Longturn Forum

Dear players,

It was brought to our attention that the following settings aren't set as intended:

• Airlifting to allied cities is enabled. This makes the leading team much stronger.
• Bribing cities is possible. In the original Warclient rules, bribing a city costs 100k's of gold.
• Space victory is enabled. This is most likely only an annoyance.

These rules were present from the beginning, but this was noticed only recently. The whole ruleset balance is possibly affected (for instance, a rapture ruleset can easily generate tons of gold to bribe cities).

According to the rules:

The rules wrote: If there is a game breaking bug the ruleset can be fixed. If it's just an annoyance or like a really powerful but cheap unit, a change is not made. Again, common sense. This is not done without something really serious happening. The game help can be fixed while the game is running but it may not be updated to the actual game since it requires a reload.

I would like to hear opinions on whether or not these are game-breaking issues that must be fixed in this game. I hope you enjoyed the game so far regardless of these settings!

Louis

Well, about me, I knew that ally airlift is possible and space race is enabled, but city bribing option was a surprise and we did not plan the playing regarding it. If I don't mistake, a key city of C2 was firstly emptied by fighters and then bribed (conquest would destroy size 1 city). I think, we could continue playing with bribe costs lifted 100 times. Maybe the other team had another plans but it is compensated by that they outnumber us. I definitely won't continue playing without Shogun, I just can't pose a treat to the other team to make it interesting for them, let alone myself, and we don't have any worthy volunteer for Shogun nation.

Just because the current settings don't follow "original" warclient, doesn't mean we should stop play especially this far into the game. I don't think we should change rules at this juncture. If that means we stop and declare a truce and do an LT55 take two of LT53 I am in favor, but we are too far in now to change the rules.

>[*]Airlifting to allied cities is enabled. This makes the leading team much stronger.[/*]

Landmass = 17. This means two separate archipelagos are surrounded by vast amount of ocean. Doctors invaded the archipelago of Covids and conquered 1 island nearly completely and have a foothold in a 2nd island. Also several smaller islands were conquered by Doctors. 1 of our nations is down to 2 irrelevant cities on a small island. On the contrary, Covids didn't do anything to the archipelago of Doctors. In this context I do not understand the attribute "leading".
In the described map setting, airlifting to allied cities benefits the aggressor, because he can beam reinforcements over the vast distance where otherwise relay points for aircraft would need to be established or transports for land units would need to be used. We ourselves, fighting the invaders, have short distances both for airplane and land units and do not benefit said feature in the same way.
For the given reasons I reject the idea game balance would be disturbed by airlifting to allies, the opposite is the case. Even if we manage to take back our archipelago, this will take many turns, the other side has time to adapt to the situation. If the other side has nobody that did farming or is willing to do farming, that is not our problem. As far as I can see, vast majority of Covids are farmers.

>[*]Bribing cities is possible. In the original Warclient rules, bribing a city costs 100k's of gold.[/*]

This is nice for the invaders, they can bribe our cities.


>These rules were present from the beginning, but this was noticed only recently.

Only 2 players in the whole game are warclient players. It cannot be expected from us others to know what warclient rules are, nor is this a warclient game. This is a longturn game where certain rules have been made to deal with problems, none of this rules say that anything that is not to the expectation of the warclient players is changed to their convenience. If I play a game, I notice the ruleset when I start and adapt my gameplay accordingly. Thus the assertion "was noticed only recently" is wrong.

>The whole ruleset balance is possibly affected (for instance, a rapture ruleset can easily generate tons of gold to >bribe cities).

Tons of gold can be used for many things. Can also buy stealth fighters.

>According to the rules:
>

The rules wrote: >If there is a game breaking bug the ruleset can be fixed. If it's just an annoyance or like a really powerful but >cheap unit, a change is not made. Again, common sense. This is not done without something really serious >happening. The game help can be fixed while the game is running but it may not be updated to the actual game >since it requires a reload.
>

> I would like to hear opinions on whether or not these are game-breaking issues that must be fixed in this game.

