Longturn.net

akfaew

Administrator

Posts: 622

I resign

I accept I have lost, I resign from playing further.

Until now every time I lost I said "This was a fair fight, but I lost against a better player, I have much to learn". This game I cannot say that.

Marduk

Administrator

From: Rotterdam, Netherlands

Posts: 151

Re: I resign

Fair enough. I think LT30 is very useful in showing the need for us to think deeply about fixing some exploits and loopholes. The bigger the game, the more obvious the need for fixing them.

I think everyone is willing to help figure out which exploits are just "funny loopholes" and which really need to be blocked with rules and patches. Let's not point fingers at those who have used tricks in LT30, but invite them to debate this and fix it.

Specifically:
- scripting for automatic unit movement and attack should either be a standard function for all players, or it should be made impossible

- same with scripts that extract more information from the Freeciv server than is available to other players (like detecting unit movements)

- I think the "fighter + land unit" combination is way too dominant in the game. It causes wars to drag on enormously and reduces the value of land units. Also it strongly favors players who play 24/7 or use scripts. Longturn is supposed to be playable with 15 minutes/day, but that makes it impossible to use this very poweful trick.

For those who don't know: if you put a land unit in a fortress and add a fighter (air unit), then enemy land units cannot attack it. The enemy can only destroy this blockade by using air units, which will first have to destroy all land units and will only then target the fighter. This can be literatally impossible in practice (e.g. with an alpine on mountain). In short-turn Freeciv this is not an issue since with short turns it's impossible to move a fighter in and out of the fortress to prevent it from crashing at turnchange. So it's an unintended feature that only works in Longturn, and I think it is a bug rather than a feature.

Solution: if an air unit attacks a stack of land units + an air unit, let it target the air unit first (so the fighter kills the enemy fighter, and then land units can destroy the defending land units).

pekka

Player

Posts: 22

Re: I resign

AKFEW, I disagree with your this statement: "This was a fair fight, but I lost against a better player, I have much to learn. This game I cannot say that". Be honest, you where simply outsmarted by a much more powerful strategy. Maybe its true that some players that have left and are now leaving LT30 by themselves are superior players.  But face it, the lesser skilled players compensated their lack in abilities by forming a much more powerful alliance. That is also a kind of skill.

This game has been a game where 2 different playingstyles have been clashing together. I think Monamipierrot did nail it in an otiher post on LT forum: "I liked the fact that for the 1st time in traditional LT, a giant "peace" alliance of "simciters" was strong enough to face some of the Top10 and most aggressive players of all times,  despite of the winner limit. It was the proof that some alternative play style is possible. "Winning" this way, if you like this kind of winning, is also possible."
However not that gracefully and dignifyed as winning by going on a solo rampage.

I think I/you/we anticipated the finnish player-community to play much more agressive than they did, and my/your/our strategy was dependent upon players to behave much more agressive than they did. Seen in a retrospective light, the only way I/you/we could match "a giant peace-alliance of simciters" was if we created "a giant war-alliance of warriors".  In retrospective light, we should have made a alliance with a lot more players, e.g. I should have teamed up with Terror-team at an earlier stage.  But as I understand that was not possible, because some players (Terror) wanted to win this game solely by themselves. And that post on JHH blog did leave me with a bad taste in my mouth.  On the other side, that post did bring some adrenaline and spirit into the game..

But, I think there has been some "game-improvements" that I personally do not consider a great display of "sportmanship". Active or passive, its the same shit in my eyes. Seen in this light, I totally agree with AKFEW's statement.

