How fast the game should be?

[wieder]

Here is something from the in-game chat.


<Wieder> Yes, I understand the talk about winning conditions and for example this game has no limit for players alive in the end. We can of course add more scoring and credit for having an alive nation for x turns
<Wieder> however, what I fail to understand is the request for minimizing the citymindist while complaining that the units move too fast
<Wieder> having a citymindist of 4 makes the game faster and if it was 3, the game would be even faster. More than few players have even proposed having effectively no citymindist
<Wieder> why not instead increasing the citymindist if the units move too fast? with a citymindist 6 we would effectively have 2x moves
<Wieder> what comes to players rushing for certain techs, there is little we can do to avoid that. we sure have tired to balance the ruleset but if good players know how to win, there is only so much we can do
<Wieder> ideas for balancing or allowing more than one way of playing the game are more than welcome
<Wieder> also... about the fast units. the fighter units are already adjusted to move slowly. the first fighter has just 1.5x moves and the stealth fighter has 1.66x moves
<Wieder> then again the ships do have 3x moves
<Wieder> if you look at the original ruleset citymindist is 2 meaning that the enemy cities can be reached in 2 turns. the same would apply to the LT ruleset if we had a citymindist 5


In the original ruleset the most advanced fighter can move past 5 cities in one turn. Ships 2 cities or more and a nuke can move even further than a stealth fighter. Adjusting the moves to 2x or something like that is probably not enough since some units may move too slowly and some really too fast for a 120-180 turn game. Then again if a game should last more than 180 turns, we are talking about something very different. 6 months of one game is already on the limits.

[Corbeau]

Yes, I see the point here. Reducing movement and reducing City-Min-Distance almost nullify each other... Almost... The effect is the same, although the math is a bit different.

Except one large difference and that is the world size.

If you put it that way (put movement against city distance) I'd be almost ready to accept the x3 movement, if it wasn't for the world size. The thing is, the way things are set up right now, whoever gets the first victory (in 1 vs 1) is the winner in that war. When someone gets a hard blow, he doesn't get up. Practically, the game for him is finished. No ups and downs, one hit and it's over. (Unless someone else steps in, but mostly not even that can help.)

What does this have to do with the world size? Well, with movement x3 and CMD 4, the world is a smaller place and once you are hit, there are no reserves. On our islands in LT37 a musketeer can take the roads and almost get to the other side of the island in one turn. A Dragoon can almost make a full circle around it in one turn. When you attack someone with enough force, you can destroy the whole nation in a few turns.

This means that you are fighting one single battle, not multiple battles within a war.

As a consequence, there are very few skirmishes because everyone is aware that any loss will cost dearly. A small world reduces taking risks and stimulates hermetic play; it all boils down to tech and arms race and, in the end, one large kaboom.

My suggestion would be to make units cheaper and war rewards (and losses) smaller by increasing the number of cities (that is, reducing CMD).

Also, accelerate start by giving more settlers at the beginning. And I don't remember what are granary levels at size 1 and 2. If they are not already, set them to 10 so that small cities grow faster.

[wieder]

I fthe world size is the problem, we can always increase that and make the world a bigger place.

If you go to Game -> Options -> Remote server

you can see lots of settings used for LT37. There are currently 320 land tiles / player. Withe the island map this is actually quite much since you can build on the coastal areas, expanding the worked tiles. The standard for many games has been 450 tiles / players when playing with continents.

The question is, would it be fun if there was almost "unlimited" amount of land to settle? We could have 1000 land tiles / player and you could build as many cities as you would like.

My guess with citymindist turned even smaller is that people would build lots of small cities and those are even harder to protect. The production for one city will remain small and the can't be too many units inside. The enemy could just pick the poorly defended cities and always reach the next city with spies and ground troops. With citymindist 3 there would be only 2 tiles between the cities. The mounted units could reach that city even with 1.5x moves. I can understand how having many cities may look like a solution but I can also think many ways for exploiting that.

With a team game the team will protect you and help you. That's something very different to the teamless games.

We experimented with more settlers on the start, but the problem is that it's too easy to use those settlers for creating bigger cities and start fighting from almost T1. This easily leads to a situation where you are attacked by someone who builds few big cities and then only horses. Very hard to protect against and also most likely breaks the game for you.

The granary level is currently always 50%. It was changed from the default that were 50%, 34% and 25%.

[Corbeau]

My guess with citymindist turned even smaller is that people would build lots of small cities and those are even harder to protect. The production for one city will remain small and the can't be too many units inside. The enemy could just pick the poorly defended cities and always reach the next city with spies and ground troops.

Well, that's for a player to decide, isn't it? Maybe someone can find a different strategy or use terrain in a way to make all this work for him.

With citymindist 3 there would be only 2 tiles between the cities. The mounted units could reach that city even with 1.5x moves. I can understand how having many cities may look like a solution but I can also think many ways for exploiting that.

What exactly do you mean by "exploiting"?

We experimented with more settlers on the start, but the problem is that it's too easy to use those settlers for creating bigger cities and start fighting from almost T1. This easily leads to a situation where you are attacked by someone who builds few big cities and then only horses. Very hard to protect against and also most likely breaks the game for you.

How so? More small cities will actually produce an army faster than one larger city.

