of 8 tiles. Only the first 4 workers can do the road in the first turn and the second 4 can start right after the TC if they are not moved at all. The road is built even if logging in the game is not possible for the remaining turn. While not optimal usage of workers, this stuff may happen and there has been uses for that. Not a big problem - for me - if that goes away but it might be for someone else?

Anyone else figuring out how to abuse that stuff? :DD

[mmm2]

higher priority would be to limit logged in time per turn, ie such setting name as "logintimeout". I think the situation we have now is that 80% of the players are online for just 5 to 10 minutes each turn, and then the other 20% do ultra-micro-management of cities, attacks, diplomacy, etc for sometimes as much as 4 hours per day or even more... The game should run such that each player is given the same time to move. This is something that could be experimented with in LtEx game if someone would do the coding for it. Here would be my suggestion for "logintimeout":
T1-T20: 5 minutes /turn
T21-T50: 10 minutes / turn
T51-T100: 20 minutes/ turn
T101 + : 30 minutes/ turn.

this will help in two ways:
1) Players such as maho who login for very brief time periods will spend almost as equal time as those players who typically ultra-micro-manage stuff.
2) Players who ultra-micro-manage won't waste as much time playing freeciv when they should be spending time with work, family, friend, etc.

[StratThinker]

higher priority would be to limit logged in time per turn, ie such setting name as "logintimeout". I think the situation we have now is that 80% of the players are online for just 5 to 10 minutes each turn, and then the other 20% do ultra-micro-management of cities, attacks, diplomacy, etc for sometimes as much as 4 hours per day or even more... The game should run such that each player is given the same time to move. This is something that could be experimented with in LtEx game if someone would do the coding for it. Here would be my suggestion for "logintimeout":
T1-T20: 5 minutes /turn
T21-T50: 10 minutes / turn
T51-T100: 20 minutes/ turn
T101 + : 30 minutes/ turn.

this will help in two ways:
1) Players such as maho who login for very brief time periods will spend almost as equal time as those players who typically ultra-micro-manage stuff.
2) Players who ultra-micro-manage won't waste as much time playing freeciv when they should be spending time with work, family, friend, etc.

For those of us who have lagging connection, 5 minutes will be too short: I once had lags of 10 seconds. There are also some turns where one needs to log on for longer, for example if one is changing governments, or if one has created a new city which cause unhappiness, or if one is deciding on the next major tech.

[mmm2]

For those of us who have lagging connection, 5 minutes will be too short: I once had lags of 10 seconds. There are also some turns where one needs to log on for longer, for example if one is changing governments, or if one has created a new city which cause unhappiness, or if one is deciding on the next major tech.

well these "logintimeout" settings could be voted on in pregame (assuming if someone made code change to allow it)... but main point is, there should definitely be some limit, especially not more than 30 minutes, definitely not more than hour... and I also like the idea of the time of the clock speeding up to double or triple speed the nearer to end of turn and start of turn, so that players who login inbetween turns would only get 1/3 of the time as players who login during non RTS/ETA* times... that makes sense to me, because the time nearer to the beginning and end of turn is more valuable, so it should be counted as such too..

*ETA= End Turn Attack (2 for 1 move)

[wieder]

It's really not possible to forbid the ultra micromanagement even if you limit the online time to the extreme. if someone would still want to do that, he or she could just replicate the game world on a local machine with an editor and then perform all the tests there. Copying the settings to the actual game can be done relatively quickly. There were players doing that in Lt31. Not really because of getting more time for micromanagement but just for testing different strategies. There was a story about someone doing that in the Finnish Skrolli magazine. That was the second LT31 story I didn't translate.

Overall I don't think having players online is not a huge problem if there is no RTS involved.

For the Finns playing Freeciv is very healthy since that takes some time away from practicing the National Sports :DDD

Also, there are some occasions where more time is simply needed. One of those is documented in this thread http://forum.longturn.org/viewtopic.php?id=370 and doing all that really took several hours of online time. There is no way it would have been possible in one hour. What would have been your suggestion for performing that attack? Breaking the ZoC's and effectively using the units really takes time if you have only a limited amount of units ase eryone usually does.

[mmm2]

that's great. let's make a vote in the pregame to enable it, and I will vote yes for it.

I would just look at what the average time spent online is for most players - that is usually 8-10 minutes. We should keep it at 10 minutes IMO.. If most players are just spending 8-10 minutes to move, then it's unfair if there are a handful of players abusing the time and spending 2-3 hours to micromanage every small detail. There has to be an element of time, and you should have to use time management skills to decide which aspects to move with the time given.

[wieder]

Mmm2, didn't you read that the patch allows players to stay online as long as they wish but only prevent them from making moves. This would still make it possible to micromanage stuff. Micromanaging could be done by replicating the game on a local computer and then testing the stuff there. Lots of work and would definitely give advantage for those players who bothered to do that.