There are no game-breaking issues that must be fixed, but there are wrong expectations from certain players about the game they must fix themselves or take the consequences. Changes to the ruleset can be applied for a follow-up. Though I would regret it and will not take part in that. Warclient is, if I am not totally mistaken, a shortturn (RTS) game played in a gated community in a highly specialized and optimized manner, while longturn is an open, free for all community where always players will take part that endanger the team by building undefended nations or playing in another, non-competitive way. The warclient players refuse to accept this difference, and I do not understand, why they want to play here at all. In my opinion the LT53 ruleset as is, with landmass=17, is excellently suited to meet the demands of FFA longturn. The airlift to allies feature helps a team to fight otherwise certain defeat if one of their non-competitive players is invaded, as in our case. But the rules are the same for everybody, and as I said, from an abstract viewpoint, it benefits the aggressor most.

I highly recommend to use this ruleset and setting in future games.

I complain about the forced deletion of the player asdrubaldone. It cannot be regarded as game breaking if Doctors have to live with a single city they cannot disband. It violates the traditional longturn policy of treating all players as peers, with the sole exception if a player deliberately endangers the game outcome.

Also the administration should clarify who is responsible for what. The game page says, wieder is the administrator. The deletion of asdrubaldone was done by louis. As I have come to know wieder, it is hard for me to imagine that he does approve this decision. Of course I am willing to revise the picture I have.

Ignatus wrote:we don't have any worthy volunteer for Shogun nation.

Ask pneu?

fran wrote: Also the administration should clarify who is responsible for what.

The administration as a whole is responsible for everyone having fun. If this game wasn't fun, sorry about that, we're doing our best.

Sometimes we all make mistakes and from time to time making the mistakes is the only way to continue without making even bigger mistakes. The goal is to have fun and competitive games by keeping this stuff fair. There have been many mistakes made with the past games. Assigning an AI nation to a new player in LT30. Not extending the turn in LT34 while we had DNS issues. Also this time when we really didn't know how to deal with this stuff.

For the next game we need better rules for dealing with idlers and maybe also rules for deleting players.

I feel that if nothing was done we would have ended up with more issues. We will never know, sure.

The next MP3 game may (???) also need to be more experimental or experimental if the rules need fixing mid game.

Sorry about the trouble. Hopefully the game was fun and will be fun for the remaining players. I also hope to see all of you in the next game.

louis94 wrote: Space victory is enabled.

Enabled, but it doesn't seem possible in practice, since there's no Apollo Program or any other effect that would actually enable building the Spaceship parts.

Pasting this here

shoigu wrote: if u gonna launch one day another warciv game the following things u have to change
-disabled techsteal from allies
-space victory disabled, only way to win is anhilating the opponent team, or they give up
-airlift to allies disabled, only airlift allowed is to ur own cities, 1 unit per city, per turn
-no bribing at all, bribe costs for 1 city must be like 300k gold, so non possible to bribe even 1 city in the entire game
-also the sight sea that is following more than 2 tiles from the island's, leading to another island's is not warciv real setting. I dont know if this one is possible to change.
all tiles that are more far than 2 tiles that surround's an island has to be converted in to deep sea

More:

shoigu wrote: -set revolen 2, instead revolen 1, anarchy time has to be 2 turn's
-set rapturedelay 0, instead rapturedelay 1

Even more:

shoigu wrote: - trading gold disabled
Is there btw a possibility to enable contact to the enemy when u met him? I mean to see what is his amount of gold and what goverment he is using?
Embassy would gain the knowing about what he is researching, and what tech's he is having

louis94 wrote:Some settings do not match original Warclient

These rules were present from the beginning, but this was noticed only recently. The whole ruleset balance is possibly affected ...

To repeat here what I said in Discord, I see two major problems here:

The first is that this discussion started with one player declaring they were going to quit over this. Before that, all I heard was second-hand information, practically rumours. No public message on the game Discord channel, no post here on the forum about someone suggesting a change, or anything like that. I don't think that's a very good way of starting a discussion, to put it briefly.

The second is that, as far as I understand, there are a number of players in the game who didn't know about warciv or their rulesets beforehand, but had to adapt to the new conditions. (Well, at least that applies to me, even though I came here as a replacement.) I also saw no documentation to warciv settings linked in Discord or the forum, so it was not possible to check what the ruleset and settings were supposed to be. All we saw were the rules set for this game.

