Longturn Forum

jhh wrote:

mrsynical wrote:Can you please explain how you accidentally teleported?

This happened because we have been trying to form an alliance with all who want. That requires first to establish cease-fires, since alliance cannot be made if you are in war with one of the other in alliance.

We cannot use peace since it would not allow us to travel those areas on map and makes a lot of problems when the armistice runs out and units get disbanded (not teleported, as it was before). Actually just the same problem that hapens from cease-fire, but in cease-fire, it's not direct reason.

What we didn't take in account was that cease-fires running out would also make hundreds of units auto disbanded if some alliances would be turned to peace since some of the members were changed to war state and those treaties invalidated.

For example, for me, there was none units teleported (AFAIK). All disbanded. Including British partisan on the sea escaping from my old lands in an ally ship, when that alliance was broken, and peace doesn't allow units inside friends ship. If there would have been land, it would have moved there, but there was no land. So disbanded, not teleported.

I've heard that there is still some situations where the teleportation hapens but we have not used that on purpose.

In summary, breaking an alliance moves your units out of your former ally's cities. If there's no free tiles in range, the units disband.

I had a cease-fire that expired, and didn't realize that it would cancel alliances with all of his allies. A few turns later, several of my allies had alliances broken when Terror hacked them.

mrsynical wrote:

IllvilJa wrote:

akfaew wrote: * staying online 24/7 (1.8)

First, this is NOT strictly forbidden, it's just a recommendation using the word 'courtesy' etc. Second, with a madman like Wieder in ingame chat, you keep your client logged on only to see what madness he produces. Actually, the ingame chat is there and a good reason one stays logged in. And no, IRC channels on the internet is not the same. Not everyone in the game are on those, but everyone in the game is in the ingame chat.

And yes, having the freeciv client constantly humming is a convenient way to play the game when being in a hurry. A few moves there, some chat there, spending 30 seconds answering an occasional diplomatic meeting that pops up etc.

So I'm inclined to say thanks for the recommendation but I'll continue be logged in. I can tell you guys in chat when I go to work and when I'm back so you can overrun my nation safely .

(If it changed so this rule is phrased that staying online too much is prohibited, then I'll comply, but then, I think we should have a server side restriction on how much time we are allowed to stay online).

Personally, I would like this rule to go as well.

WTF? Are you serious? You just choose to ignore this one, and say it doesn't really count cause it doesn't suit you?

No NOT everybody is in the game chat. Most people actually log out when they have done their moves. Most people don't want to see your crap on the chat line, we would rather see our messages and the messages from our own allies.

Looks like there will be a time limit for future games just for you. Enjoy.

This is my thought much before beginning LT30. To limit the connection of a player is simply absurd.
We have enough to watch out for idlers, or people playing too few turns. We can't forbid people to play TOO MUCH. Doesn't make sense. I think we can't limit the time on the sole account of the game being somewhat more fair for other people. Will we then limit brain usage for smarter players to make the game more fair? Come on! If you have time to waste, you have more chance to win. That's fair. This doesn't make the game better for you, nor worse for me.
I have no time to waste, and I like games even when I don't win. My ego doesn't depend on LT, as I hope all of yours don't.
I want to be online all day because my PC is online all day, my email, FB, skype etc. etc. accounts are online ALL DAY and I HATE to connect/disconnect, cause I live and work in the cloud. Full stop.
Please don't make me disconnect just to "please" enemies. It doesn't make sense. I never tried to attack someone when he is offline. Never cared about that. It would be better NOT TO KNOW when someone is online.
And again, IllvilJa is right. The statement says "courtesy". IMHO it's not even a courtesy but... You know, it is a courtesy not to swear in a church, althou you're not a believer. I wWill "courtesily" not swear in a church, but this doesn't make me a believer. So if you ask me "please" disconnect, I'll disconnect. But this is NOT and will NEVER be a sacred rule. I will be an act of "courtesy" for you, who believe that disconnecting is more fair.

I don't want to justify any kind of forbidden script, I'm personally very far of using them, as I've got enough with logging in, doing my moves and logging out; but there are many players who doesn't need these features because they are online all day. I don't know why it isn't clear in the rules too.
In my opinion, all are in the same boat. It totally breaks the "spirit" of longturn and it's even more harmful than scripts.
How many scripts are needed to make possible to do all you can do staying online all day? (filling in cities being attacked, logging movements, etc)