I fear Im hijacking your thread. I have been thinking about posting some suggetions on the LT-forum. This thread look just as good as any other thread, so here it comes:

First:
Im a little confused. Exactly how many players can be in one alliance at any given time in LT30? I understand there is a max limit set for the "winning" alliance to 10 players.  But is is possible for 50+ players to form an intermediate alliance to fight off the rest, and then dissolve itself when this task is accomplished?  I fear this is the current situation in LT30. We have one big peaceful cooperating where everybody is whatching eachothers back (using all sorts of scripts),  freeing up recources to engage in a science-race. Personally I think this is taking some of the fun out of the game.  Theoretically an alliance may choose flexibility and stop at 8 players to leave 2 slots open for others players to join. What benefit would that yield, when the rest made a 50+ or something cooperation. Two excellent players did summarize the logical outcome of this kind of strategy:
[18:04:15] <Wieder> The game is not over yet, but anyway.. It would be nice to know what makes things so bad
[18:04:30] <Elrik> in some way it is over
[18:04:56] <Elrik> especially after smashing KG
[18:04:58] <Elrik> it is over
[18:05:15] <Elrik> now it is only killing the rest and then limiting alliance to size 10:)

If we are to adapt our strategy to future LT-games using current rules we need to gather as many players in our alliance as fast as possible.  If we dont harvest players on our side, they will join an other cooperation. I think there must be set a limit for the size of a alliance for the whole game,  not only winning the game. If an alliance had a max on 10 players at any given time, then a decision to leave 2 open slots would make sense..

Second:
I think there should be some limitations on diplomacy. I think the game will benefit if it there was some limitations on e.g. trading tech.   It should only be possible to trade tech between players whitin an alliance. Not like now, where tech is traded totally without restrictions. This will slow down science-race sufficiently to avoid the race for howitzers/nukes that this game turned into. With this kind of restrictions in place, then waiting with attack until nukes arrive will probably not pay off in the same way as with current rules. Pushing too hard on science will have a higher risk, it may backfire because you may get attacked long before nukes arrive. Then war with lower-tech weapons can re-emerge as a viable strategy.

I think there must be done something with the rules to rebalance future LT-games. What are your opinions?

And last:
For those of you that did not understand why I think this rules/strategy is braindead and lame:
In the 90-ties there appared a new kind of reality-series in Norwegian television. You may have heard of series like "Big Brother", "Paradise Island" and "Robinson Ekspeditionen"
Generally its a kind of 2 staged game. First a competiton involving teams, and later on an individual basis. The competition basicly boils down to a situation where the "weak" participants conspire to get rid of the "strong". In first (teamed) stage the "weak" teams cooperate to get rid of the "strongest" team. In second (individual) stage the weak players conspire to get rid of the assumed strongest player, 1 by 1. This is a powerful strategy, and the winner usually end up beeing a blonde white-trash bimboo that usually has more beauty than their brain can handle. But of course, she would have fooled me into submission any time. Who can resist the true assets a blode blue-eyed norwegian girl?

So, if you still dont get it:
The strategy of hording players to get enough leverage to get rid of the assumed strongest players are just as refined as the strategy these players invent in these "brain-dead" reality-series. If that is what you want, that is what you get. Braindead, but still powerful..

---
Pekka

Edit:
Marduk, you where faster than me posting first reply to AKFEW. And as always, more diplomatic in your wording. A true gentleman
I hope you censor my post, Im just shooting from the hip..

Last edited by pekka (2012-05-05 12:16:39)

kevin551

Player

Posts: 360

Re: I resign

The "brain-dead" strategy you refer to was also the freeciv AI strategy for many years. It is known as the 'lobster approach'.

When a lobsterman leaves a trap out in the sea and can't get to it for a while, he will find the remains of many lobsters, but only one survivor.
You might think that the survivor of the lobster-battles would be the biggest lobster, but actually it will always be the SECOND-SMALLEST.
That's because when there are a bunch of lobsters in the tank, they always gang up on the biggest one first, until there are only two left, and then the bigger one wins.

jhh

Player

Posts: 79

Re: I resign

Until now every time I lost I said "This was a fair fight, but I lost against a better player, I have much to learn". This game I cannot say that.

I disagree that this wouldn't have been fair fight. Both sides were using same exploitations (except what Terror did).

Only difference is that now there was more new players, map is bigger and the game is longer in time.