On the other hand, there were people who were supposed to know the ruleset and see that everything is like it should be. Test games were played, and none of this came up, and seemingly no-one checked before 86 or so turns into the actual game. And now apparently one of the people who knew the ruleset beforehand is not happy with the rules and cannot adapt? Something doesn't add up here.

----

The differences to warclient mentioned here don't seem to me to make it impossible for the game to proceed to an ending. As far as I can see, airlifting and bribing fall into "really powerful but cheap" at most.

i'm in favour of changing.

the idea was a WarClient game, and we dont pay anyone here to make the ruleset, it is for fun they do that, so if they make any error, it should be, without question, accepted and corrected.

Other thing would have been if this would have been used for an great adavantage and afterwards it would be asked for a change. That I wouldnt like, but it is not the case as far I can see.

So whats the matter, to just accept that it was an error.

To that with they had 500 millions turns to find out, again I hope you never do an error in your life. It doesnt matter when you find out, the thing is you find out and didnt used it for your advantage.

we could end the game today, and say the experiment was a fraud. But that would be stupid, cause there are just three things to be change, that havent affected the running of the game yet.

It is like we are making a pasta, a old recepie, and we want it to be like that. Then we found out that we forgot put in the thyme, and somebody says: no, we have the pasta like it is, we cant change, I'm acoustumed to this(even it is the first time we do it).
So do you put the thyme in or do you stick to that human who doesnt want to put it in cause we didnt put it in from the begining(in this example would be wrong cause, thyme you should use at the end)?

That about that.

At the risk of repeating myself, there are some things here I have to provide counter-points on.

el_perdedor wrote: the idea was a WarClient game, and we dont pay anyone here to make the ruleset, it is for fun they do that, so if they make any error, it should be, without question, accepted and corrected.

I'm not sure if strict adherence to the warclient rulesets was the number one priority for everyone. Especially given that there were many who didn't even know what they would be (and possibly didn't even care that exactly). The rules set up for the game earlier in this forum also don't seem to indicate that was the main priority. This would be very different if there was prior agreement that the ruleset could be changed to match warclient settings mid-game, and who would be the final arbiter in that.

Now, I understand that the people who know the warclient ruleset may have had the expectation that the game would match that ruleset. But again, please look at this from the viewpoint of the others who never knew and never had a chance to know the warclient ruleset. For them, this is a surprise change.

el_perdedor wrote: So whats the matter, to just accept that it was an error.

Yes, indeed. Sometimes that means accepting your own error, and living with it.

el_perdedor wrote: To that with they had 500 millions turns to find out, again I hope you never do an error in your life. It doesnt matter when you find out, the thing is you find out and didnt used it for your advantage.

Oh, I do make errors. Then I fix them for the next time. And try not to force changes on anyone else, or get mad if someone dislikes a sudden change.

I've also been present when mistakes were made with rules in board games, in which case we usually just play the game to the end the same way we started it and do it right the next game. (Sometimes I've been the one misremembering the rules, sometimes not.)

el_perdedor wrote: there are just three things to be change, that havent affected the running of the game yet.

Except that they have. Perhaps not the small changes in rulesets, but the arguments around those changes, and the way the changes were put forward have: they've reduced the fun in the game. At least for me, that is; I can't speak for others.

el_perdedor wrote: It is like we are making a pasta, a old recepie, and we want it to be like that. Then we found out that we forgot put in the thyme, and somebody says: no, we have the pasta like it is, we cant change, I'm acoustumed to this(even it is the first time we do it).

So, if we realize that only halfway through dinner, shall the cook get up to get the thyme and force it on _everyone's_ plates? Or should we just finish dinner and remember the thyme the next time? The problem with analogies is that they don't match reality. For one, with food and spices, we don't have to give everyone the exact same thing. We can just give the thyme to whoever wants it, and let others finish without it. But we can't really do that with the airlifting settings of the freeciv server.

Another problem here is that we didn't really have a recipe to follow. Like I said before, having some reference on the ruleset as it "should be" would have helped others to be able to spot differences, double-check the ruleset or be prepared for what to expect. I still don't know what the "real" warclient ruleset is. I tried to go searching online, but found mostly broken links and one wiki page with some description, but it was different from this game in other parts, not related to the three points mentioned above.

