Longturn Forum

I'm quitting the game. I've been attacked using the known "exploit/bug/trick or whatever you want to call it" of building some fortresses just before the turn change and attacking the city using the roads whose ownership has just been changed by the fortresses.

To counterattack this, I have to use the same tactic (I won't do it) or just stay online each turn change to kill the workers/military units that try to do this trick (I won't do itl either). So my only option is to leave the game as it's pointless to continue playing knowing that a turn or the following one the trick will be used again.
I was hoping nobody used this tactic, but it has been used and there won't be any punishment as it is a "feature" of the server.

Well, enjoy it.

Dear fellow Long Turn players,

I fear I have to add my voice to this debate, because I now realise that any features that cause game play to necessitate being around at TC are hurting our FreeCiv community (incl. this 'send a worker to build fortress just before TC' trick). There are many players who are keen to play 'turn-based strategy' games - like ifaesfu - who simply cannot be online at particular times of the day to counter attacks by other players who have more time on their hands. I realise that this could seem 'whiny' to some people, but really, when you think about it is not.

I, for one, am currently working from home, so I can log on at many times of the day (I am quite flexible). But the truth is that in my previous jobs (or in jobs I might have in the future), I will not be able to log on during working hours to monitor if I am being attacked and am then at a distinct disadvantage compared to players who have more time.

I am not blaming people for exploiting this tactic - I mean anything that is not hacking the game is in effect passable; but, I am talking about our long-term building of a turn-based strategy game that can involve a variety of players from all walks of life. Therefore:

1. Please let's change any coding that allows RTS game play around TC - there are several suggestions already at different parts of this forum.
2. Let's try to be nice to players who have less time: This is just one game - losing good players like ifaesfu is a real shame (I do not say this just because we are in the same team in LT32, but even before I have noted how ifaesfu is always giving noobs advice on the metaserver and really being a great sport about playing FreeCiv)

Now, regarding LT32 specifically: May I suggest that we suspend the game for a few turns, while all teams get a chance to gain players to replace idlers? Because if ifaesfu leaves (since I doubt people will agree to changing the code mid-game), our team will be almost half idlers, and we do not have time to play everyone. All of us quitting because we can't play is a real possibility otherwise, and that would be bad for everyone, as it would give a very clear advantage to our neighbouring enemies - it would effectually destroy the fun of LT32 for at least 2 other teams).

Please, let's have a civilised discussion about this (this is Free Civ after all).

Cheers, Xercise

Hm, hm. What can I add to this. Amen?

My three cents are this. I bought my first, legal, boxed and stuff Civilization copy, because I heard it was a brilliant strategy game - a turn-based strategy game. TURN-BASED. I played it for years against AI until I got bored with its so-called diplomacy. I joined Longturn community counting on some diplomatic struggle - and I was promised with that; somebody was even speaking something of EVE-like experience. Well, I heard that diplomacy in LT31 were put in a very simple way: join The Church or die. Now I'm hearing all the LT32 is about is RTS. I hate RTS. I hate all the games in which thinking eventually does not matter, because winning or losing is the matter of clicking a wrong pixel a second too late. I'm also hearing the clue of Longturn is to be online at the TC to not to be surprised by your rivals. Well, maybe if I was a bit younger, I would find it funny to play the game like some obsessive teenage freak, hanging around TC no matter what hour is in my time zone. But I'm 35, much too old for this shit.

Maybe I'm the only one who was counting on another kind of entertainment here. Well, whatever.

I support Xercise's suggestion to put LT32 on hiatus for few days.

O, c'mon, in LT31 you could log out and after login you could have your nation cut by half 3 times a row.
We have all been playing test server, and nobody said that this is bug.

If you think that this feature is a bug (prefortress is quite new and can be not perfect) make a poll before next game to stop it.

After every game we usualy have flame war about some specific settings, some players are using it and some players arent.

Admins cannot change rules ingame after some bugs/feaures has been used, we can only make our game more friendly in next games.

W still try to make this game more friendly for this players which has not time for playing, but there must be some adventage for this players who can spend their one hour ingame any time in a day then this players which can login only once a day for 5 minutes.

I dont have time to login to a game every hour, i will never wake up in a middle of a night to make TC moves, but there are some player which will do and they will have adventage in any settings.

Thats why we have 23h TC to prevent being in TC time at day time for some players and for some players not.

We have had a clever system of maho's TC when TC was random in last hour, so it could little prevent this hordcore TC moves, but still one hour is not enough for checking online if it is a TC or not, if somebody make TC road or not.

Check this, some body has built a tc road and prefortress on your terian for TC, next tc you can try to destroy this prefortress or not, even if you will login every 10 hours attack on your cities will be delayed by 2 turns, with same tactics next turn enemy will finish fortress and destroy your cities.

There is some ways to solve this:
-delegalize fortress as well with stackkill off
-let players building fortress only on his terian
-fix a prefortress not to let build fortress from menu and leave it as it is
-switch off restrictinfra

When you want to win in this game (i mean LT) you need to invite new dirty tricks which will be delegalize maybe in next game and try to keep it in secret for whole game to get as many adventage as you can. I am sure sirty tricks didnt stopped at "fortress bug" this game and we will see some new "features".

We are far far away from freeciv mainstream with this freaky bardo ruleset, every player can make a poll before a game, if you dont like any settings ask for changeing it. Nobody is able to make everyone happy. It is simple to make everyone unhappy but not in the same level and this is not fair too.

These are all good arguments and we should consider all of them for LT33 (and the Ladder Wars)...

However, since ifaesfu wants to quit this LT32 game because it is not playable for him, our team will be left with 3 idlers, which is too much for us to handle (we are most of us busy with real life).