Also I don't like the way you are talking like joining in an alliance makes us less good players, or winning other players like that. It doesn't make any sense in a multiuser game. Especially since you were actively attacked with less than 5 players and that's within your own size AFAIK.

elrik

Player

Posts: 108

Re: I resign

(...)
Two excellent players did summarize the logical outcome of this kind of strategy:
[18:04:15] <Wieder> The game is not over yet, but anyway.. It would be nice to know what makes things so bad
[18:04:30] <Elrik> in some way it is over
[18:04:56] <Elrik> especially after smashing KG
[18:04:58] <Elrik> it is over
[18:05:15] <Elrik> now it is only killing the rest and then limiting alliance to size 10:)
If we are to adapt our strategy to future LT-games using current rules we need to gather as many players in our alliance as fast as possible.  If we dont harvest players on our side, they will join an other cooperation. I think there must be set a limit for the size of a alliance for the whole game,  not only winning the game. If an alliance had a max on 10 players at any given time, then a decision to leave 2 open slots would make sense..

Thanks for calling me excellent:) Making alliance too big can make that there is no target for your army:D Balance is the key - how fast can you kill someone, how much can you earn, is it better to ally him.

(...)
Second:
I think there should be some limitations on diplomacy. I think the game will benefit if it there was some limitations on e.g. trading tech.   It should only be possible to trade tech between players whitin an alliance. Not like now, where tech is traded totally without restrictions. This will slow down science-race sufficiently to avoid the race for howitzers/nukes that this game turned into. With this kind of restrictions in place, then waiting with attack until nukes arrive will probably not pay off in the same way as with current rules. Pushing too hard on science will have a higher risk, it may backfire because you may get attacked long before nukes arrive. Then war with lower-tech weapons can re-emerge as a viable strategy.

We have seen that problem long ago and we already solved that(maybe not in perfect way but... who cares:) ) with techloss. It is disabled in this game. It bring 2 chances of loosing tech:
1. when you give/allow to steal/conquer
2. when you get/steal/conquer
You can play team game too(diplomacy only inside team made before game start) or a game without diplomacy(we had those too)

(...)
I think there must be done something with the rules to rebalance future LT-games. What are your opinions?

we should worry more about problems Marduk wrote about. Other problems has been already solved and we only need to use those solutions:)

Marduk

Administrator

From: Rotterdam, Netherlands

Posts: 151

Re: I resign

I wrote a poll to address the client modifications. There's some problem with poll creation so I'll first put it up for discussion here, and open the poll as soon as the problem is fixed.

-----------------------------------
Client modifications have caused a great deal of debate in LT30, and current rules are too vague to provide clarity.

This poll proposes that by default all local client modifications are banned. However players can request through a poll for individual modifications to be allowed. If approved, the modification must be usable for all players interested in it.

Hence it is proposed to replace:

"1.9: Many players have local client modifications (patches). This is acceptable, as long as automatic attack, moves or similar functionality is not implemented."

by:

"1.9: Using any local client modification is banned, unless it has been explicitly approved before the start of the game. Players can request for a modification to be used, under the following conditions:
a) a description of all functions of the modification is posted on the website
b) all necessary files for operating the modification are made available to all users, including explanation of how to operate it
c) a poll requesting use of the modification is approved by the players
d) the server admin agrees that the modification does not harm the server"
---------------------------------------

That leaves the issue of fighter+land unit blockades. Could someone estimate if this is easy to change (by making fighters attack other fighters first)?

monamipierrot

Player

Posts: 171

Re: I resign

You may have heard of series like "Big Brother", "Paradise Island"
..

This gave me an OT idea. Reality tv shows have almost always very similar structure/rules: there's only one winner, and players have to kick out each other and grow more aggressive to the end of  the game.
This is for 2 reason:
1. Sadly, lack of imagination by show authors.
2. If you don't put people against each other, there's no fun.

So, I propose to spice up the game by entry a new rule, taken from all the Big Brother crap, just because we don't have time to think of something better (which I believe it does exist).
The rule could be this:
Every x (5)? turns a UN Council is opened and a poll is created. One player - one vote *or* one score point - one vote. Each one choose a Champion. Between the 2 most voted "champion", one will leave the game. This can be voluntarily or by "natural" circumstances (i.e. war between champions and their new "allies" which may also be destroyed in the circumstance). After only 1 champion left, the council will be opened again and a new Champions poll is created, and so on, till we have only 10 "winners".

