This topic is for discussing planetology settings altogether, cause every variable influence each other.
Here is some of my opinions on how LT30 planet should be, or shoulg be not.
After playing just one LT game, I feel I have already some tastes, and they are quite different from the settings used in LT29 and in previous games.
One thing I didn't like about LT29 is too much landmass, and I know it was already some less than other LT games. But I would not like a Islands game of the type of some old LT games were (I judge from topics and images I found in old www).
I saw that in freeciv.fi they use some of the settings I would also use, i.e. generator=2 & startpos=3, tinyisles=1, separatepoles=0. If tiny islands are on, I would also goto for HEX.
I will put some details of my ideas in next message, for those of you who really are interested in the subject.
Planetology settings
-
monamipierrot
- Member
- Posts: 106
- Joined: Thu Jan 01, 1970 12:00 am
World (1): What the HEX!!!!
I would recommend hexes, they have several advantages, but also some small disadvantages.
Here are the advs:
1. Beauty. Hex-shaped land is more appealing to sight, cause it have no 90¨degrees angles, no straight lines on coasts and features (except for roads and rivers) and no chess-like water-land effect, like
XOXO
OXOX
XOXO
2. It allows to set 1x1island ON without the chess-like water-land effect
3. chess-like water-land can’t be reproduced anyway. You can’t cross the path of a ship just walking (better for realism and for military strategy), unless you build a city on a istmus, which may convert that city in a strategical stronghold.
4. with hex some generators produce more beautiful lands, with features like thin channels and thin stripes (istmus) of land (if you set 1x1 on), which adds a lot to military strategy. This seems not to happen with squares.
5. rivers are beautifully shaped. Traveling thorough them is more logical (you would not be allowed to move “diagonally” anyway!!). Roads are also nicer.
Here’s some disadvantages, some are easily fixable, some are not:
1.Tilesets. With squares I use trident, which is very similar to the hex2t, but if you like Amplio you don’t have something similar to it with hexes. Worst of all, some players may want to use some custom tilesets which are only available with squares.
2. There MAY be some compatibility issue with LT rulesets and LT games new rules, for example with some movement/sight/length/distance/etc. calculations. I don’t know which one, maybe some of you can think of some. There MAY be also some compatibility issue with future LT features
3. cities have a slightly smaller radius (19 tiles vs. 21). This would slightly encourage smallpoxing.
4. with some generators earth looks like some N-S stretched, e.g. all features (island, continents and seas) are more often “tall” than “fat”. Maybe this issue is related to next one:
5. overview window distorces the map, which appears much more fat than in normal (real) view
6. Many players are not used to hexes.
7. Freeciv comes from Civilization. The worst Civilization is the 5th (the only one with hexes!)
Additional characteristics (you may judge if they are adv or disadv):
1. Slightly easier to siege a city
2. New tactics and tricks for ZOC, maybe it is slightly easier to stop a enemy unit
3. no diagonal movement: every step is equal. (adds to realism but less variety)
I would recommend hexes, they have several advantages, but also some small disadvantages.
Here are the advs:
1. Beauty. Hex-shaped land is more appealing to sight, cause it have no 90¨degrees angles, no straight lines on coasts and features (except for roads and rivers) and no chess-like water-land effect, like
XOXO
OXOX
XOXO
2. It allows to set 1x1island ON without the chess-like water-land effect
3. chess-like water-land can’t be reproduced anyway. You can’t cross the path of a ship just walking (better for realism and for military strategy), unless you build a city on a istmus, which may convert that city in a strategical stronghold.
4. with hex some generators produce more beautiful lands, with features like thin channels and thin stripes (istmus) of land (if you set 1x1 on), which adds a lot to military strategy. This seems not to happen with squares.
5. rivers are beautifully shaped. Traveling thorough them is more logical (you would not be allowed to move “diagonally” anyway!!). Roads are also nicer.
Here’s some disadvantages, some are easily fixable, some are not:
1.Tilesets. With squares I use trident, which is very similar to the hex2t, but if you like Amplio you don’t have something similar to it with hexes. Worst of all, some players may want to use some custom tilesets which are only available with squares.
2. There MAY be some compatibility issue with LT rulesets and LT games new rules, for example with some movement/sight/length/distance/etc. calculations. I don’t know which one, maybe some of you can think of some. There MAY be also some compatibility issue with future LT features
3. cities have a slightly smaller radius (19 tiles vs. 21). This would slightly encourage smallpoxing.
