A new concept to Longturn games, scenario game

Post by **wieder** » Sun Jun 18, 2017 4:00 pm

We have few proposed scenarios for a new game. With this kind of game the map is pre-defined and known to all players when the game starts.

This game doesn't have a start date and it may take a while to be planned. The game could start August/September at the earliest but if more planning is needed, this may take more time.

One proposed scenario is German States 1871. More info can be found here.

http://forum.longturn.org/viewtopic.php?id=632

You can also propose other scenarios. At this point we should know if there is interest for this type of games and what kind of settings a game like this would need to work properly. Feel free to propose scenarios.

The ruleset will be probably based on LT38 but we can also use some other ruleset. There will be, probably, modifications to the selected ruleset. You can also propose changes needed for some specific scenario.

The map for the scenario game might need something like 6-15 players and the scenario/map can be selected for the number of players.

Since this is a new concept, it's probably not going to be ranking game but that doesn't mean there couldn't be winners.

Marduk · Post by **Marduk** » Tue Jun 20, 2017 8:35 pm

Sounds fun! Depending on the scenario these games could also finish faster. Short intense games are something many LT gamers crave for.

Post by **wieder** » Wed Jun 21, 2017 11:58 am

Indeed. They could end faster if some techs are known from the start and the games would have a smaller map.

Maybe we could even start a game with king units

People interested in playing a game like this, please reply here. It helps if we know how many interested players there are.

Sketlux · Post by **Sketlux** » Wed Jun 21, 2017 1:27 pm

Actually I had given up playing a scenario but since the actual possibility seems to be there...

Here again the the collection I have to offer:

http://forum.freeciv.org/f/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=809

Ive been updating most of the scenarios without updating the page. Varying the topography, players and many more things so the scenarios would be familiar but not totally predictable and there would be no necessity to reveal the map.

Post by **wieder** » Thu Jun 22, 2017 9:39 am

Stuff like this may take a long time to happen

Maybe we could start with a 6-10 player game and with some techs ready when the game starts. That because trying this stuff out with a maybe 40-50 turn game isn't too much and also gives us better idea about how to set up the next game.

Is some of the scenarios close to that?

Sketlux · Post by **Sketlux** » Thu Jun 22, 2017 3:24 pm

6-10 players is more something for the Spanish Civil War. But it could work mainly as a proof of concept and for people looking for a role play game since some forces only have limited capabilities on this map.

Post by **wieder** » Thu Jun 22, 2017 3:47 pm

Limited capabilities? Do you mean that changes are needed for the ruleset? The easiest way would be using a slightly modified LT38 ruleset but we can use some other one if it's already available, maybe?

Sketlux · Post by **Sketlux** » Thu Jun 22, 2017 4:40 pm

"Limited capabilities"

Depicting the Iberian peninsula I added Gibralta (Britain) and France north to the border plus countries that fought/helped in the Spanish Civil War and therefore are represented with units but without cities. Maybe to role-playish for the first game?

Im open for amputation of other scenarios. Caribbean Colonization is too unscenario-like in my opinion.

Post by **wieder** » Fri Jun 23, 2017 12:52 pm

The probem with nations with units only is conquering the cities. One way to deal with this would be giving those nations only ancient techs. That way the conquered cites would not be able to produce new units or at least units that are modern enough. Does this sound too weird?

Maybe we could test the scenario game with a very small and short game setup? Maybe editing some map for a limited number of players and playing a 10-20 turn game with 23h turns? Anyone interedted to play such a short game? It would be a non ranking game and we could plan the setup together.

Lord_P · Post by **Lord_P** » Fri Jun 23, 2017 2:00 pm

I would really like to play a Carribean Colonisation game.. it would be like both of Sid Meirs best games in one, Civ and Pirates

In fact I was thinking about how you could do something like that for a while, because combined units and ships is a lot of fun.
If I could find the time to set it up I would do something like this;

Create a game that hugely favours aggressive attacking play and makes defending very hard (No city defence bonus?), but in which cities can be captured undamaged, so rather than steady empire building cities and islands will change hands often as the game goes on.

Change how ships work so they are effectively all transports, but of different sizes and which can carry different units. So If you want a warship you have to make cannons and load them onto a galleon that can carry them.
Make all ships capturable, but with killstack off, so they are kind of like floating forts. To attack a ship you sail up to it then attack with cannons (Bombard damage only?) then board it with infantry until you kill the crew and capture it.
Ideally (I dont know if this would work) it should be possible to kill the defenders of a ship and then capture the ship and any remaining capturable units. Such as the cannons, workers, caravans or other good stuff the ship was carrying.

