LT41 to start February 7th. Teamless, islands and more traditional

[wieder]

The next LT series game will be starting in February 7th 2018. The game is teamless and based on LT39 ruleset making it more traditional one with allied victory. The map will be islands based and one of the few changes to the ruleset includes that only marines can attack from the ships. Not swordsmen, musketeers or riflemen. Confirming participation will open when there is two weeks to the start.

Join here:

http://longturn.org/game/LT41/

[Sketlux]

What is the explanation against amphibious attacks?

[Corbeau]

Haven't ever in history been performed until marines came into existence?

[wieder]

We can keep that feature if people really want it. Removing the marine attack feature from the ancient units would be kind of reverting back to the original values and I'm not sure how happy people have been with this ability letting the experienced layers really easily to conquer others in just few turns.

The attacks would still be possible with triremes and with some planning. Just not that easy.

[Sketlux]

Corbeau, you should check the Wiki article on anphibious landings... "Recorded amphibious warfare goes back to ancient times..."

[Corbeau]

Are we talking about the landing or directly attacking the enemy army *while* landing?

[wieder]

There is historical realism for both adding and removing attacking from the ships. From the game play point of view it's more about making it possible to capture enemy cities in one turn. Capturing without units already able to reach the city from land.

While LT37 was really interesting game, it was kind of too fast for those players who lost half of the island in just minutes, without a chance to defend that well. Yeah, one should have reasonable defenses, but it kind of feels like that the attacks should be just slightly slower in the early game. Now it was move ships, kill defenders and take the city with one swordsmen.

It could be like this: unload units next to several cities, wait or the next turn and then clear one or few of those cities with ships. This would have almost the same effect but the defender would have a small chance of surviving even with tc unloading.

In any case, you can decide how this should be. My suggestion is to only allow marines to attack from the ships but then again this also works if the swordsmen can do it.

Comments are welcome

[Corbeau]

Remember the discussion about restrictinfra and why it is good for the game? I believe every argument from that discussion applies here, too. If there have been any landings directly into the city, I'm pretty sure there were less than five in 5000 years of history. I mean, successful ones. I actually think that there should be a setting that gives additional bonus if a city is attacked from the sea by land units. Would that be possible?

[Sketlux]

If you think about the Viking raids on villages, monasteries and cities I believe there were many raids where the attackers could park right in or next to the city. I got nothing against countermeasures like reducing the attack of a swordman to 3, walls or a primitive city structure against naval attacks. But taking away the naval component would not only be less realistic it would reduce much fun of the game -at least for me.

[Caedo]

Remember the discussion about restrictinfra and why it is good for the game? I believe every argument from that discussion applies here, too. If there have been any landings directly into the city, I'm pretty sure there were less than five in 5000 years of history. I mean, successful ones. I actually think that there should be a setting that gives additional bonus if a city is attacked from the sea by land units. Would that be possible?

I'm not sure if it's available in 2.5 (my guess is that it's not), but at least in newer versions, it's possible to create a Defend_Bonus (I believe it's called) effect that requires the attacking unit to not be on a livable tile. I'm not sure of the exact name of the requirement (something like UnitState at local range), but that should work.

[Corbeau]

If you think about the Viking raids on villages, monasteries and cities I believe there were many raids where the attackers could park right in or next to the city. I got nothing against countermeasures like reducing the attack of a swordman to 3, walls or a primitive city structure against naval attacks. But taking away the naval component would not only be less realistic it would reduce much fun of the game -at least for me.

Fair enough. In that case, I'd go with "port protection" or something, a cheap (20 shields max) and early improvement that becomes obsolete with, say, Ironclad. Because Vikings could only raid smaller cities, while attacking big ones it took considerable military preparation, and they definitely didn't sail directly into the port. Besides, it would be enough to have a large chain at the entrance to the port to prevent it.

[Sketlux]

Yeah, I had the chain in mind! But that only works for non-coastal river cities. Make the chain cheaper for river cities than the "port protection" for coastal cities. Would the chain make an attack impossible or give bonus to the defender?

[wieder]

Adding a port protection city improvement would not affect capturing the cities this way since the attacking units are ships. There is also a way to make it harder for the ships to attack cities if the player builds coastal defense improvement. The city walls are also ok but only work against units attacking from land or from ships.

The idea with attacking from the ships is not to attack the units. While it's possible to attack units and people will do that, the most devastating effect is the following:

1) choose an enemy city you want to take
2) attack the city with frigates and kill all the units inside
3) use one swordsmen to enter the city. no fighting. just entering directly from the ship
4) move better defensive units to the city

All this can be done in few minutes.

No with the change it would be like this:

1) choose an enemy city you want to take
2) land at least one unit able to enter the city
3) wait for the tc and the unitwaittime to end
2) attack the city with frigates and kill all the units inside
4) use the previously landed unit to enter the city
5) move more/better defensive units to the city

With the change it would be possible to attack from the sea with ships but the actual unit taking the empty city would need to be landed beforehand. That would give the defending player at least 10 hours to react.

[Corbeau]

I'm not sure if there is a game mechanic to make the attack impossible by building an improvement.

As for river/coastal, the chains usually protected also sea ports, not only rivers. Build two well protected piers and stretch a chain between them. That's how it was usually done.

As for river cities, I don't think the thing applies to them because, effectively, a unit attacking from a trireme standing on a neighbouring river tile is actually attacking from land. City Walls apply.

[wieder]

Probably not possible to prevent attacking from a ship with an improvement. That's why doing this would need removing the marine flag from the swordsmen.

And yeah, attacking from a trireme on a river equals to attacking from land.

City walls always protect against attacking land units unless the unit actually has a flag that will make it to ignore the walls in all cases.

[Corbeau]

Now replying to Wieder: the second solution is way better. However, Frigates completely killing of city units is very unrealistic. I was toying with the idea of "shore bombardment", giving most naval units "Bombarder" flag, but that would make purely naval battles a bit odd. But I still haven't discarded the idea.

Now, I wrote a lot more in this post, but I will start another topic because the... topic... is way more general.

Here:
http://forum.freeciv.org/f/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=89866

[fran]

Now replying to Wieder: the second solution is way better. However, Frigates completely killing of city units is very unrealistic. I was toying with the idea of "shore bombardment", giving most naval units "Bombarder" flag, but that would make purely naval battles a bit odd. But I still haven't discarded the idea.

Now, I wrote a lot more in this post, but I will start another topic because the... topic... is way more general.

Here:
http://forum.freeciv.org/f/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=89866

I like the idea of making all ships from frigate upwards bombarding, preferably only against land units,
but even without that restriction. Why should a ship on open sea shooting to land die? In exchange for
bombarder flag the attack strength could be drastically reduced. The only ships that would be able to kill would
be triremes, caravels and subs. triremes and caravels would never be obsoleted, and their attack strength could be increased. they can gain further power by veterancy.

[Corbeau]

No, no, no, you can't not make triremes obsolete. But, like I said, corvettes and DESTROYers can take the role of DESTROYing ships. Corvette paralel to frigate and Destroyer parallel to Cruisers and Battleships.

[Corbeau]

Just a thought... If there is a suboptimal number of players for LT41 for the next week, maybe consider making *this* game "experimental".

Because, to be honest, having started two games at the same time two months ago was a bit of a gamble and it's quite to be expected that less people are interested in starting another one right now. The April one may see a return to the old numbers, but I'd say that this one will probably be a bit more scarce than usual.