4. with some generators earth looks like some N-S stretched, e.g. all features (island, continents and seas) are more often “tall” than “fat”. Maybe this issue is related to next one:
5. overview window distorces the map, which appears much more fat than in normal (real) view
6. Many players are not used to hexes.
7. Freeciv comes from Civilization. The worst Civilization is the 5th (the only one with hexes!)
Additional characteristics (you may judge if they are adv or disadv):
1. Slightly easier to siege a city
2. New tactics and tricks for ZOC, maybe it is slightly easier to stop a enemy unit
3. no diagonal movement: every step is equal. (adds to realism but less variety)
-
monamipierrot
- Member
- Posts: 106
- Joined: Thu Jan 01, 1970 12:00 am
World (2): Generator
Features I don’t quite like in LT29 I played are:
- Small sizes
- Small seas and oceans
- No climate areas
- Lack of variety.
- Predictability: Where are small islands? Where are beaches with mountains or hills?
I think our goal should be something similar to Earth: very variable, quite big.
Once I set the generator with these settings
players: 30
mapSize: 30,000
topology: 9 (hex earth)
Method generation: 2
Start positions: 3
1x1 islands: True
Separate poles: false
Temperate: false
land percentage: 30%
and produced some dozen worlds, observing them.
These worlds had these features:
- big, funny 30000 tiles map with 30 players
- Almost always: one huge supercontinent , sometimes connected E-W as a ring, where players are located.
- 1, 2 or 3 smaller unhabited continents (the Holy Lands).
- continents are sometimes connected by istmus or separated by channel, in both cases 3, 2 or only 1 tile large, just to make military strategists happy! With smaller mapsizes or land masses, players may be more often distributed in 2 continents.
- one or more continents may be attached to one pole.
- dozens and dozens of isles from 1 to 100 tiles, some in archipelagus, some isolated in middle of oceans.
- many peninsula/isle/istmus look like long 1(or 2)-tiles thick stripes, resembling earthly Baja California or Italy or SE Asia archipelagos, i.e. tectonic-made land. Sometimes these stripes are broken in insular necklaces (like aleutine islands, or SE Asia archipelagos). Very cool.
- a number of big oceans, or a huge Ocean.
- maybe some big internal sea, sometimes big enough to host islands or being strategical and see some naval battle.
- some “mediterranean” sea, as above
- earth-like weather-related land, this one being too much rigid, and producing horizontal “stripes” of colured tiles (if you watch at it in the overview view), very unrealistic and, which is worse, predictable (you already know that in tropics you will found almost only deserts, and so on).
The last feature is the only one I didn’t like. Another one that may annoy someone is the difference in chances that players may have. Actually, they almost always felt altogether in the same continent, but some more isolated than others, and some with more resources.
Anyway, I don’t think we should worry too much about players chances, expecially in team games, after all this is a game.
If climate areas are still an issue, we can try the toroidal generator: for some reason, the dimension of the “stripes” are way smaller than the normal Earth ones (for 30,000 tiles a desert is some 6 tiles large). In my opinion, toroidal maps have one issue: the poles (big and round: unesthetical), but I produced some which were very interesting. We can raise temperature to 65 to have them smaller but equatorial/tropical areas grow altogether!
But definitely, we can have a “all temperate map”, which sometimes is not boring at all, because it hosts big deserts and other areas. It may apply to toroidal maps, but also to earth maps. I only don’t like the fact it never have glaciers, tundras and jungles.
With these changes (toroidal and temperate), I managed to get almost always very interesting worlds. For example, last time I got a supercontinent (90% of all landmass) which spanned N-S failing to connect in a “ring” way, but continuing like a snake-like spiral and then after passing through the E-W connection, reaching again as close as to eat its own tail. I observed the map for 10 minutes and couldn’t manage to have a satisfactory mental representation of this: it was too new for me, something close to a moebius strip. Add to this a number of archipelagoes in the oceans, a number of big islands, the fact that the supercontinent was fragmented in 4 subcontinents separated by 1-tile-istmus, and that the tail-mouth channel was 20 tiles long and almost all 1-tile wide, like a neuronal synapsys. To play on it with human beings would have been a great pleasure.
Thanks for the patience. Don't gorget to write here your opinion on this!