So, could we make an intermission to search for players to take over our idlers? Obviously any team can try to find replacements for their idlers?

i will take delegation for one of your idlers! is it ok, if i take player not near our team border?

Xercise wrote: However, since ifaesfu wants to quit this LT32 game because it is not playable for him, our team will be left with 3 idlers, which is too much for us to handle (we are most of us busy with real life).

Sorry man, but it was always like - you are spending 10 minutes a day in a game then you will get same low chance to win this game.
When you are checking everything all day long coresponding with everyone else your chance getting bigger.
You are not obliged to win all games, if you are focus on winning then once using by other players dirty tricks are show you are quiting becuse you are not able to win in your way.
If you are busy in real life just take care about your nation not to starve them, you will have fun in other ways of playing then winning.
If player will not get this point then he is going to quit anyway, this game or others, like lots of warserver players here, they have spent so many times in game and it was draining them, they wasnt able to stand back and see this game in more friendly way, not only going to win after death bodies of opponents. Players like people keeping theirs line of living in every way not like in shortturn games then when you loosing you are loosing only 3-7 games of playing, not 6 months.

ifaesfu wrote:To counterattack this, I have to use the same tactic (I won't do it) or just stay online each turn change to kill the workers/military units that try to do this trick (I won't do itl either).

Yes, it is a lame bug/exploit and as I said in the other thread it reduces the game to "TC wars" which are frustrating and time consuming. It was used against us first (I didn't even know that the bug existed until tiger pointed out that cgalik/akfaews team used it against us [.. who were your allies I should point out]) and so we asked for the bug to be fixed. It wasn't fixed, and both admin's teams continued to use it against us, so at some point we went with the old saying "if you can't beat them, join them" and started to use the bug too.

det0r wrote: and both admin's teams continued to use it against us

who is the 2nd admin team?

mrsynical wrote:

det0r wrote: and both admin's teams continued to use it against us

who is the 2nd admin team?

Marduk is Administrator, same as me.
So he is talking about "The Empire" or "Polar Express"

If prefortress is changeing owner that now bug is much more then we thought in first time.
You can build prefortress with road in normal order or build road and fortress from menu.
Then somebody need to give an alternative to fix all this situation, becuase if we change a rules after game started and forbidden building fortress from menu feature of prefortress could be still exploited.

I was inventor of prefortress feature, but i didnt code it at all. I have invent how it should be work, once it is not working as it was invented we need to fix it or remove from ruleset for next games.

Det0r - you are talking about time consuming, ask your teammates to log out after an hour spending in a game, it wasnt happen even if i asked for it.

People seem to use that trick of building last minute fortresses because they want to avoid some kind of hour time strategy. In HTS someone moves a worker when there are 12 hours to TC and starts making a fortress. Then someone logs in when there are 10 hours to TC and kills that worker.

If this was a real turn based game, that second player was supposed to kill that worker only at the next turn. Not at the same turn. That's why it's reasonable to move those workers at the last minute to avoid HTS. Unfortunately this requires TC RTS.

Yeah, this actually becomes unfair not when you move the worker just before TC but when everyone doesn't have the same opportunity to make those moves at the last moment.

(shrug) Somebody has to encode into Longturn server planning phase and execution phase, that's it. Nobody has enough time, skill and will altogether. I am right, am I?

edrim wrote:Det0r - you are talking about time consuming, ask your teammates to log out after an hour spending in a game, it wasnt happen even if i asked for it.

Will do. I've accidentally left the client open a couple of times the last few days but I haven't seen requests to log out in the chat so I don't think I'm the culprit

Archont wrote:(shrug) Somebody has to encode into Longturn server planning phase and execution phase, that's it. Nobody has enough time, skill and will altogether. I am right, am I?

Not exactly. I had such proposition long time ago, and unexpectedly - it met with very cold reception. Many ppl claimed that game will be very boring. And they was probably right ...

Also, you wouldn't avoid problem of RTS - what about order? Someone moved his phalanx few minutes earlier than other and his phalanx will destroy other's warrior, also coming to same direction.

maho wrote:I had such proposition long time ago, and unexpectedly - it met with very cold reception. Many ppl claimed that game will be very boring. And they was probably right...

It would become very demanding, since one could not react on events during execution phase - he could only watch how his wrongly planned moves lead to a tragedy. What, I suppose, eventually would end with embedding some scripting language to write conditional orders. In the end longturn could become completely different animal from other Civs.

maho wrote:Also, you wouldn't avoid problem of RTS - what about order? Someone moved his phalanx few minutes earlier than other and his phalanx will destroy other's warrior, also coming to same direction.

I imagine execution phase as divided into ticks, in which every unit pays only quantum of its mobility to execute its orders, and of course all units begin their moves in the same moment. But this would require more and more notions to implement... actually it could be fun to design it and code it. But, alas, we are mostly players, not software engineers.

Taking the real time moves out of this would probably result with less interesting gameplay. I would give it a try but it's very likely that most of the fun would be gone.

After all, it's really interesting to make a move, see more about the world and only then plan the next move. For example, move the AWACS over the enemy and only then decide what to do. Or checking an enemy city with a spy and only then make the decision about the actual attack. Taking the real time element away would change all that.

wieder wrote:After all, it's really interesting to make a move, see more about the world and only then plan the next move. For example, move the AWACS over the enemy and only then decide what to do. Or checking an enemy city with a spy and only then make the decision about the actual attack. Taking the real time element away would change all that.

Of course. That is why I am talking about scripting language: to order, for example, moving a dip into the city and basing on his report - resource output, buildings set, quantity and quality of defenders - trigger the offensive or not. Or do something else. But all automatically.

I heard about at least one game written this way (but it was long time ago and I can not recall the name - I even do not know whether this game still exists). But this is so different from what we got used to playing Civ that I doubt it will gain any support from the community. I am just dreaming aloud.