LT36: The signups are open, the actual game to be started in 3-5 weeks

[wieder]

The signups have been open for a while for testing purposes but they are now officially open. If you have already signed up and plan to play there is no need to sign up again.

LT36 will be a teamless game and there are (almost) no limits to the size of the winning alliance. The winning alliance can be very big, most likely consisting of max 40% of the players joining the game. There is no need to destroy everyone else and if no one objects on a winning topic the some alliance makes, the game is won by that alliance. If someone objects, that nation must either withdraw the objection or must be destroyed if the alliance wants to win. More detailed explanation of this will follow before the game starts.

Most likely no trading at all but stealing and getting techs with espionage is possible. The chance for getting techs is probably 5% as it is with LT35. Not fully decided yet.

We will play some more test games and hopefully can start the actual game in early December 2015. Yeah, I dared to say the year

As usual, selecting the map is not done at this time and we are open to suggestions.

[Corbeau]

Actually, it would be safe to allow tech trading if you enable tech upkeep. We just had a small game on GreatTurn and, technically, the experiment ended up a "useful fail" because the rate turned out to be a bit too big. I think the upkeep ended up with something like 0.6*cities*techs which ended up suffocating most of the development. However, I (and it seems only I) managed to maintain a steady rate of progress even though getting Gunpowder took a bit less than 200 turns (I think ~180 or something). But it definitely helps with making tech more realistic and curbing the disadvantages limitless tech trade imposes.

Also, Morphles took the effort of adjusting the WHOLE tech tree so that, when you are about to lose a tech, you lose one of the top ones, the ones that you gained last (root_tech). The file is available somewhere.



About this game, what are the general settings? Movement x3, I suppose? Restrictinfra? Trade gold penalty?

[wieder]

There will be some tech upkeep in LT36. Tech trading was considered for LT36 but at the moment we don't know how to set up the upkeep in order to let the players to research in normal rate for LT games. This means getting gunpowder around T60-T80. If someone figures that out it wouldn't be out of the question to include tech trading. Once again the upcoming game is intended to be played in 120-150 turns. Too many players seem to get bored if the games go beyond 150/180 turns.

Movement will be 3x, restrictinfra will be on and the fee for trading gold is something between 10-20%. Currently 20% but I was thinking about changing that to 10%.

There are some new small wonders we didn't have with LT34 (Trade Company and Atlantic Telegraph Company).

As I already said the biggest change compared to LT34 is that there are almost no limits to the number of winners and alliance sizes. The space ship will also cost only a fraction it cost in LT34.

[Corbeau]

Well, here Tech Upkeep was set to 0.375*tecshs*cities (I think) and all techs costs were 60. So maybe putting that number to 0.2 may turn out fine, but I think for that you really need a bit more serious test game. Perhaps just have people play a single-player to see how it works. Your usual test games seem to be mostly suitable for other types of checks.

[wieder]

Testing it may be tricky since we also have tech leakage making techs cheaper. If no one can figure it out for LT36 it's probable that LT37 will have tech trading anyway. At that time we can use some value based on the experience we will get from LT36.

Btw, what does it mean to have all the tech costs 60?

[Corbeau]

It means exactly that: every tech costs 60 bulbs. What you're confused about is probably that you think that later techs are acquired too easily. Well, no. When I reached Gunpowder, I had 12 cities and production of around 250 light bulbs (50% for science). However, out of those, roughly 220 were used for tech upkeep. And, like I said, I was the most advanced by far. One other player resigned in revolt because he was stuck and couldn't get his science running, everything was eaten by upkeep.

As for tech leakage screwing up the test game, no. That would be just finnesse, the main thing to test is to prevent most people being blocked by tech upkeep and prevent others to flash by them too quickly. But whatever, it's your game, do as you please.

[wieder]

Yeah. Some people may be blocked by the upkeep and some are not even really slowed down by it. The upkeep basically makes it harder to trade lots of techs at once.

I suppose you are not going to play another ranking game on Longturn

You may want to know that I have been planning a different kind of non ranking game designed in the spirit of the ancient Finnish Freeciv game. Some key features of that game are 2x moves, city and tech trading on, more role playing elements for the game and most likely even the caravans on but without the one time bonus. In addition to the double turning is forbidden. There is however no start date yet but I guess the game might start between early 2016 and late 2016 and it would be based on Freeciv 2.5.

[Corbeau]

Well, that's the point of upkeep. It's basically a middle ground between no tech trade and full tech trade. Also, very realistic.