Marduk

Administrator

From: Rotterdam, Netherlands

Posts: 151

Re: I resign

Pekka and Monami, I think those ideas don't really fit in this thread. There are some concrete issues that must be solved asap so let's focus on that. You're free to open a new thread with more radical ideas like big brother elections and such (it would help to list those ideas with a short summary so it's easy for people to see what you're discussing, most people don't read long posts).

pekka

Player

Posts: 22

Re: I resign

Pekka and Monami, I think those ideas don't really fit in this thread. There are some concrete issues that must be solved asap so let's focus on that. You're free to open a new thread with more radical ideas like big brother elections and such (it would help to list those ideas with a short summary so it's easy for people to see what you're discussing, most people don't read long posts).

I promissed some players a post, so I did it. And yes, the beauty-contest element of the meassage was a polemic element, not to be taken too serious. And its not a suggestion for a feature for freeciv. I would of course never share blue-eyed norwegian.. Just to make a point..

That said, I think you really should consider the alliance limit carefully. And also limitations on diplomacy.

Pekka

pekka

Player

Posts: 22

Re: I resign

Ladies and Gentlemen..

<Aloril> :how do you differentiate between saving map in client from using screen capture + photoshot + editing map manually?
I will tell you the difference: A PC can do this easily 24 times pr second 24/7. I humanly possible cant.

<Wieder> Yes.. About that autoattack: it's a bit strange to complain about Aloril being online 24/7 because Terror was doing the exactly same thing OR he was using autoattack
Wieder, this is a question of who came first. The egg or the hen? If its true Aloril was online 24/7,
then the only logical countermessure is to to start beeing online 24/7 yourself. And lets not underestimate Terror here. Terror did notis the smell, there was something shitty going on, players staying online 24/7. And for heavens sake, lets not play innocent, some of you have already admitted using logging script. The questions of who did what, and who threw the first stone, is a futile argument.
If you start walking down this path, I will make sure to remind you that you can not throw shit at Akfaew and Terror, unless you are willing to take some heat yourself.

On the other hand:
I think scripts and improvements ultimately will make freeciv client better. Dont stop coding, but let us not reduce this to a coding-contest.  Lets share new ideas and improve the game. It's a question about sportmanship and gentlemens agreement. If you introduce these kind of improvements during a game, without giving any information, dont expect your fellow players to treat you as equal gentlemen. Be prepared to take some blame. 

I think Marduk idea about having a vote for new improvements during a game is the logical solution. Maybe it could be possible to download stuff here on LT webpage?

Gentlemen, what are we playing for? Money, fame and glory, or just for the fun of it? Lets introduce a gentlemens agreement. Lets have a game where we all are on the same level. In the *gentle art of the defend*, boxing, there is certain moves that are not allowed, even if its possible. Punches beneath the belt, back of the head and uses of elbows are not considered good sportmanship, even if its easy, effective and possible. If you show some sportmanship, just post your improvements here on LT-forum. Come on boys, I know you have a boxer in you.

Pekka

Last edited by pekka (2012-05-05 16:05:52)

jhh

Player

Posts: 79

Re: I resign

And for heavens sake, lets not play innocent, some of you have already admitted using logging script. The questions of who did what, and who threw the first stone, is futile argument.

Let's not forget that Longturn rules say quite clearly that many users use scripts in longturn.org. Some of us from finnish community thought that was the normal way of longturn. You cannot say we made something wrong if we just did what we thought was normal in longturn (as does the rules say and as does other longturn veterans do).

Dont stop coding, but let us not reduce this to a coding-contest.

I don't like this coding contest at all. Sadly, usually only response from Akfaew and you guys to problems is "change the code". :-)

It's a question about sportmanship and gentlemens agreement. If you introduce these kind of improvements during a game, without giving any information, dont expect your fellow players to treat you as equal gentlemen. Be prepared to take some blame.