I'm not sure about this but your suggestion of 8-10 minutes sounds like a joke to me since on LT32 you had 12 hour online times In that case and in the Finnish spirit I would suggest a limit ot 2-3 minutes for the endgame and one minute for the early game

Still even a 2 hour limit would make some operations impossible to perform. Or maybe they could be done with a modified client. Not with auto moves but a help system telling how to do the planned moves. The moves you plan in the offline mode.

But seriously, wasn't the actual problem people staying online too long for RTS? I don't think that was a real issue in LT32 or LT31. The problem with LT31 was the turn limit and that's something that's happening again on lw1a and apparently in lw1c. Of course in both cases the game became surprisingly long or short for some reason not obvious when the games started.

[mmm2]

Mmm2, didn't you read that the patch allows players to stay online as long as they wish but only prevent them from making moves. This would still make it possible to micromanage stuff. Micromanaging could be done by replicating the game on a local computer and then testing the stuff there. Lots of work and would definitely give advantage for those players who bothered to do that.

I'm not sure about this but your suggestion of 8-10 minutes sounds like a joke to me since on LT32 you had 12 hour online times In that case and in the Finnish spirit I would suggest a limit ot 2-3 minutes for the endgame and one minute for the early game

Still even a 2 hour limit would make some operations impossible to perform. Or maybe they could be done with a modified client. Not with auto moves but a help system telling how to do the planned moves. The moves you plan in the offline mode.

But seriously, wasn't the actual problem people staying online too long for RTS? I don't think that was a real issue in LT32 or LT31. The problem with LT31 was the turn limit and that's something that's happening again on lw1a and apparently in lw1c. Of course in both cases the game became surprisingly long or short for some reason not obvious when the games started.

so it actually it only freezes units, but allows everything else... then why is 10 minutes not enough???

In normal games timeout is 60-90 seconds for first 60 moves, and that is for moving+everything else.

would it be difficult to modify this to kick out player after they exceed time limit?

[wieder]

Let's assume in this message that you are serious with that suggestion. My assumption is that you are just trying to make people to argue with you, just for fun, but let's assume.

10 minutes is not enough because in some cases moving can take hours. With 10 minutes timeouts it would also be impossible to contact with other players for operations requiring several players to make the moves. I already gave you a very good example of an operation taking more than 2 hours. Was it actually 3 hours, I'm not sure.

90 seconds for the first 60 turns? A player can easily have 100 units to be moved by T60. Having a 90 second limit would make it impossible to move. Also any lags would result with a missed turn.

What is the actual problem you are trying to solve? Having the players online is hardly a problem if they are not doing any RTS and limiting the online time to 90 seconds for the first 60 turns would really serve no purpose.

So, what's the actual problem you are trying to solve?

[kull]

guys, sorry for only answer now!

i am a software developer, that's why i were asking...

i do not understand very well the ruleset, but perhaps i can help in the function for connection to players passwords and delegation system?

where i can get the code to check it? the current one and the target one?

Edrim, you can send me an email with more details about this?

[elrik]

wieder: mmm is talking about shortturn games and it really is like that. I tried that once or twice but i don`t like it. It was VERY hard to play without proper warclient which as i know doesn`t work on 2.3. If i am wrong and there is proper warclient on 2.3.5 then i understand why he wants that time;)

And as i see we are talking about solutions which we already had in the past and which were working almost good:)

1. Delay 10h between 2 turns move - it was really working great.
2. what about adding use only own infrestructuke rule to that? Is it working in alliance? that solves problem od 2 players making roads for each other.

[edrim]

where i can get the code to check it? the current one and the target one?

Edrim, you can send me an email with more details about this?

You are remember bad, in LTeX system you wasnt able to login for checking inside a game after using limit inside a game.
It was one hour to spend ingame and you were off for whole turn. I dont remember anything about logging for makeing orders.

It was buggy system and it was crush server several times, we have to switch it off because this system was unstable.


To all of us:

In all games everybody who can share his time for a game (much more then everybody else) has adventage and usuale this corespond with winning a game. For me it is ok, i dont have time spending ingame more then couple of minutes and sometimes more for talking (exercise language) so i dont care if i loose. I have fun in playing even if players having more time then me will win, sometimes players with less time can win but it is with less probability.

So please tell me if it is ok for you or not, this is question number 1.

Another thing is to reduce RTS ingame. We have 10 hours delaying of makeing moves after TC, and nothing else can be done here. We can reduce time ingame but it will break our pleasure to play this game. I know that if someone spending 24h ingame it is somehow wrong, thats why we have gentelmans agree not to spend to many hours inside a game.
In LW there are limits, more time in higher board.

Question number 2: are you ok with not low (hours not minutes) limits time ingame?

Once someone spend to much time ingame all other players out of his ally getting wolfpack and try to avoid his winning (in all other situation wolfpacks born too), and player who spend so much time ingame loosing this game is really pissed off and angry to all community, that his time didnt gave him win. If good players are connectiong together we cant forbid worse players connectiong together in bigger packs.

