Longturn Forum

Here is the preview of the promotion email we plan to send old LT players. Anything you think we should add or remove?


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Two new New Freeciv games are going to start on longturn.org in November 21st and November 22nd. LT39 will be the first one and the next day we will start LT40. You may ask why two games instead of one big one?

In the past LT games have been focusing on very competitive gameplay with the goal on winning the game and getting the glory of victory. While this is particular design has been working well for years, there has been demand for something different. Some people have been asking for a game with more focus on building the great empires and compering against everyone else instead of teams or alliances. This is why we now are planning two different games with quite different setups and rulesets.


LT39: Traditional empire building with focus on military action

For those who want to build great empires. For those who want to conquer the world with military might. For those players there will be LT39. It's going to be a more traditional LT game with more familiar ruleset. As with most previous games, ther is allied victory where about 20-25% of the players can team up and try to win the game together. Expect war, deception and evil plans when playing this game. While space race is enabled you may expect the game to end with a conquest victory where everyone but the winners have been wiped out. The ruleset of the game is based on LT38 which is a heavily modified version of the freeciv 2.5 civ2civ3 ruleset. The full ruleset can be found on git and it's easy to install on your personal computer if you want to take a look at it. The military units and building the economy has been balanced to allow you to use multiple strategies for winning the game.

More info about LT39 on the forum: http://forum.longturn.org/viewforum.php?id=26
Join LT39 here: http://longturn.org/game/LT39/


LT40: Something very different with focus on building and allying

Then there is LT40. This game is going to be more experimental one (while not really an experimental game) and while there will be wars the game is probably going to focus on building stuff and reaching for the stars. To achieve this the empire sizes have size limits before every new city will add to the unhappiness. The allied victory is not available. The "limited" empire sizes will make global conquest really hard even while it's not really impossible. Once you reach the empire size barrier, the unhappiness will increase every time you build or get a new city. Unless you play with anarchy all the time. There can be only one player with the best score. Only one with the 2nd best score... For this game and all the players will be ranked with the in-game score. You will get ranking for LT40 even if you don't make to the end game. The in-game score will make this competitive for everyone. Even if you don't win/end the game with the space race victory, you can still try to beat your neighbor or some other player you have been fighting with. LT40 also has *lots* of new buildings, wonders and other game enhancing features no one really is that familiar with. There is a new government, government specific early units and even submarines for transporting spies behind the enemy lines. Techs can't be traded traditionally but they can be stolen with diplomats and spies. Since there can be only one player with the best score and there is no allied victory, expect competitive game with deception and secret & evil plans to beat the others. However you can also expect defensive alliances aimed at helping its members to live and let live.

More info about LT40 on the forum: http://forum.longturn.org/viewforum.php?id=27
Join LT40 here: http://longturn.org/game/LT40/

Let's make our civilizations great again

wieder wrote:Since there can be only one actual winner and there is no allied victory, expect competitive game with deception and secret & evil plans to beat the others.

I'd add:

"... but also defensive alliances aimed at helping its members to live and let live."

Also, I'd decrease emphasis on "only one winner" because it's obvious: if, at the end, score is calculated, obviously, only one player can be best, only one can be second best etc.

Maybe also add that spies and diplomats will be cheap(er) to produce.

Also, last line, typo, "civilizatons"

Also, I'd say that "empire sizes have size limits" is not true. There are no limits, only unhapiness will increase, but that can be countered by wonders, increase in luxuries, city improvements that you don't always build etc. So, large empires will be harder to maintain, but in no way impossible, which the word "limit" implies.

Thanks for the comments. I have now edited the post and it will be posted to LT members in few days.

What do you mean by spies and diplomats being cheaper to produce?

I thought we agreed on them being cheaper? Wherever we were discussing tech exchange.

Wait, after a limit, you get unhappy people with EVERY new city? Dude, that's not good! It will turn the game into Civ 3 before the bug fixes! Everybody will have exactly the same empire and that doesn't really make it interesting. That really is the hard and artificial limit. I guess a new unhappy citizen for every FIVE cities would be fine, but one is too much (or too little...)

I can't remember the exact diplomat/spy discussion now. We could instead make the odds better or also make diplomats slightly cheaper and also spies cheaper from the current value LT40 has. The idea is to allow tech trading but not make it cheap.

It's been one unhappy for each city but I guess we could try with 3?

wieder wrote:I can't remember the exact diplomat/spy discussion now.

Here

In short, I believe we agreed on cheap diplomats and 50% general chance to succeed and 100% tech transfer chance.


edit: continuing the nation size/unhappiness discussion where it belongs.

Let me give it a try.
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LT40: Something very different with focus on building and allying

Then there is LT40. This game is going to be a slightly more experimental one (while not really an experimental game) and while there will be wars the game, it is probably going to have a bit more emphasis on building stuff and reaching for the stars. To achieve this the empire sizes have limitation in the form of increased unhappiness as the empire grows. The allied victory is not available. The "bounded" empire sizes will make global conquest harder, while not really impossible. Once you reach the empire size barrier, the unhappiness will increase every time you build or get a new city.

For this game all the players will be ranked with the in-game score. You will get ranking for LT40 even if you don't make to the end game which should make this competitive for everyone. Even if you don't win/end the game with the space race victory, you can still try to beat your neighbor or some other player you have been fighting with.

LT40 also has *lots* of new buildings, wonders and other game enhancing features no one really is that familiar with. There is a new government, government specific early units and even submarines for transporting spies behind the enemy lines. Techs can't be traded traditionally but they can be stolen with diplomats and spies. Since there can be only one player with the best score and there is no allied victory, expect competitive game with deception and secret & evil plans to beat the others. However you can also expect defensive alliances aimed at helping its members to live and let live.
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Thanks. Looking nice!

The stealing costs were actually not finalized. Now there is 10% gold tax, 50% chance for diplos/spies to succeed, no tech lost for receiver or the original owner.

The unit costs were changed so that diplomat will cost 30 and spy 50. This may probably make tech trading quite cheap if there is no chance for the receiver to lose the tech. For diplos the expected cost is about 120 bulbs / tech and with spies 200 bulbs / tech. Might make sense toat least double the costs. This needs more thinking.

Might actually make sense to make spies even more expensive.

FWIW, I got no promo email. In fact, I got no email from longturn in a very looooong time.
Yes, my adress is valid. No, there's nothing in my spam filter.

I'm guessing it will be send in few days. Not sent yet. Thanks for notifying us about this.

The mail has been sent. Some mail servers may have rejected it but most users should have it now.

oh... And if someone didn't receive the mail, please report to me. That can be done with private message or by replying here. No need to mention the email address since I can check it from the user info.

Just good to know so that I may check if it would be possible to send mail by hand for some of the veteran players.