Or you meant that one large(r) city produces its FIRST horsemen like, extremely early, before smaller cities that didn't even manage to build any defences? If this is the case, why not simply start the game with a number of warriors?

The granary level is currently always 50%. It was changed from the default that were 50%, 34% and 25%.

I didn't mean the City Improvement Granary. I meant the storage place, the number that determines how many food you need to grow a city, not how much it's left when the city grows.

Maybe it would be good to have Size 1 city have to produce only 10 food (not 20) to grow to Size 2. It would mean faster startup and also removing the paradox that cities with size 2, 3 and 4 need to produce 10 food (because of automatic Granary), while city of Size 1 needs to produce 20.

[wieder]

I'm not sure if it's for people to decide if a production of a city will remain small if there are lots of cities. of course the players could decide to build less and large cities...

By exploiting a small citymindist the easiest way for doing that is to build a city next to the enemy city and then moving directly from city to city. Doing this would practically remove the restrictinfra ON setting. It would be almost impossible to build cities protected by the terrain.

More smaller cities can produce more units but at a slower rate. For example, with 6 settlers it's possible to build 3 size 3 cities and then produce 3 horsemen ready to attack very soon, before the enemy is prepared for that. All units in one location. Then another group of 3 really fast. With 4 settlers this would be really risky.

Decreasing the granary size in steps was something we tried but that didn't work that well. If a size 1 city needs 10 to grow and size 2 needs 20, there is a possibility for an exploit. You can build a migrant with size 2 and the city will instantly grow back to size 2 when it's completed. That's because size 2 has 10 food in the granary and size 1 needs only 10 to grow and that's already full when the city shrinks. We could of course try with different granary sizes like 10, 12, 16, 20, 24, 30, 30, 40.... but if I remember correctly, there was some reaso we didn't take that route... Not sure what it was.

[Corbeau]

I'm not sure if it's for people to decide if a production of a city will remain small if there are lots of cities.

Really? You wanna play the rest of the game for others, too?

By exploiting a small citymindist the easiest way for doing that is to build a city next to the enemy city and then moving directly from city to city. Doing this would practically remove the restrictinfra ON setting. It would be almost impossible to build cities protected by the terrain.

Possibly a good point, but even with citymindist 2 you can still have a city surrounded by forests and stuff. As for restrictinfra, this means that you have to get the settler there first and still wouldn't be able to use a road in front because a new city with a size of 1 can't move the border enough to gain control of the road and the tile between the cities would remain under control of the enemy city.

What you could do is pump migrants, but this actually means pulling in a lot of resources simply to conquer one enemy city. If you can do that, you can probably do it with less resources.

Also, I could be wrong, but I think you can't build a city in enemy territory, no matter what. Only yours or neutral.

More smaller cities can produce more units but at a slower rate. For example, with 6 settlers it's possible to build 3 size 3 cities and then produce 3 horsemen ready to attack very soon, before the enemy is prepared for that. All units in one location. Then another group of 3 really fast. With 4 settlers this would be really risky.

Didn't I just propose a solution?

Decreasing the granary size in steps was something we tried but that didn't work that well. If a size 1 city needs 10 to grow and size 2 needs 20, there is a possibility for an exploit. You can build a migrant with size 2 and the city will instantly grow back to size 2 when it's completed. That's because size 2 has 10 food in the granary and size 1 needs only 10 to grow and that's already full when the city shrinks. We could of course try with different granary sizes like 10, 12, 16, 20, 24, 30, 30, 40.... but if I remember correctly, there was some reaso we didn't take that route... Not sure what it was.

Hm, that's a good point. What you could also do is have cities with size 1 and 2 grow at 10 and 15 food and remove automatic granary effect for them (and disable building a granary until size is 3 or more, if that is possible).

[wieder]

I probably didn't quite say it right. It's not for the players to decide if a smaller city will give less production than a bigger one. A small city will have less prod. Also, there will be more unhappiness if you build lots of smaller cities. That's because exceeding the city limits.

If a city is surrounded by forest it can still be reached with mounted units.

You can build a city if you first change the ownership of the tile. This is of course a bit slow but still possible.

Removing the granary effect for small cities would effectively slow down the growth of the cities.

I really fail to understand how decreasing the citymindist would slow down or preventing the enemy from conquering entire nation in just few turns. The problem was that the units can move fast and reach the far away cities very quickly. Now, if the cities will be built even closer to each other, that would just make it works. On average of course.

Another way for doing this would be setting the citymindist to 6while also increasing the city working radius. This would also require increasing the map size.

If the citymindist would be 2, would you also like to see the city working radius decreased to the level we have on the default ruleset with 1x moves?

My feeling is that most people who want to decrease the citymindist want to do it because they want to carefully use every possible tile for getting production. The original ruleset with 1x moves greatly encourages you to do this.

The citymindist is there to limit the options players can have. Pretty much every rule on the ruleset limits the freedom of choice. I can understand that limiting the freedom of choice is not that nice. Ideally a ruleset should feel logical and the restrictions shouldn't feel too restrictive. Citymindist is one of the most debated settings. Citymindist is one more setting for defining how "big" the map is.

Actually... Does anyone remember why granary size of 10, 12, 16, 20, 24, 30, 30, 40 was not implemented or what the actual problem was?