Longturn Forum

Due to reasons explained in various places, here, discord, in-game chat etc, LT44 will probably never be ended in a traditional way. However, since no ending post is written, it will continue running. Those players who wish to keep playing can do so.

Meanwhile we start preparations for launching LT45 very soon. LT45 could be started by mid August. We can open the signups tomorrow.

While signups for LT45 are open we can talk about what kind of game LT45 will be. The ruleset is based on LT44 and there will be no changes or very minimal ones. That's at least the current plan.

The options for LT45 are the following:

1) We will do a 5 team game if we can figure out who 5 team leaders we can have for picking the teams. One team leader picks at a time. The team leaders will be turned into regular players once the game starts. Obviously however they may have very good ideas about how to play so play with the team. If LT45 will be a team game, we need some ideas about how to handle idlers and what to do with replacement players.

2) If the teams can't be figured out early enough LT45 will be teamless. This means having 5 team leaders who are willing to pick in discord, email or with irc in real time when the signups close. We need to know this about 10 days before the end of signups.

We try to avoid idlers and especially with the team game option we may require signup, confirmation on the web page and also a possible reply to admins's e-mail. The e-mail may or may be required and it will be sent to the e-mail address you have given. This is just to make sure you are there

Thanks!

Are you going to play? You should.

I think we should just reboot with reshuffled teams, and cut expected idlers. It's clear that at least half the people in a 2 team game are satisfied with the balance. As long all the good players who are actually going to play are there from the team draft I promise not to complain unless pablo or book come back out of retirement to take an idle hut.

zoltan wrote:I think we should just reboot with reshuffled teams, and cut expected idlers. It's clear that at least half the people in a 2 team game are satisfied with the balance. As long all the good players who are actually going to play are there from the team draft I promise not to complain unless pablo or book come back out of retirement to take an idle hut.

By "reboot" do you mean use the same map and spawn locations, or just start a new game with the same rules/settings?

Always different map, Hans.

New 2 team game sounds good to me. Then can keep tech trading the same. Otherwise with non-two team game we need to rethink tech cost style 3 (exponential bulb growth). And that will take time.

Only change needed for 2 team game needed is nations should be scattered placement, not two team blobs. This will have a lot more action than just a few fronts.

cgalik wrote:Always different map, Hans.

New 2 team game sounds good to me. Then can keep tech trading the same. Otherwise with non-two team game we need to rethink tech cost style 3 (exponential bulb growth). And that will take time.

Only change needed for 2 team game needed is nations should be scattered placement, not two team blobs. This will have a lot more action than just a few fronts.

Not sure about scattered placement. Any clusters that form could give a strong local advantage. That said, I do think that the teams should be a bit more intermingled. What about a Checkerboard? Each team will be split into two groups, and with X/Y wrapping, every half will be "surrounded" by the enemy. Does X surround O or does O surround X?

I'm fine with blobs, so long as teams are allowed to shuffle positions at T0. More players would probably stay alive longer this way.

zoltan wrote:I'm fine with blobs, so long as teams are allowed to shuffle positions at T0. More players would probably stay alive longer this way.

What does "shuffling positions" mean?
Players swapping teams so that they aren't in surrounded isolated positions?
Players swapping nations so that Bob who was playing the French takes control of the Germans, and Alice who was playing the Germans takes control of the French?

Redistributing positions within the team.

Ok, talking about "blobs" and swapping, how can this technically be achieved?

Even if you manage to get perfect balance (which is mission impossible), every balanced 2-teams game would evolve into unbalanced 2-tam game with the risk of premature quitters.

It says here that there were 15 LT team games so far. I don't think there were any premature quitters there. Altjhough, I'm not sure if ALL of them were 2-team games. But the last one I played was.

zoltan wrote:I'm fine with blobs, so long as teams are allowed to shuffle positions at T0. More players would probably stay alive longer this way.

This exactly was the problem. Either allow cross-delegation and nation swapping in general with a minimum time before changing it again. If only allow at the beginning T0 perhaps is too strict, because you maybe don't know where enemy is and players may be late.

We have not allowed reshuffling positions in the past, only choice of idler assignment. It is just the luck of the draw.

Come on, no blobs. Yes some players might die, but that's ok. Farming the whole game for some nations by design is boring, if you ask me. Random placement has a lot more strategy. In LT44 we had 37 nations and only 3 war fronts.

I thought the idea was a teaching game for the weak, given the other settings like gold and tech trading. Personally it's more fun if teams randomly distributed.

That'a a gentle shift from
"Come to team game, your best opportunity to learn" to
"Come to team game, I hope you noob will face one of our regulars at frontier, so we can teach you some lesson."

Absolutely, Fran. Normal game you will not have any vision, and gold from anyone especially if you are a noob, no one wants to ally with you as rather ally with someone known who is good.

2 team game have help from team in chat, gold, (and now techs). Noob gets to also watch experienced players play. Also if noob idles, someone steps in for them, saving nation from normal quick destruction.

As I wrote before, that sounds great in theory. But it has preconditions, like the team not consisting out of a majority of noobs. That reminds me why I don't like that kind of reasoning.
In my first game I worked actively towards allying with mmm2. As a side effect, that brought me also in an alliance with arkan, cgalik and chill. I prefer that a lot over being noob no. 11 out of 12 in a team of 18.
And if I happen to be one of the strongest players in a team of 18, there is something wrong, because I'm a beginner that maybe plays ok in early game but not in middle or even late game. I just can't give the advise needed and therefore I won't take part in a team like that in the future.