Yes, I'd be interested in that one. However, about caravans, no one-time bonus, but yes regular income every turn? Wouldn't be better if it was the opposite? The last game I played with caravan revenue, everybody complained about it; it also makes larger alliances more profitable. On the other hand, rules are the same for everyone so you either adapt or not.

Also, what is "double turning"?

And I don't really mind a ranking game. The thing that bothers me most is the possibility of a planet-wide blitzkrieg. You build for a hundred turns and are then killed in an instant. Not my cup of tea. A prolonged war of attrition and ambushes with attacks and counterattacks is more to my taste.

[wieder]

Double turning means for example building roads just seconds before tc and then attacking right after the tc.

"The thing that bothers me most is the possibility of a planet-wide blitzkrieg."

There are two reasons for this happening. The first is some players becoming too advanced compared to the others. The other is usually a planet wide rails network or some other way for moving really fast around the globe.

It might be possible to keep almost everyone on the same lever what it comes to the techs but if this wouldn't be the case someone (usually) eventually becomes so advanced that the rest of the players can do very little about that. Moving can be slowed down, but even with rails taking 1/6 or 1/9 moves it will be really hard to prevent capable players from using a blitzkrieg strategy if they really want to focus on that and are willing to take the risks required for such actions.

With LT34 I was doing that with mmm2 and very successfully but that was mostly possible because of some basic reasons. We were advanced enough even while we were not that advanced compared to the other top players (top as most advanced). The most important factor was the ability to use massive power at few key locations and without warning the enemy about that. We basically switched all the production into key military units and calculated a time when those should be ready. At the time of the attack the enemy was not prepared for an attack and didn't have troops to stop us.

What would it have taken to stop the blitzkrieg from happening?

1) sufficient defense for those countries that were wiped out in the first wave (there was too few defensive units)
2) advanced enough tech (the top enemies had that)
3) some way to slow down the advance of our armies (no rails or no connected land, that was missing)

The island scenario offered a way to slow down any attack because rails can't be built over oceans but with LT34 our enemies terraforming ocean into land and connecting all the islands that was faster and there were no oceans to stop us.

LT36 counters these problems with some changes.

First, everyone who knows electricity will be able to get an embassy with *everyone* on the game.

Second, the range of the fighters is much shorter and they need carriers in order to attack far away targets.

In addition to these there are some small changes like less like civil wars and lots of minor adjustments trying to make quick wars not as easy they were in the past.

However I think that any Civilization game can end with a blitzkrieg scenario if the defenders are not building good enough defensive army and if they don't have good enough techs. In almost every case when I have destroyed a nation in just few turns that nation had very poor defensive units and very often no walls or very few cities with walls. I think there can't really be a Civ game without the possibility of easy attacks if the defended is not defending.

It's incredibly tricky to know when to focus on military and when it's "safe" to leave some cities with less defensive units. Timing is everything

[Corbeau]

I'm not talking about "no possibility for a blitzkrieg". I'm talking about BOTH LT33 and LT34 being decided in a few turns: one due to railways and the other due to fighter swarming, and in both cases the opponents were top players. Literally the game was decided after the first blow: there was no way to do a meaningful counterattack and no way for the attacked nation to get back on its feet.

As for fighters, there is only one way to prevent them from being so decisive: make them very short-range and unfavourable attackers for a city: I'm not sure if the exact setting is "half the attack strength" or "reducing strength to 1" when attacking a city, I'd go with either. Also, bombers should have only one attack per turn, but I'm not sure how this can be achieved without then ending their turn after the attack, which basically makes them vulnerable to fighters and no possibility for their own fighter support.

Maybe make a small concept switch: "bomber unit" is not composed only of bombers, but also of their fighter support. As a result,. they have better defence value and are not that easily downed. however, they can't attack other air targets because that's not what bombers do. To compensate, make fighters cheaper so that it's worth spending several units on downing one bomber. Then you can also give them a better range.

[wieder]

There is a reason why the game is often decided after one attack. We have lots of players who are very good at predicting when to attack and when to simply give up without using the units. That can be done with evaluating the stats and also by using spies or diplomats.

LT33 had two decisive points I can recall. First one was when mmm2 was really really pushing hard to attack some nation and while doing that he was also sharing vision *and* leaving most of his cities empty. He actually had his capital empty while sharing vision to so many nations and without really knowing if there was a leak. And there was a leak. With that game mmm2 lost his capital but there was no civil war. However because there were rails all over his nation and most of the cities were without any units, the attacker simply tried again and again once the revolution happened and it was over for him. El_perdedor conquered his remaining cities and without a leader the remaining nations on that ally simply had no idea how to defend.

