Bandwidth: Data Usage

[StratThinker]

Hi, I am considering joining up for LT32, I have been wanting to play longturn for a while now. But I am wondering how much data it uses - I live in a developing country with less than ideal data connections. I understand that the maps are quite large.

Also would 1 hour a day be sufficient for me to be competitive?

[Duncan_Shriek]

Hi, I am considering joining up for LT32, I have been wanting to play longturn for a while now. But I am wondering how much data it uses - I live in a developing country with less than ideal data connections. I understand that the maps are quite large.

Also would 1 hour a day be sufficient for me to be competitive?

That depends; If transfer volume is your concern you can't do any better than playing freeciv. It has very low demands on that respect.
If online time is your concern you can get hurt: You have to be connected to do your moves, and if you make it successfully into the endgame with a chance for winning, you have to spend several weeks with more than 1 h/day.

[StratThinker]

Hi, I am considering joining up for LT32, I have been wanting to play longturn for a while now. But I am wondering how much data it uses - I live in a developing country with less than ideal data connections. I understand that the maps are quite large.

Also would 1 hour a day be sufficient for me to be competitive?

That depends; If transfer volume is your concern you can't do any better than playing freeciv. It has very low demands on that respect.
If online time is your concern you can get hurt: You have to be connected to do your moves, and if you make it successfully into the endgame with a chance for winning, you have to spend several weeks with more than 1 h/day.

Transfer volume is my concern. How low is low? 100Kb/day, 1MB/day, 10MB/day?

I also find that we need more than 1h/turn to be little a bit surprising but I suppose that that is the difference between playing against AIs and playing against humans.

[Duncan_Shriek]

Hi, I am considering joining up for LT32, I have been wanting to play longturn for a while now. But I am wondering how much data it uses - I live in a developing country with less than ideal data connections. I understand that the maps are quite large.

Also would 1 hour a day be sufficient for me to be competitive?

That depends; If transfer volume is your concern you can't do any better than playing freeciv. It has very low demands on that respect.
If online time is your concern you can get hurt: You have to be connected to do your moves, and if you make it successfully into the endgame with a chance for winning, you have to spend several weeks with more than 1 h/day.

Transfer volume is my concern. How low is low? 100Kb/day, 1MB/day, 10MB/day?

I also find that we need more than 1h/turn to be little a bit surprising but I suppose that that is the difference between playing against AIs and playing against humans.

I've never consciously seen a figure about a measured transfer volume. Each time you connect to the server everything your client can show is sent to you. I'd guess that would be ~1MBs, depending on your vision of the map. The commands and real time actions during your connection can be neglected in comparison, at least while you aren't witnessing are major battle.

[StratThinker]

Connecting to the current LT31, which is in advanced stage, requires 700KB (I just checked)

As to time spent playing, assume the game is ending, you have 100 cities, each supporting 6 units. Spend 30 seconds on each city, maybe 5 seconds on each unit. This should give you an upper bound. Such advanced stages can be expected after 120-150 turns. You'd need more to do diplomacy with other players, but that can be done thru email.

Thank you, these are within my constraints. See you in the game!

If bandwidth is so important to you, maybe we can setup a compressed tunnel if you know a bit about Linux.

Sadly I do not know enough about Linux - I could not even figure out how to compile this game from source - hence I doubt I will be able to figure out Linux.

Edit: Fixed the last sentence that will probably be ambiguous, the previous version might have been read as "I can't play this game because I do not have Linux nor can I compile it from source" - this is not the way that I wanted it to be read - as I can obviously play the precompiled version on Windows.

[Dimitril]

This should not stop you, but make sure the pc you will use is not very very slow. My low end laptop have show difficulty dealing with large map and circling lot of units. The game won't crash (I know you can even play from a mobile) it just get a bit laggy and it take more time for each turn, especially when setting ''goto'' with planes.

[StratThinker]

This should not stop you, ...

I am guessing that you were referring to the last sentence of my post, I have changed it to be less ambiguous.

... but make sure the pc you will use is not very very slow. My low end laptop have show difficulty dealing with large map and circling lot of units. The game won't crash (I know you can even play from a mobile) it just get a bit laggy and it take more time for each turn, especially when setting ''goto'' with planes.

Thank you, I think that my computer will be strong enough - we can get standard computers here, just not standard internet connections.

[mrsynical]

Out of interest what internet connection are you using? Are you planning on connecting using a mobile phone or something?

FYI - connection needs to be fairly stable. Every couple of days, I will loose connection while making moves and have to reconnect (this will require another transfer of the map). However, I am (guessing I am) located physically far from the server.

[maho]

Also would 1 hour a day be sufficient for me to be competitive?

One thing is sure: 5 minutes/day is not enough. BT;DT;