Features I don’t quite like in LT29 I played are:
- Small sizes
- Small seas and oceans
- No climate areas
- Lack of variety.
- Predictability: Where are small islands? Where are beaches with mountains or hills?
I think our goal should be something similar to Earth: very variable, quite big.
Once I set the generator with these settings
players: 30
mapSize: 30,000
topology: 9 (hex earth)
Method generation: 2
Start positions: 3
1x1 islands: True
Separate poles: false
Temperate: false
land percentage: 30%
and produced some dozen worlds, observing them.
These worlds had these features:
- big, funny 30000 tiles map with 30 players
- Almost always: one huge supercontinent , sometimes connected E-W as a ring, where players are located.
- 1, 2 or 3 smaller unhabited continents (the Holy Lands).
- continents are sometimes connected by istmus or separated by channel, in both cases 3, 2 or only 1 tile large, just to make military strategists happy! With smaller mapsizes or land masses, players may be more often distributed in 2 continents.
- one or more continents may be attached to one pole.
- dozens and dozens of isles from 1 to 100 tiles, some in archipelagus, some isolated in middle of oceans.
- many peninsula/isle/istmus look like long 1(or 2)-tiles thick stripes, resembling earthly Baja California or Italy or SE Asia archipelagos, i.e. tectonic-made land. Sometimes these stripes are broken in insular necklaces (like aleutine islands, or SE Asia archipelagos). Very cool.
- a number of big oceans, or a huge Ocean.
- maybe some big internal sea, sometimes big enough to host islands or being strategical and see some naval battle.
- some “mediterranean” sea, as above
- earth-like weather-related land, this one being too much rigid, and producing horizontal “stripes” of colured tiles (if you watch at it in the overview view), very unrealistic and, which is worse, predictable (you already know that in tropics you will found almost only deserts, and so on).
The last feature is the only one I didn’t like. Another one that may annoy someone is the difference in chances that players may have. Actually, they almost always felt altogether in the same continent, but some more isolated than others, and some with more resources.
Anyway, I don’t think we should worry too much about players chances, expecially in team games, after all this is a game.
If climate areas are still an issue, we can try the toroidal generator: for some reason, the dimension of the “stripes” are way smaller than the normal Earth ones (for 30,000 tiles a desert is some 6 tiles large). In my opinion, toroidal maps have one issue: the poles (big and round: unesthetical), but I produced some which were very interesting. We can raise temperature to 65 to have them smaller but equatorial/tropical areas grow altogether!
But definitely, we can have a “all temperate map”, which sometimes is not boring at all, because it hosts big deserts and other areas. It may apply to toroidal maps, but also to earth maps. I only don’t like the fact it never have glaciers, tundras and jungles.
With these changes (toroidal and temperate), I managed to get almost always very interesting worlds. For example, last time I got a supercontinent (90% of all landmass) which spanned N-S failing to connect in a “ring” way, but continuing like a snake-like spiral and then after passing through the E-W connection, reaching again as close as to eat its own tail. I observed the map for 10 minutes and couldn’t manage to have a satisfactory mental representation of this: it was too new for me, something close to a moebius strip. Add to this a number of archipelagoes in the oceans, a number of big islands, the fact that the supercontinent was fragmented in 4 subcontinents separated by 1-tile-istmus, and that the tail-mouth channel was 20 tiles long and almost all 1-tile wide, like a neuronal synapsys. To play on it with human beings would have been a great pleasure.
Thanks for the patience. Don't gorget to write here your opinion on this!
-
Marduk
- Member
- Posts: 81
- Joined: Thu Jan 01, 1970 12:00 am
Some really cool ideas there!
@hex:
I agree with Akfaew (Dude, is that your new name?) that we should try out hex in an experimental game first. As you mention in your introduction hex will interfere with game strategy and perhaps with LT ruleset changes. But that's what LTeX is for, sounds like a cool experiment!
Currently wars very often end in a stalemate with units in fortresses or on mountains blocking all access (because of zone of control). This is strategically interesting but maybe a bit too dominant in the game. Once Flight is discovered these blockades become invincable when an air unit is combined with a strong land unit in a fortress. If the tileset or map generator used can reduce this I would be all for it. But hex might have the opposite effect.