This is normal here and everybody need to answer a question to his own mind what for he is playing.

[wieder]

Yeah, I really hope I misunderstood and mmm2 was talking about short turn games.

Limiting the time online is something I don't really like. As I have said before, having strict limits might result with some serious issues and as long as everyone or at least most people honor the rules or at least accept them some way there are not too big issues

With delaying the moves for 10 hours, do you mean the current unitwaittime system or are you planning to implement the proposed 10 hour unitwaittime for all of the units therefore preventing any moves in 10 hours after the tc if any single unit was moved just before tc?

What I do personally when I'm logged on is of course moves, but lots of the remaining time goes for chatting or like in lw1a where there was not too much ingame chatting, that time was used for managing the cities or making plans for how to do something. That planning could be mostly done with screenshots if absolutely necessary. For me that planning is the most important element since it's not about trying to look the secret moves someone might be doing or even about trying to figure out the best settings for the cities.

I believe that players who have a game plan for 1, 5, 15 and 45 turns will have a great advantage over those who are not planning that much ahead. This planning can't be prevented with time limits. But this planning can also backfire and for me it in a way did in lw1a. Not that I would complain about my performance in that game, far from it, but too much planning may also lead to loss of resources. My advice for people who don't like to make plans for 45 turns ahead is that make the enemy to think that you have such a plan especially if it doesn't exist. That way you will probably burn some serious resources from that player.

And yeah, don't take this stuff too seriously. I have played way too few Longturn games to really understand all the possibilities. Lw1a is/was my 4th LT game and in addition to that I have only played the Finnish game in 2011. There have been talks about a new Finnish game being launched soon and my guess is that it will be online in 1-7 months

But yeah, it may be a smart move to attack a player who spends too much time online. That player is probably either crafting some evil plans or improving the performance of the nation.

Wat about the setting preventing workers completing roads or fort-stuff if the work was started less than 6 hours before tc? That might also work pretty well if it's possible to do? I understood that it didn't require further code changes but as usual, I may have missed something.

[edrim]

What about the setting preventing workers completing roads or fort-stuff if the work was started less than 6 hours before tc? That might also work pretty well if it's possible to do? I understood that it didn't require further code changes but as usual, I may have missed something.

Are you serious?
Do you think everybody are prepared to be online every 6 hours a day?

There is no good ways to prevent RTS and about TC moves. I cant belive anybody here care about this guys who play it here, they are comming and going out, because loosing is not they are prepared to. They can win couple of games in a row and there will be a game which they are spend so much time and loose that "never come back" issue will be on.

I am not good player because i am playing freeciv only here, no planing outside a game, but i like this community and I have still have fun with it since LT8.
I saw many times very good players that come with warserver thinking and go out because it is not for they way of playing.

If anyone waiting for TC to come for making moves I am placing him to same shelf as anybody else doing the same. I dont care if they do itbecause I cant prevent it, so I will never be in a top with this type of playing because I will not spend so much time ingame as such players. But i am loughing when some players are crying that once again "wolfpacks" ruined their pleasure. Ask yourselfs next time why this wolfpacks are getting together and stop crying.

[wieder]

I'm serious about asking about it. Not that serious about implementing it on a game. The reason why I asked about it was that it was mentioned on the #longturn channel and it was unclear to me if this was a real plan or not. I don't think 6 hours would be the correct value since there is also the 10h limit. For preventing the RTS even a 1 hour limit would do a real difference since in a team game there may be people online if the teams are big enough. However that's a different matter and obviously not something you were talking about.

I'm not asking because of good players or bad players but because that was something proposed and it would be one relatively good solution (with 10 hour limit) unless it needed any new code. If that needed code, any code, I would think it would be a bad solution because as we know, code is not coding itself.

I really must ask.... Who is crying that wolfpacks are ruining the game? Are you talking about lw1 or LT32? I've not seen any talk about wolfpacks regarding lw1 but there certainly was that kind of talk with lt32. As far as I know there really was no wolfpacks in lw1.

[kevin551]

What about the setting preventing workers completing roads or fort-stuff if the work was started less than 6 hours before tc? That might also work pretty well if it's possible to do? I understood that it didn't require further code changes but as usual, I may have missed something.

I think you are referring to the actionwaittime setting see http://gna.org/patch/?4555
It hasn't been coded yet.

[edrim]

I really must ask.... Who is crying that wolfpacks are ruining the game? Are you talking about lw1 or LT32? I've not seen any talk about wolfpacks regarding lw1 but there certainly was that kind of talk with lt32. As far as I know there really was no wolfpacks in lw1.

Everybody since LT10 or LT09. In nearly everygame was a wolfpack. Sometimes wolfpack win and sometimes wolfpack lost, the worse thing is when wolfpack is getting from good players not this average in specyfic game.