The second attack on LT33 happened against akfaew and this time I'm not sure what he had there but as far as I can remember there was a decent amount of units but not all of them were top quality. Once akfaew fell his alliance was mostly waiting for inevitable.

With LT34 there were all those fighter attacks but they were really helped by the connecting rails.

What I'm trying to say is that most nations I have seen collapsing that fast collapsed because of losing the capital and also because of having too few defensive units protecting the vulnerable capital.

With LT34 fighter had a range of 30 meaning that they (v ones) were able to strike 15 tiles away from the home and return after that. With LT36 that has been reduced to 15 meaning that the range is 7 and even a veteran fighter can't attack further unless it's highly promoted. The same applies to lots of airplanes. They really need the supporting ships this time. This was also the first time I know there had been a fighter attack like that one.

Lots of stuff was changed since LT34 and some of that was already changed for LT35.

I really try to fix the problems but changing too much is another risk.

[wieder]

I was just checking the ruleset and the game has plenty of units people can use for taking out the enemies in just few turns. The key for the success is having *lots* of those units available when the attack begins.

- horsemen can reach far away targets and they can be deadly. Rarely used because producing them in the early game slows down the research and building the economy
- crusaders are effective because they have an attack of 5. Not used that often but I remember at least one game where they contributed to killing the enemy in just few turns. This was once again possible because of too few defensive units
- catapults and cannons are made too slow for doing actual blitzkrieg
- a combination of musks, frigates, swordsmen and maybe elephants can take out coastal nations in just few moves if the attacker takes on one coastal city and then continues to inland
- dragoons are powerful but usually not used to kill anyone unless it's known that the inner cities are defenseless
- alpines are a classic example of units used to quickly attack a nation because they ignore terrain effects. They are not that great if the defender has decent defensive units
- riflemen and marines are great for attacking coastal cities. Really dangerous stuff
- fanatics are rarely used but if a nation with lots of production switched to fundamentalism it's possible to produce 20-30 fanatics every turn. They have no upkeep and once again if the defender has no walls an army of 200-300 fanatics can easily wipe out a nation or two
- spies can poison cities to size 1 and then simply incite them. There are ways to prevent this from happening but poisoning is very effective
- an army of fighters supported by carriers and riflemen + alpines + mounted units is a deadly combo if the enemy is not prepared. This was used in LT34. Now fighters have less range (15 changed to 7)
- nukes and submarines are deadly but not as deadly they used to be. Nukes had a range of 40/48 in LT30 but it was changed to 8/16. Easy to wipe out entire nation if the defender has no SDI or is not prepared
- paratroopers can do the same as fighters did in LT34 and they can be even more effective
- if the enemy has built a decent roads network it's relatively easy to wipe out an entire nation with howizers. This has been done several times and even with restrictinfra on that's going to work if the defender is not really prepared and builds forests for slowing down the attacks
- cruise missiles can do the same effect fighters can do but there needs to be tons of those
- stealth fighers and stealth bombers are incredibly efficient and the defender needs to have good enough techs to protect from those
- the ships. Cruisers, destroyers and battleships with subs can protect each other and clear coastal cities fast allowing a real blitzkrieg
- The new fusion powered units in the end of the tech tree - those are some serious stuff and great for a quick operation :F
- and the space ship can end the game in just 8 turns effectively doing the same for the game play as any military operation does

All these, except the space ship, basically need 2 things. The enemy to neglect defenses and focus too much on improving the economy. There is simply no way of preventing that from happening if the defender has too few units. The other issue is building a rails network without the forests to block the moves if cities are lost. LT34 conquest victory may not have been possible if the enemy had done that and didn't connect all the islands so that the troops had a path for advancing.

Bombers were really a disappointment in LT34. They were useful but usually too slow and effective only against really really heavily defended cities.

[wieder]

We could of course change the citymindist from 4/5 to something like 7/8, increase the city working area and make the map bigger. That would effectively do the same things as making the units to move slower. For some reason this seems to be a very unpopular solution and people would like to use a very small citymindist. Something like 3 or even 2 were proposed. The closer the cities are each other the faster it's to wipe out an entire nation. That's another issue.

I'm actually tempted to change the citymindist to at least 6 and increasing the city working area. Maybe for LT37?