Longturn Forum

Here are some changes we could make.

Should cities on hills and with a mine give just 1 food instead of 2? We decided to give 2 food to make the growth more easy but if this is too much we could give just 1 food. Opinions are welcome. We will probably keep the +2 food but changing that is possible.

Monarchy should have less production waste than republic.

Coastal defense should be available with some earlier tech. What would be the tech?

Building bigger than 8 cities should be less expensive. Maybe cheaper granaries and the amphitheatre could cost less while keeping the high upkeep cost of 5. Anything else?

Muskets could cost less than frigates. How much less?

Fanatics for fundamentalism available with conscription.

Barracks II cost now 30. That may be changed to 45 and barracks III would cost 30 as they cost now.

Sun Tzu costing 400 instead of 600.

Great Wall will cost less but the actual cost is not yet decided. Ideas?

Statue of liberty could have some reasonable cost but it's very hard to say what that could be.

Palace could give production bonus instead of gold. Maybe 3 or even 4? Does it make sense to change this?

Maybe extra vision for the lighthouse. Or another building providing extra vision?

My opinions:

Cities on hills should keep the 2 food.
Coastal defense could be available with Construction.
Musketeer cost shouldn't be higher than 30, if frigate's cost is 40.
Barracks II's cost should be kept as 30.
Republic should have less waste & corruption than any other government except Democracy.
Palace may give production bonus but gold bonus should stay.
City Walls & Coastal Defense could provide extra vision (cumulative).

Suggestion:
No upkeep costs for City Walls & Coastal Defense, considering that Trade Routes are disabled.

good ideas dx486!

Maybe a musk could cost 35 if a frigate is 45 in a future game.

Additional ideas:

- great library will give more sci to the city where it's built (10-15 maybe?) and the cost is 350
- isaac newton's will cost 450 and also gives more sci (12-16 maybe?)
- less production waste to democracy

Yeah, I always found the idea that "all governments shoud have same amount of waste, only differently distributed" stupid. Why? isn't there supposed to be some progress?

- free food given to cities on mined hills.
About that point, I'm undecided but rather in favor of removing it.
Removing it would make the settling choices more even. With it, you have 1 more food if you've settled the mined hills rather than a flat tile nearby and have used the mined hills as an extra worked tile.
On top of that free food you get the +50% defense bonus. I think that this is probably too much. One should have to decide if he goes for an easier to defend city or a faster growth. You shouldn't have both. Then you would have to find a trade-off.

- Palace could give production bonus instead of gold. Maybe 3 or even 4? Does it make sense to change this?
The pyramids are a good way to give the Palace or other city a production bonus. I don't see why the gold bonus should be replaced by a production one.

dx486 wrote: Coastal defense could be available with Construction.

I strongly oppose to that one. That would be the equivalent of making SAM Batteries available with Theory of gravity for instance.
If players want to change the technology required to build coastal defense, why not change it back to the original tech, that is Gunpowder?

dx486 wrote: City Walls & Coastal Defense could provide extra vision (cumulative).

I would find more logical if city walls would reduce the city vision instead as they sort of block the view of their inhabitants

dx486 wrote: No upkeep costs for City Walls & Coastal Defense, considering that Trade Routes are disabled.

This subject seems to be an old one here. There seems to have been a consensus that these protections need maintenance and thus it is logical that they are not upkeep free.
Making a city improvement upkeep free should only be used as an incentive for building it. This is how I see the fact that marketplaces are upkeep-free.
I don't think we should encourage players to play even more defensive than they already do.
It's the second defensive change that you suggest. I can understand that as a new player you may find that the current ruleset encourages attack too much. Now I don't think that this is a bug, it could rather be a feature!

In some past games the city walls were upkeep free and also gave 200% defense bonus instead of the current 100% we now have. This was changed because lots of players felt that defense should be more expensive and also defensive playing shouldn't be too easy.

The biggest problem for defensive play is that not too many players really build that many defensive units and have warriors defending most of the cities even in the mid game.

On another thread there are some changes that may help defensive playing by making military operations harder for those who pursue economical growth. The most important planned or proposed changes are the removal of Mausoleum of Mausolos' no incite directive and removing Statue of Zeus from the game. Those wonders are currently too powerful and make republic and democracy too well suited for war. Players who want to fight should, in my opinion, use governments allowing more free troops and less unhappiness from units outside national borders.

Maybe removing the extra food from cities on hills should be done. After all most players requesting that know how important it is to build on good defensive locations while lots of "less experienced" players choose to build on grass because they like the extra food and may not even realize that you get 2 food from hills.

If someone has some ideas about how to improve the game, there is no need to tell the exact changes that should be made. You can instead tell us what should be easier and what should be harder. Of course ideas for specific changes are more than welcome but one of the actual reasons for removing the polls from LT was that it's very hard to see the big picture when changing some specific rule. The role of a game admin is not really to dictate how a game should be designed but instead plan the big picture. For example more defensive game could be implemented with cheaper walls or cheaper defensive units but also by making offensive operations more expensive by changing the number of free units. Then again we could also use a different approach and lower the city limits for early governments. Something like that really prevents too fast expansion. The downside is that we don't have that many governments that would be available only in the mid or late game.

I was toying with an idea of splitting some governments into two versions. For example the ancient democracy is very different from the one lots of countries have today. The easy route for that would be creating "Democracy" and "Modern Democracy" where the original one would have a limit of maybe 16 cities and one more unhappy with every 6 cities. The modern one could have a limit of 32 cities and one more unhappy with every 32 cities. This would change the game and it's not planned for LT38 but if that sounds good and would make the game better, we might implement something like that in the future. The current governments do become available quite early in the game and there is little room left for improvements (=changing to a better government) in the late game.