@new map ideas:
I think in the Longturn community there is a group of players who wants games to be fair competitions with as little interfering factors as possible, so the best player wins (rather than the one with a lucky spawn position). If you spawn in a big desert and your enemy in a heaven of grass and plains even the most briliant strategy wont work, making the game far less interesting. But there's also a group who want new and surprising maps and game rules, so you have to adjust yourself to new situations rather than perfecting the same strategy game after game. I've never tried to build a strong empire in a huge desert or on 1-tile islands, sounds like a good challenge!
So far the regular LT games (LT29, LT30 etc) catered to the competitive players, with fair rules (all temperate maps, no huts, no barbarians etc) and a game outcome that results in a score on the ranking list. LTeX so far has been more for fun and crazy games. But we could introduce another game type that would cater more to the fun / interesting maps type of player. Earlier there's been talk of introducing Scenario as a new game style besides Team-game, Teamless game and Experimental, and I think that could work really well.
If we set up Scenario games as fun games that don't have to be perfectly fair and don't count for the ranking list then only those players who are into that will join, so nobody would be disappointed by it. That way we can try any map idea: waterworld (huge map with 90% water, only 1 tile islands; maybe just one continent which nobody spawns on); all desert (with just small oases to nurture cities); weird geometric shape maps, etc, anything we can think of. Also we could prepare cities and units to do for example a huge replay of World War 2 or a fictional scenario.
With already well over 30 players in LT30 it seems we have enough players to start another game parallel to LT and LTeX, so that could be the scenario type.
@hex:
I agree with Akfaew (Dude, is that your new name?) that we should try out hex in an experimental game first. As you mention in your introduction hex will interfere with game strategy and perhaps with LT ruleset changes. But that's what LTeX is for, sounds like a cool experiment!
Currently wars very often end in a stalemate with units in fortresses or on mountains blocking all access (because of zone of control). This is strategically interesting but maybe a bit too dominant in the game. Once Flight is discovered these blockades become invincable when an air unit is combined with a strong land unit in a fortress. If the tileset or map generator used can reduce this I would be all for it. But hex might have the opposite effect.
@new map ideas:
I think in the Longturn community there is a group of players who wants games to be fair competitions with as little interfering factors as possible, so the best player wins (rather than the one with a lucky spawn position). If you spawn in a big desert and your enemy in a heaven of grass and plains even the most briliant strategy wont work, making the game far less interesting. But there's also a group who want new and surprising maps and game rules, so you have to adjust yourself to new situations rather than perfecting the same strategy game after game. I've never tried to build a strong empire in a huge desert or on 1-tile islands, sounds like a good challenge!
So far the regular LT games (LT29, LT30 etc) catered to the competitive players, with fair rules (all temperate maps, no huts, no barbarians etc) and a game outcome that results in a score on the ranking list. LTeX so far has been more for fun and crazy games. But we could introduce another game type that would cater more to the fun / interesting maps type of player. Earlier there's been talk of introducing Scenario as a new game style besides Team-game, Teamless game and Experimental, and I think that could work really well.
If we set up Scenario games as fun games that don't have to be perfectly fair and don't count for the ranking list then only those players who are into that will join, so nobody would be disappointed by it. That way we can try any map idea: waterworld (huge map with 90% water, only 1 tile islands; maybe just one continent which nobody spawns on); all desert (with just small oases to nurture cities); weird geometric shape maps, etc, anything we can think of. Also we could prepare cities and units to do for example a huge replay of World War 2 or a fictional scenario.
With already well over 30 players in LT30 it seems we have enough players to start another game parallel to LT and LTeX, so that could be the scenario type.
-
monamipierrot
- Member
- Posts: 106
- Joined: Thu Jan 01, 1970 12:00 am
@Marduk
you're right, it should be moved.
Anyway, keep in mind that as LT30 will be the first 2.3 game, it may be quite unbalanced by its nature, because to find the right strategy with new game features could be somewhat more a matter of luck rather than of strategist planning.
So, IMHO it would be the perfect moment for testing some rather unbalanced settings, like those I described in "World (2)" message.
Uh, and consequently LT30 should be ranking free, of course. (I already won my 1st game but I'm not into "ranking" and "points", if you wonder)
About scenarios... I'm a hardcore fan of the eXplore "x" of 4x games. (I will cast a poll to lower vision range of units, just because of that). In a scenario you already know the map, if I'm not wrong... I'm not much into it, if I have to be honest.