These changes we have made has existed a long time. The patches talked publicly here were already in use in warclient from where they have been ported to 2.3 and are nothing really new or put in action during this game. Terror was using these patches in LTex23 from where we got our original patches from him. (Although I have never used them and some -- like the production thing -- should be made into upstream by a GNA feature request. That's on my list to put in GNA next time I find time and will to do more GNAs.)

Gentlemen, what are we playing for? Money, fame and glory, or just for the fun of it?

Of course for fun.

pekka

Player

Posts: 22

Re: I resign

You may have heard of series like "Big Brother", "Paradise Island"
..

This gave me an OT idea. Reality tv shows have almost always very similar structure/rules: there's only one winner, and players have to kick out each other and grow more aggressive to the end of  the game.
This is for 2 reason:
1. Sadly, lack of imagination by show authors.
2. If you don't put people against each other, there's no fun.

So, I propose to spice up the game by entry a new rule, taken from all the Big Brother crap, just because we don't have time to think of something better (which I believe it does exist).
The rule could be this:
Every x (5)? turns a UN Council is opened and a poll is created. One player - one vote *or* one score point - one vote. Each one choose a Champion. Between the 2 most voted "champion", one will leave the game. This can be voluntarily or by "natural" circumstances (i.e. war between champions and their new "allies" which may also be destroyed in the circumstance). After only 1 champion left, the council will be opened again and a new Champions poll is created, and so on, till we have only 10 "winners".

THAT would be something
Its the only logical step..
Comon Marduk, dont be a party-break..

pekka

elrik

Player

Posts: 108

Re: I resign

Its better to focus on what can be made fast:) Too many new ideas can`t bring fast solutions. So please focus on ltex game:) most probles is already solved there:
1. move logging - you can do it 1 hour per day
2. autoattack - look at point 1
3. science sharing - tech loose possible AND (*NEW setting cancelresearch ) - if you steal tech or get it from other players, and that is tech what are you researching then next tech you start with 0 bulbs researched
4. string alliances - the bigger alliance the harder to maintain - try to make an attack together having only 1 hours per day:)
5. democracy overpowered - there is no rapture
6. TC roads - (*NEW setting roadbuild ) - time to turn change when road or rail might be build on unclaimed terriory or other player territory, default 4 hours

the only serious problem left are fighters. I am pretty sure i read some solution in ex game but i can`t find it now

To all who think that 1 hour is too few. With limited alliances it is more than enough. Its just some more talks behind game and a bit more organisation. But smaller and good organised alliances will have advantage there

Last edited by elrik (2012-05-05 18:02:05)

Kryon

Administrator

Posts: 370

Re: I resign

the only serious problem left are fighters. I am pretty sure i read some solution in ex game but i can`t find it now

The new ruleset we're testing in LTex fixes that. The ruleset description text says "Unreachable units do not protect reachable ones.". Also "Road/Railroads can't be used in enemy territory. "

elrik

Player

Posts: 108

Re: I resign

I knew i saw it somewhere:)

Marduk

Administrator

From: Rotterdam, Netherlands

Posts: 151

Re: I resign

the only serious problem left are fighters. I am pretty sure i read some solution in ex game but i can`t find it now

The new ruleset we're testing in LTex fixes that. The ruleset description text says "Unreachable units do not protect reachable ones.". Also "Road/Railroads can't be used in enemy territory. "

Awesome, that all sounds like music to my ear!

Does the unreachable unit fix seem stable? No strange side-effects? If so, please inform Akfeaw so we can enable it as standard setting in all games (no voting needed since it's a bug fix).

About using roads in enemy territory, feel free to open a poll to enable this in LT31 (again, if it seems stable).

Point 3, 5 and 6 in Elrik's post: polls for LT31 are more than welcome, I'll vote in favor of all of them.

akfaew

Administrator

Posts: 622

Re: I resign

the only serious problem left are fighters. I am pretty sure i read some solution in ex game but i can`t find it now

Terror intended to add a patch to ltex23b (after fighters are researched there) to autoreturn fighters after a couple of minutes of inactivity. But he became a martyr and died for a cause, he will never implement it now.