One more thing.
The "spirit" of LT is not to play 15 minutes/day. To play 15 minutes/day is the ADVANTAGE of LT (comparing with a short-turn game). Advantage, because you can perfectly play 15min/day, have a life, and still have chances to win.
I believe the "spirit" of LT is to have a big, complex, brain-usage-demanding (maybe one of the most complex of all times?) game against human opponents which are supposed not to be crap AI, and that believe to be (and maybe ARE) smarter than you. Unfortunately (?) everyone of us have a life so it will be impossible to interact altogether at the same time. Forget about it.
The advantage of turns - and of LONG turns - comes exactly here: that you can "connect" your client and your brain to the game once in a day and take almost all the decisions the game needs.
The number of players makes impossible to make "one player at a time" turns, so we have to move "at the same time" (23 hours). This partially collide with some of the original game mechanics, which come from a game (Civilization I) which is strictly "one (AI) player at a time". That way spies and undefendend travelling units were not in danger. Now they are. Big attacks were easier. Now they are not.
Another side effect are the "illegal" double TC-moves or tactics. I agree that the 10h/delay is a good way to avoid making double moves, but I don't think we have to put more and more "artificial" limitations to players (or other "patch") to somewhat fix some exploitable game mechanics. Side effects of those patch could be much worse than what they want to fix.
Come on, if we put 30' as a maximum per-turn connection, we can say goodbye to one of the best part of LT: diplomacy/intelligence, for the simple reason that it is very unlikely I can arrange a meeting with allies (or enemies) in a small window of 30' per day. This would not be better for people with a life. It would be WORSE because if they want to discuss something with allies or enemies they will maybe have to connect at a bad time of the day while being at work / with friends / with girlfriend etc. etc.

Waiting for the (good?) day in which we'll play against human-like AIs (which can wait for us weeks when we are on holiday and then play non-stop with us 3days long, if we just want), we'll have to play together between mortals and we need not to desencourage playing: we need to ENCOURAGE playing more, hopefully without creating monster-players without friends and who rarely see the sun because they need some 0,1% chance more to win the game. If playing more gives advantages.... let's give people those advantages. Keep those advantages as low as we can (if we really need to) but - again - please DON'T FORBID people to play more!!!!

Ok, sorry for the long talk. This went quite philosophical, but IMHO some of you take some positions without keeping in mind the whole picture (e.g. confusing an "advantage" with a "spirit" - sorry ifaesfu). Or maybe this is MY whole picture of LT games. I'd like to see yours, if it is very diffent from mine.

No sorries monamipierrot.
I think (or thought) that longturn games was intended for those people who don't wish/can't play freeciv during 4 hours long, that's why I talk about "spirit". It's nonsense to play longturn and to be online all day. It's better to play the warclient and play 30 games in a month instead of 1 each several ones.

The chat to form alliances and plan movements is just an excuse if the units of the enemy are killed while trying to do their movements. It has been happening since turn 1. People online 24/7 don't let the rest to play the game, it's as easy as that. You can't move your units freely, because you don't know and you don't mind if someone is at work, having a shower or reading comics. The only thing you know it's someone is in the game and probably will try to counteract your actions by killing the moving units, filling in the cities being attacked, etc. and this is, in my opinion, inadmissible.
What is the "smart" in defending cities rts? This isn't an advantage, it's a cheat.

ifaesfu wrote:I don't want to justify any kind of forbidden script, I'm personally very far of using them, as I've got enough with logging in, doing my moves and logging out; but there are many players who doesn't need these features because they are online all day. I don't know why it isn't clear in the rules too.
In my opinion, all are in the same boat. It totally breaks the "spirit" of longturn and it's even more harmful than scripts.
How many scripts are needed to make possible to do all you can do staying online all day? (filling in cities being attacked, logging movements, etc)

I'm pretty sure it was Terror who started to do things like that and it was Terror why we started to do things like that, too. I haven't been using it myself though. And I don't see any reason to use scripts like that now anymore.

Yes, my client is online most of the time, but that doesn't mean I do like you said:

I do not log (I did write SQL logger, but not used it here),
I don't even have sounds on (so I wouldn't notice if there is an attack),
I usually don't fill cities up in defence RTS-style (since I am not usually on PC when it hapens).

What ifaesfu has said is the general consensus of most longturn players - if you want to stay logged in all day, go and play warserver, it is a lot of fun. It makes a huge difference being able to attack your opponents when they are offline and this makes the game less like warserver, because you can execute your attack without having to worry about being counter-attacked as you do so (i.e. it is 'less RTS, more planning'). You guys continue to state that you don't think that this should be a rule, but it is and it always will be. In LT30 we would log off and get attacked, but we never got a chance to attack with you logged off. This is a huge advantage and one that has intentionally been discouraged from LT (although it always seems to happen in games Duncan plays :b).

The max-time per login is implemented in eX and appears to be working, so I guess that will put an end to the whole discussion regarding this point. In terms of terror using auto-attack: he has been banned from LT at the decision of the admins anyway. I think it was the wrong decision, but it's obviously the one that will keep most of you happy.

Close the thread, when the eX game has progressed a few more weeks and dude gets time, LT31 will begin and we can start all over again with new problems for people to bitch about.

I'm sorry for all that is happening, but I feel alleviated to know I'm not the greatest mf.
(Akfaew, I'm not coming back.)

akfaew wrote:Blah blah blah, I do evil things because Terror, I stay online because Terror, I RTS because Terror. Your next step is to hack peoples accounts jhh.

I never did anything that was illegal. Actually I didn't even use modified client or RTSed!

Staying online with the client was only thing I did but I'm not only one doing it, and I don't using it like you are complaining -- I am not playing all the time there.