----

I'm also a bit surprised at how something like this comes to pass. Perhaps with the benefit of hindsight, it comes to mind that starting a game like this with a ruleset coming from the outside seems it should involve getting _the actual ruleset and server settings files_ from somewhere where the game has been running previously with the "right" ruleset. If warciv even uses a ruleset file compatible with freeciv, that is. If it doesn't, then that's obviously harder.

ilkkachu wrote:

el_perdedor wrote: It is like we are making a pasta, a old recepie, and we want it to be like that. Then we found out that we forgot put in the thyme, and somebody says: no, we have the pasta like it is, we cant change, I'm acoustumed to this(even it is the first time we do it).

So, if we realize that only halfway through dinner, shall the cook get up to get the thyme and force it on _everyone's_ plates? Or should we just finish dinner and remember the thyme the next time? The problem with analogies is that they don't match reality. For one, with food and spices, we don't have to give everyone the exact same thing. We can just give the thyme to whoever wants it, and let others finish without it. But we can't really do that with the airlifting settings of the freeciv server.

Actually, this is an excellent analogy. Thyme is just a spice that can be omitted, the pasta doesn't taste the same, but it doesn't necessarily have to be bad. it's just that here one person got used to eating pasta with thyme and, once he realised it isn't there, threw a tantrum, catapulted the plate out the window, jumped on the table and shit on it.

Everyone else is technically able to continue with the meal, but somehow, the mood is broken.

I'm also a bit surprised at how something like this comes to pass. Perhaps with the benefit of hindsight, it comes to mind that starting a game like this with a ruleset coming from the outside seems it should involve getting _the actual ruleset and server settings files_ from somewhere where the game has been running previously with the "right" ruleset. If warciv even uses a ruleset file compatible with freeciv, that is. If it doesn't, then that's obviously harder.

I think the regular warciv is played with 2.0 so some "translation" and rewriting is required.

okay, im out.

but i'll answer to the first point:

"I'm not sure if strict adherence to the warclient rulesets was the number one priority for everyone."

First: where did you read or hear that?

Second: Yeah, sure for you it doesnt matter, what did you did for the ruleset? Or did you came up with the idea?

Thrid: The idea was making an 1 to 1 WarClient, not a hybrid so a bunch of players wants to take advantage of a loophole.

Now, what makes me sick, is that it is an advantage for me or shoi, but we dont care, cause the 1 to 1 isnt there and that is what we want, cause that was the idea. But others seem to be so obsessed with winning and finally, they think they got the chance.

I'm out.

Actually, this is an excellent analogy. Thyme is just a spice that can be omitted, the pasta doesn't taste the same, but it doesn't necessarily have to be bad. it's just that here one person got used to eating pasta with thyme and, once he realised it isn't there, threw a tantrum, catapulted the plate out the window, jumped on the table and shit on it.

sure if you forget that the idea was to make a old recipe, like it was intended.

BTW, nobody was quiting, we wanted to put the thyme in thats all, and then all started to scream. That would it be if you like to go by the facts, otherwise, sure corb, you are, like always, right.

Also what do you care? are you playing this game?

Is it the beef with the LT52? Be assured I lost that game too, perhaps that eases you temper.

There are different questions here that easily are mixed up.

a) Is there an inherent problem in the ruleset as such? Answer is no.
b) Is it possible to play it in an unadapted, compromise-free way you play warclient? Answer might be no. But the first reason for this is, the landmass setting is most likely not canoncial, and a longturn ffa game always will have non-competitive players, while a warclient game will not.
c) Should the player adapt to the ruleset at hand, or should the running game be adapted to the player? Obviously the former, because the latter violates the rules and would make one particular player special.

The worst thing about this is, the warclient players call gameplay according to the ruleset as it is "cheating".
This together with their belief they can take the vast majority of players hostage to their one and only pure way of playing during the game, not even thinking about any way of adapting to what is at hand, is the point that should not be tolerated.

louis94 wrote:

fran wrote: Also the administration should clarify who is responsible for what.

The administration as a whole is responsible for everyone having fun. If this game wasn't fun, sorry about that, we're doing our best.