Keep tech, unit types and building types to just the pirate era with some limited ways in which research or buildings can improve them.
Make trade low and research/buy costs very high, but create a way for players to make large amounts of trade if they can successfully transport caravans further than a min distance. So successfully delivering trade to distant cities is the only real way to develop and improve, and is also the incentive for attacking and capturing each others ships.

The goal would be to create a very different game, which is much more dynamic, with territory, units and wealth being captured and lost all over the place as players build up fleets and try to control the sea.

You could create a bunch of government types with quite extreme differences, Pirate, Native, European Imperial, Independent Colonial etc. which each favour a particular aspect or style of play.

There used to be LTex games where players could join at any time, and I think this kind of game would be good for that. With a limited and slow tech tree it doesnt matter if you join late, it matters what you do with the units you have. If players are killed (And it should actually be really hard to hold territory and survive) they just 'respawn' in the ocean with a ship and crew and the chaos continues..

I guess the only way to 'win' such a game would be to hold all the cities for a certain number of turns while waves of respawning players keep arriving. Or maybe a rating system with things like "Longest surviving player" "Most trade delivered" "Most Ships captured" etc using data from the server.

Anyway....I have lots of crazy ideas but little time to get stuck into making rulesets.

A short game, or the German States one would also be fun

Sketlux · Post by **Sketlux** » Tue Jun 27, 2017 11:04 am

I guess in the end its better if we just take the German States Scenario and try to play it with as much players as possible. I guess the best way to proceed is to open the sign up process and then see how many will join. I can erase a few players who anyhow are too close together and make other changes if requiered when I roughly know how many are playing. The other scenarios require just too many house rules.
I would suggest to either limit alliances to 3 players or scrap alliances completely and only allow one winner since the map is rather small. Easy and conflict avoiding rules.

Sketlux · Post by **Sketlux** » Sat Jul 22, 2017 9:35 am

Wieder you think you could open the registrations? In my opinion there is enough interest here and once enough people registered we can do the adjustments.

Post by **wieder** » Sun Jul 23, 2017 11:20 am

Good idea. The signups are now open.

cgalik · Post by **cgalik** » Sun Jul 23, 2017 11:41 am

Also if you get too many players for a particular SG, you could just make two of the same scenario SG1a and SG1b.

Sketlux · Post by **Sketlux** » Thu Jul 27, 2017 3:30 pm

I noticed. Much of the nations in 2.3 are missing in 2.7 :-/

Sketlux · Post by **Sketlux** » Sat Aug 12, 2017 2:55 pm

The probem with nations with units only is conquering the cities. One way to deal with this would be giving those nations only ancient techs. That way the conquered cites would not be able to produce new units or at least units that are modern enough. Does this sound too weird?
Maybe we could test the scenario game with a very small and short game setup? Maybe editing some map for a limited number of players and playing a 10-20 turn game with 23h turns? Anyone interedted to play such a short game? It would be a non ranking game and we could plan the setup together.

Wieder, could we test the Spanish Civil War Scenario? 8 people have signed up so far for SG1 and almost all are playing LT38 so all of them are a reliable bunch. I think its ok if nations without cities can conquer cities and produce own units. We could use the ruleset of LT38 and play 10-20 to test the concept of scenario games and at a later date try a bigger one. I could send you the newest file, inform everybody and then we could start pretty soon.
What do you think?

Post by **wieder** » Tue Aug 15, 2017 2:30 pm

I thought about it maybe best to edit the German States 1871 scenario. Some "artistic freedom" needs to be taken, probably, meaning that some nations should be merged or edited out depending on how many players we get. While testing different scenarios would be preferable, it looks like that starting with one scenario, playing it and then playing it again for the second time with edits and fixes would really help balancing and understanding this scenario stuff.

The tech levels need to be set to allow the advanced start. Somehow it doesn't feel right to start with ancient techs.

Another question is tech trading and tech leakage. How to set those?

And the buildings... I'm not that familiar with that time period in Germany. I know the story of the unification and stuff but I have no idea about what kind of infra different states had around the time.

The city sizes are another issue. They should be something like 10-12 maybe. So that not too much time is needed to grow the cities. Not sure how big the cities were at the time...

Sketlux · Post by **Sketlux** » Thu Aug 17, 2017 1:52 pm

The tech levels need to be set to allow the advanced start. Somehow it doesn't feel right to start with ancient techs.