So no units were teleported? Disbanded I understand (A good reason you shouldn't be trying to make super-alliance!). Why does robodave say he had units disbanded? even if not used on purpose

jhh wrote:

mrsynical wrote:Can you please explain how you accidentally teleported?

For example, for me, there was none units teleported (AFAIK). All disbanded. Including British partisan on the sea escaping from my old lands in an ally ship, when that alliance was broken, and peace doesn't allow units inside friends ship. If there would have been land, it would have moved there, but there was no land. So disbanded, not teleported.

I've heard that there is still some situations where the teleportation hapens but we have not used that on purpose.

mrsynical wrote:So no units were teleported? Disbanded I understand (A good reason you shouldn't be trying to make super-alliance!). Why does robodave say he had units disbanded? even if not used on purpose

I've heard that in some special cases units were teleported but there was a lot more units moved to adjacent tile or disbanded than teleported. Teleporting is some kind of bug in Freeciv, units shouldn't be teleported anymore. AFAIK I didn't have any of my own units teleported -- all my units were disbanded.

Some years ago in these situations the units were always teleported but that should be history already (but I guess it isn't, hence I think it's bug).

JHH, I see you have picked up some nasty tricks during the game:
https://groups.google.com/group/lt30/br ... f7b4?hl=en

pekka

pekka wrote:JHH, I see you have picked up some nasty tricks during the game:
https://groups.google.com/group/lt30/br ... f7b4?hl=en

All stealth fighters and stealth bombers are invisible unless you have an adjacent unit? Or am I missing something here?

pekka wrote:JHH, I see you have picked up some nasty tricks during the game

Nice videos. I was wondering why you were moving that mechinf back and forth there.

However I didn't learn this trick in this game. It is actually very old annoying feature that has been fixed with a server option in newer Freeciv and because of that I haven't been using it recently -- until now in LT30 where it works.

I made a blog post about it and other recent accusations:

http://www.freecivbook.com/blog/2012/05 ... -cheaters/

Yo man, and I replied this in your blog:

Nobody has claimed you are cheating. You are only using a feature in the game.
But on the other hand, so did these boys you where throwing a stone at:
”Update: To clarify the term cheating: I call it cheating to build roads under one minute before turn change and then using them right after to conquer cities. It’s abuse of the original game system. It just hasn’t been fixed in the server (yet). However it looks like this type of abuse is normal business in Longturn games. (It’s btw forbidden in our Finnish game rules as is much of the other abuses Longturn allows.)”

That said, I clearly remember one player coining this kind of playing beeing shitty, a great display of lack of sportmanship and a totally disregard of any “gentlemens agreement”.

pekka wrote:That said, I clearly remember one player coining this kind of playing beeing shitty, a great display of lack of sportmanship and a totally disregard of any “gentlemens agreement”.

As I did reply on the blog too, I don't think this is anything like double turning. If enabled it's just annoying feature of the game -- not exploitation of turn based game like building/purging roads are.

jhh wrote:

pekka wrote:That said, I clearly remember one player coining this kind of playing beeing shitty, a great display of lack of sportmanship and a totally disregard of any “gentlemens agreement”.

As I did reply on the blog too, I don't think this is anything like double turning. If enabled it's just annoying feature of the game -- not exploitation of turn based game like building/purging roads are.

Please elaborate your statement. E.g, exactly what is the difference? What is annoying, and where do a feature end? And where do shitty playing start? You are raising your voice over 5-sec of movements. Im raising my voice over 22 hours 59 min and 55sec game-movements. To me both movements are just as annoying.

pekka

pekka wrote:Please elaborate your statement. E.g, exactly what is the difference?

Generally turn-based games should be played one turn at the time. When you do your turn 5 secs before and 5 secs after TC, it's clearly exploiting the original idea of the game. There is nothing like that when you use SFs like that, since that is kind of their intended use, if those rules are enabled and active. You can also destroy SF+mechinf if you have enough power and will to use it. That's actually new thing, I think, since I recall it was years ago so that it was simply impossible to destroy if used in right combination.

pekka wrote:What is annoying, and where do a feature end?

We had one game years ago where SFs were in a key position. The game was ending in the next few turns (because of space flight). Ocean was so far a way that we couldn't make an attack over sea in time, so railroads were the only option. Sadly, they managed to place one SF blocking on one tile of only railroad to their land and that was the only thing between our alliance smashing their capital... so it's kind of annoying, but still, legal move in a game where fighters work that way.

JHH, you did not adress my key point: Im raising my voice over 22 hours 59 min and 55sec game-movements..
It simply stinks.

pekka

pekka wrote:JHH, you did not adress my key point: Im raising my voice over 22 hours 59 min and 55sec game-movements..
It simply stinks.

How is it really different than keeping ground or sea units in sentry? I understand what you mean but still I don't think it's so strange feature. Sure it's annoying for the party it is used against, yes, but surely intended feature of the game.

Actually years ago I recall fighters were disbanded if left outside cities. These days they simply move to the nearest city, hence that's clearly intended feature.