Longturn Forum

Hi,

I'm building a new ruleset based on the default ruleset for our next Finnish longturn-style Freeciv game. The basic idea is to triple by 3 everyhing that's in relation to vision or movement -- and try to keep it as standard as it can be.

Traditionally we have been using the default ruleset with minor changes (like transport helicopters), so because I like tradition, it'll be based on the default ruleset too.

However LT has corrupted us to want to triple movements and vision, etc.

You are welcome to contribute in the process of designing it. I'll be documenting each change at GitHub as issues: https://github.com/jheusala/freeciv/issues

PS: I think we could also take few international players to play with us in the next game (or all of them if we don't get 126 players -- usually we have got it).

Also, we could test play it tomorrow for 5-10 hours. Anyone want to join the game?

I would love to stay in touch with the finnish community. I just finished one of 2 GreatTurn games I was in.
However, may I give you one advice with my personal tastes about movement and vision.
I think 3x movement is a great improvement for a number of reasons. The most important are:
1. it speeds up the game
2. it allows to play on bigger maps
3. by far the most important: it gives much more meanings to terrain movement cost.

About large (let's call it 3x) vision, I simply don't like it.
The main reasons are:
1. It spoils the exploration by making visible too much part of the map.
2. It spoils the strategy by alowing to spot enemy (expecially attacking ones) too early.

So, generally speaking I would strongly suggest to keep vanilla (1x) sight for the troops.

However, many people pointed out that with a superman movement (3x) and normal sight (1x) there should a unbalanced advantage for attacking players, and maybe defending ones would be tied to use patroling units to early spot the enemy, which is not easy in a advanced stage of the game.

So, it would be wise to try to find a middle ground between high movement and low vision. In my opinion there are two "golden" solutions:
A. 3x movement + 2x vision
B. 2x movement + 1x vision
The 1st solution is the best to make faster a big game. I would strongly recommand this one.
The 2nd solution is the one used in GT01 and GT02 and I still find it satisfactory (GT01 is over and we still don't know how many uninhabited continents are out there!)

The main issue of (B) is that 2x movement, while still speeding up the game, doesn't give much added value to mp usage over terrain.

I will explain what I mean when I praise the terrain movement cost value in a 3x movement game.
In normal Freeciv there are 3 different "levels" of terrain mp cost.
1-plain terrains
4-hills, forest etc.
6-mountains

In vanilla (1x) Freeciv most of ground units (till modern warfare) have 1mp while few have 2mps. 1mp units would move always the same, regardless of the terrain. For them, to travel throu mountains is exactly the same as to travel on plains. In a game without added mps for veterans, the distinction between hills and mountains is completely useless: no unit have MORE than 3mps so no unit can climb a hill and then have spare mps.
In a 2x game, interaction between units and terrain is more complex and tricky.
In a 3x game, even more.

More:
In 1x and 2x games, a hilly landscape makes no no difference between a horseman and a phalanx. Fine for realism: a horseman should not be that good with hills. Anyway, less compexity, less fun.
In a 3x game, the phalanx still can't climb a hill and move after. A horseman CAN.

tu put it in 3 tables with terrain types (easy plain terrains, hilly or similar and mountains) and unit kinds (slow 1mp, fast 2mp and fastest 3mp), each of which for different movement multipliers, we obtain these performance rankings:
It is quite clear that 3x gives a more interesting combination.

As a radical measure, I would also strongly advice to change terrain mp costs, introducing 2mps or 3mps terrains. But this is another story.