You will understand that from now on I will refer to the administration as "The Continuum".

el_perdedor wrote: "I'm not sure if strict adherence to the warclient rulesets was the number one priority for everyone."

First: where did you read or hear that?

Note that I didn't say it wouldn't have been a number one priority for someone. Also, that's just my impression, I may be wrong. Others may well say I'm wrong in assuming that of them, that it indeed was a number one priority for them, too (as it appears to have been for Shoigu and you). In that case, I'll admit to having been mistaken.

Then again, like I said before, the forum posts made before the game don't make it _at all_ clear that changes mid-game should be expected, or accepted immediately.

This is from wieder, 2020-05-18: http://forum.longturn.net/viewtopic.php?id=1339

LT53 is about war and the ruleset is multiplayer 3 warciv

... The ruleset is designed to be very similar to the ones in the warclient games. ...

And later, 2020-05-26: http://forum.longturn.net/viewtopic.php?id=1341

The winning conditions and the ruleset for LT53

... Here is the ruleset: https://github.com/longturn/games/commits/master/LT53

... If there is a game breaking bug the ruleset can be fixed.

There's nothing there about strict adherence to the warclient rules or about automatically changing the game in the middle for that.

As far as I've understood, the reason to have such rules on running the game, like that later post, is that people would know what to expect, and that there would be some pre-agreed way of dealing with possible issues.

el_perdedor wrote: Second: Yeah, sure for you it doesnt matter, what did you did for the ruleset? Or did you came up with the idea?

What does it matter what I _did_ for it? It's perfectly possible to wish strict adherence without doing anything about it. Or to not wish.

But to answer your question: I don't remember doing next to anything about the ruleset: partly because there was no way for that. If someone had presented documentation of what the ruleset was supposed to be, and asked in public for people to double-check it, I might have done something. Or not. Hard to say, and anyway such documentation was nowhere to be seen.

el_perdedor wrote: Thrid: The idea was making an 1 to 1 WarClient, not a hybrid so a bunch of players wants to take advantage of a loophole.

Now, what makes me sick, is that it is an advantage for me or shoi, but we dont care, cause the 1 to 1 isnt there and that is what we want, cause that was the idea. But others seem to be so obsessed with winning and finally, they think they got the chance.

Well, again, I'm not sure about others, but I don't think I said anything about winning. I'm also not sure how it translates to winning if one player in both teams gets an advantage, but that's beside the point.

Instead, what pisses me off, is that the first _public_ comment on this was a player declaring they're going to quit over the issue. Instead of bringing up a discussion on the noted discrepancies in public, and allowing the rest of the players to comment, we hear it first in hearsay, and when the player wanting the changes finally comes up to speak, they do it by way of throwing a tantrum. The words, "My way, or no way" come to mind. That's not a very good way of dealing with issues in a game of several months that has about a dozen people involved. Instead, that's a very good way of getting people annoyed.

el_perdedor wrote: BTW, nobody was quiting, we wanted to put the thyme in thats all, and then all started to scream.

No, the player who wanted the thyme started to scream. While Corbeau's description, is obviously an absurd exaggeration, I think it _is_ quite apt. Him being an outsider doesn't make it impossible for him to form a view of people's behaviour based on the public discussion, such as it was. It probably makes him more objective than the rest of us.

Another major distinction to draw is what humans actually do on the one hand and how they reason about it on the other hand. I never could understand the reasons given here for quitting a LT game. I agree with ste that airlift to allies and buying unimportant crap city did not change what had happened otherwise. I have railroad on my island which is the equivalent to longturn maglev and 2 (or 3) transports would bring units to kamblr's in 1 turn as does airlift to allies. So the things that are called responsible for the current state of game for sure are not. Changing them would change nothing. Having changed them before would have changed nothing.

Never mind, believe your story. I'm done with this discussion.

Thank you for sharing your opinion. It's clear now that the rules will not be changed, especially after the players who requested it left the game.

el_perdedor wrote:sure corb, you are, like always, right.

Why, thank you! I appreciate this!

"like always, right."

I'm sure there is an English version of this Finnish saying: "Luulin kerran erehtyneeni mutta olin väärässä!"

roughly translating

"Once I thought I was wrong about something but I was mistaken about that!"

So many of us can say something like that