@dude
so, test hexes, test them!!!
you're right, it should be moved.
Anyway, keep in mind that as LT30 will be the first 2.3 game, it may be quite unbalanced by its nature, because to find the right strategy with new game features could be somewhat more a matter of luck rather than of strategist planning.
So, IMHO it would be the perfect moment for testing some rather unbalanced settings, like those I described in "World (2)" message.
Uh, and consequently LT30 should be ranking free, of course. (I already won my 1st game but I'm not into "ranking" and "points", if you wonder)
About scenarios... I'm a hardcore fan of the eXplore "x" of 4x games. (I will cast a poll to lower vision range of units, just because of that). In a scenario you already know the map, if I'm not wrong... I'm not much into it, if I have to be honest.
@dude
so, test hexes, test them!!!
-
Marduk
- Member
- Posts: 81
- Joined: Thu Jan 01, 1970 12:00 am
donemonamipierrot wrote:@Marduk
you're right, it should be moved.
We still have plenty of time before LT30 starts so I think we'll manage to figure out balanced settings for it. We've done this beforeAnyway, keep in mind that as LT30 will be the first 2.3 game, it may be quite unbalanced by its nature, because to find the right strategy with new game features could be somewhat more a matter of luck rather than of strategist planning.
So, IMHO it would be the perfect moment for testing some rather unbalanced settings, like those I described in "World (2)" message.
Uh, and consequently LT30 should be ranking free, of course. (I already won my 1st game but I'm not into "ranking" and "points", if you wonder)
I guess we can apply the word 'scenario game' to a range of games:About scenarios... I'm a hardcore fan of the eXplore "x" of 4x games. (I will cast a poll to lower vision range of units, just because of that). In a scenario you already know the map, if I'm not wrong... I'm not much into it, if I have to be honest.
i) a map prepared in general: we choose map generator settings to create a specific effect (funny shapes; extreme values for landmass etc), so we know what to expect but nobody has seen the precise map before the game (so exploration is still a major part of the game)
ii) a map prepared in detail using the map editor: so at least 1 player already knows the precise map; we should have a rule about whether that player is still allowed to join that game, or whether all players should be shown the map if one player already knows it
iii) a map prepared using the map editor, including cities and units: for example for a World War 2 simulation
All versions of the scenario game have in common that the map doesn't have to be balanced, and that the game is likely to be very different from the standard games. Also we can focus less on precise ruleset choices (just use the default) so the focus is all on the effect of different maps on the game. I propose that we organize scenario games as normal LT games, without player spawning. That way games are limited in time and we can try out many different scenarios. Maybe scenario building will become an important part of the longturn community, sounds fun to me!
-
monamipierrot
- Member
- Posts: 106
- Joined: Thu Jan 01, 1970 12:00 am
Another thing I would implement is some randomness in the world generator (but also in many different settings).
If the randomized value can't be seen by players, and can't be guessed from the client, at least in the early stage of the game, it would add some spice to the game.
We could just set a min-max range (if the values are numbers), and here you are your unknown (with some limitations) world.
1st candidate options would be:
1. landmass - this can't be a big range, of course, cause it directly affect game length, but I would say it could be some +-20% of the average we select.
2. poles
3. temperature
4. water
5. mountains
but one can think of many other values from non-geographical options.
I think this is very easy to implement.
If the randomized value can't be seen by players, and can't be guessed from the client, at least in the early stage of the game, it would add some spice to the game.
We could just set a min-max range (if the values are numbers), and here you are your unknown (with some limitations) world.
1st candidate options would be:
1. landmass - this can't be a big range, of course, cause it directly affect game length, but I would say it could be some +-20% of the average we select.
2. poles
3. temperature
4. water
5. mountains
but one can think of many other values from non-geographical options.
I think this is very easy to implement.
-
Grendel
- Member
- Posts: 32
- Joined: Thu Jan 01, 1970 12:00 am
I would love to play a hex game. I also believe it is superior to squares for tactical games, as long as you don't need right angles for rooms or bldgs. I am intrigued by the idea of creating a large hex tileset, so I'm going to try. I've never tried to make a tileset before so I imagine it will be a while. It's probably going to look pretty blocky too.
-
monamipierrot
- Member
- Posts: 106
- Joined: Thu Jan 01, 1970 12:00 am