Marduk

Administrator

From: Rotterdam, Netherlands

Posts: 151

Re: I resign

the only serious problem left are fighters. I am pretty sure i read some solution in ex game but i can`t find it now

Terror intended to add a patch to ltex23b (after fighters are researched there) to autoreturn fighters after a couple of minutes of inactivity. But he became a martyr and died for a cause, he will never implement it now.

But that still leaves the solution of making it impossible for unreachable units to block a land attack?

monamipierrot

Player

Posts: 171

Re: I resign

About using roads in enemy territory, feel free to open a poll to enable this in LT31 (again, if it seems stable).

Are we sure we shouldn't use roads in enemy territory? I think it would be much better to inhibit workers/engineers to work in any way land in enemy territory (saves from both TC roads and fortress, so we can revert and cancel the prefortress feature which is very annoying).
We can also implement both things (no roads usage in enemy territory + no working enemy land) but I'd rather change the "no road usage" into something more like a usage limitation, e.g. to estabilish some alternative ZOC usage, called the "road-ZOC" (you can use an enemy road/railroad only if BOTH tiles are free from enemy ZOC, otherwise you can still move but road/railroad will not "work" for you)
Sorry if this went quite OT, again.

Kryon

Administrator

Posts: 370

Re: I resign

Does the unreachable unit fix seem stable? No strange side-effects? If so, please inform Akfeaw so we can enable it as standard setting in all games (no voting needed since it's a bug fix).

We'll have to wait until fighters to test that. Or someone can start a short-turn single-player game with new ruleset and test it much quickly.

Robodave

Player

Posts: 12

Re: I resign

I think LT30 had several problems, but they're spread across several levels of metagame.

1) Account and server security: This should be taken for granted.  We shouldn't even need rules like "don't hack other people's accounts", because it's a common-sense agreement.  Anyone that deliberately compromises system security should be immediately, and permanently, banned (which is what happened).

2) Game rules: The LT30 ruleset allowed for some unintuitive tactics.  While fighter stacks aren't a bug, exactly, they are an unintended consequence of the intersection of several rules and should be fixed with ruleset changes.

3) Sportsmanlike conduct: Auto-attack, client scripting, and maximum login time.  It would be nice if we could address these issues with a gentleman's agreement, but I support the login time limit per turn.

4) In-game diplomacy: I was in a 10-member alliance, which then allied with several other alliances to deal with shared threats.  I don't see any problem with this.  If we hadn't seen such a strong external threat, we wouldn't have banded together to address it.  Now that the threat is gone, I expect that we'll either elect 10 winners or dissolve into in-fighting.

bluemoth

Player

Posts: 4

Re: I resign

For the fighter stack issue, is it possible to allow land units to attack land units irrespective of fighters being in the stack, Land units cannot attack fighters and so when they attack a stack of land units and fighters, only the land units should be considered in the attack.

I don't know how hard this it to implement.

Ceeers.

mrsynical

Player

Posts: 171

Re: I resign

And for heavens sake, lets not play innocent, some of you have already admitted using logging script. The questions of who did what, and who threw the first stone, is futile argument.

Let's not forget that Longturn rules say quite clearly that many users use scripts in longturn.org. Some of us from finnish community thought that was the normal way of longturn. You cannot say we made something wrong if we just did what we thought was normal in longturn (as does the rules say and as does other longturn veterans do).

The issue is not the scripting, it is the use of the script 24/7. I don't even care about auto-attack, if you are not logged in 24/7. If you are logged in for ~1 hr does it really care if you use auto-attack?

mrsynical

Player

Posts: 171

Re: I resign

For the fighter stack issue, is it possible to allow land units to attack land units irrespective of fighters being in the stack, Land units cannot attack fighters and so when they attack a stack of land units and fighters, only the land units should be considered in the attack.

I don't know how hard this it to implement.

Ceeers.

This is not the solution. Fighters shouldn't be allowed to sit in the open for 23 hrs at a time.