I disagree. I've played the scenario. It was fun to play it low tech and then sowly advance. High tech games are much faster. The map is relatively small, we would accelerate it disproportionately.
We are talking about the borders of 1872 because Freeciv offers mostly 18/19. century german states. But they were fighting internally for centuries so it doesnt feel to me strange to start the fight low tech.

Another question is tech trading and tech leakage. How to set those?

I like very much LT38, no trading but some leakage to give everyone a chance. We could use those settings.

And the buildings... I'm not that familiar with that time period in Germany. I know the story of the unification and stuff but I have no idea about what kind of infra different states had around the time.
The city sizes are another issue. They should be something like 10-12 maybe. So that not too much time is needed to grow the cities. Not sure how big the cities were at the time...

The Africa and Europe scenarios are much bigger and justify more infrastructure like rail. In German States Scenario the three cities you get are already connected by road plus one north south and an east west medieval long road connect all ends of the scenario. Also, the big rivers are all navegable by all kind of ships since they are made of lake tiles. It is enough.

As for the buildings. The cities are not edited since it is a huge work. I did it for the Europe Scenario in hours and hours of work and only for more easy available census data of 1900. Not doing it again. Specially since everybody will complain that the game is too unbalanced. City size 1 is not a bug, its a feature. Again, the smallenes of the scenario would give disproportionate strenght to impires with big cities. And if I would take the data from the 1900 Europe scenario the would be pure fiction aplied to 1871. There was huge population growth between 1871 and 1900! I reject using fantasy data.

I thought about it maybe best to edit the German States 1871 scenario. Some "artistic freedom" needs to be taken, probably, meaning that some nations should be merged or edited out depending on how many players we get. While testing different scenarios would be preferable, it looks like that starting with one scenario, playing it and then playing it again for the second time with edits and fixes would really help balancing and understanding this scenario stuff.

I can cut and glue it but since longturn has less nations than regular freeciv it is again difficult... I got a newer edited version of the German States version were I made improvements to the landscape.
I dont wanna take the completely surprise of exploring. We could start with the default version and in the end we would take the edited landscape version that nobody know besides me.

I made some work on the Africa scenario. It doesnt have the nations problem and there is still lots of exploring. Might be an alternative as well. It has edited 1900 tech but you still have to grow your empire and when the empires are flourishing it will be one huge war. If we wanna have fireworks from the beginning it has to be Europe 1900...

Post by **wieder** » Thu Aug 17, 2017 3:20 pm

[17:45:21] <(wieder)> opinions about ScenarioGame1?
[17:46:08] <(wieder)> There Will be some kind of advanced start, at least with pre-built cities
[17:46:18] <(wieder)> is that all that is needed?
[17:46:54] <(wieder)> there is no reason we couldn't start with size 1 cities and with no techs... just wondering...
[17:47:26] <(wieder)> Personally I would at least add some techs to everyone but we can of course do without that

Sketlux · Post by **Sketlux** » Thu Aug 17, 2017 4:28 pm

Perfect! I figured out how we can handle less players and evenly distribute land. I will work on it tomorrow and then send it to wieder.

Post by **wieder** » Thu Aug 17, 2017 4:42 pm

After we decide about the start date, there needs to be at least two week period of confirming participations. During that time more players can join the game. Probably best to merge nations only after confirmations are done.

Waiting is horror

but I would probably wait for more players. I'm not 100% sure if I will play and if there are more players who will not confirm, it might be a very small game. The summer is soon over even here and players will probably check for games later this month.

Sketlux · Post by **Sketlux** » Sat Aug 19, 2017 1:49 pm

I dont think much more people will join. Almost all were veteran players and most joined in the first days. Also, scenarios are very sensitive to idlers and newcomers are often idlers so I prefer quality over cuantity. We could start soon if you ask me! Anyhow we have to test how well this runs.

Yeah, I will position players once confirmations are through.

fran · Post by **fran** » Sat Aug 19, 2017 3:22 pm

What about fog of war here? Because the map is not random and the creator already knows it, it wouldn't be
unreasonable to set revealmap to true (or whatever that option is called). That would spare people the effort of
saving the map of the test game for reference ...

Sketlux · Post by **Sketlux** » Sat Aug 19, 2017 4:48 pm

No need for. You will recognize the map but since I changed so much of the map (moved rivers, altered pathways, added/deleted nations and changed a lot of tiles that it is unnecessary and would take away a fun thing to do: Explore! It can be useful to look at an older map for rough orientation but I think you will pretty fast know where you are even without looking at the map.
As for me, I wont take a look at the map, I will only have the memory of a map of an editors perspective wich is a lot different. Players will anyhow be randomly assigned. But most importantly I'm not a good player...