Freeciv LongTurn (LT57 report)

[HansLemurson]

Turn 45

Top 5 Cities:

Everybody's at Size 16 now.  These are not the only size 16 cities, and we'll probably see some new faces poking in when the random plagues strike.

Demographics:

Population climbing, plenty of cities, ok Land Area, not-so-good production, AMAZING ECONOMY.
Every time Vectron's Glory grows, my demographics lie about my true production value.

Science:

I've raised my science funding this turn because I decided that I wanted bridge-building now.
Somebody else also researched it, and it's a pre-requisite for Invention, which is valuable.


Invention is the cornerstone of many critical techs, such as Democracy, Gunpowder, and Navigation.
I'd like to go for Sanitation, but I fear that the needs of War will demand otherwise.
Invention makes unit upgrades cheaper, and also gives access to the Small Wonder: Leonardo's Workshop.  This upgrades two obsolete units per turn for free.  Very nice!
It also comes with a cheap Great Wonder, as a prize for the Inventor of Invention: Verrochio's Workshop.  (Leonardo's apprenticeship)  This gives you an additional 1 free upgrade per turn.

Islands:

Osilia [44]

Bargen gets to grow again after Revel reaches size 2.  I also realized I completely forgot to irrigate the wheat.  Oops!  Fixing that now.

Lemuria [2]

Even more workers on Lemuria!  I'll transform this land into a rich paradise.

Hansa [1]

More rush-buying of buildings on Hansa.  Some courthouses this time too.  I hope to see good benefits from these buildings.
Wismer and Hannober get Granaries in time for their growth so that no food will be wasted.

Exploration:

My exploration continues with the discovery of Island [34], yet another Roman colony.  I know it has to be a small island because I found it from the south and know exactly where Islands [33] and [35] are.
I wonder where the Roman home island will be.

War:

My Square-Rig sails to the south-west of Incan Croatia and spies prey in these waters: A Czech caravel, doubtless filled with valuables!
I go in for the kill...



And find that my prey is too tough!  Only a 31% chance of success?
Veterancy is potent sure, but that should make this a 50-50 fight, should it not?
A quick look at the unit stats tells me that Square-Rigs were nerfed to have only 8HP instead of the standard 10HP.  
This means that although my ship is graced with 3 Attack-strength which can equal the 3 Defense-strength of a Veteran Caravel (2*1.5), with only 8 HP to the Caravel's 10 the chance of winning is low.
It was a mistake to build a warship without the benefits of the Lighthouse.
Here's the question: Should I attack anyways?  I'm risking 65 Production (Square Rig + Warrior) to potentially kill a LOT more, depending on how much is loaded on that ship.
If I die, I have no follow-up.  However, the enemy is alerted to my presence now, and I may very well face an enemy Square-Rig which will just straight up kill me.  So do I roll the dice for a chance at glory?
Or do I hope they don't have anything in the area and try to retreat?
Or do I treat this as an impasse with neither side desiring to attack and just sail deeper into enemy waters for the sake of exploration?

Attacking is the only decision I control, but I'll not have control over it for much longer.  I might not even have until the end of the turn, depending on who comes online when and with what units available.

Extra Info:

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[NobleHelium]

How do the random plagues work? (Apologies if you already explained this, I actually skipped a lot of reports because I got tired of having to expand every spoiler every time and at least half the things I am reading I don't understand. ) What do the players think about this randomness, in general? Most people react negatively to randomness so I was wondering.

Also I find it hilarious that the crappier workshop is a Great Wonder and Leonardo's is merely a "Small" Wonder.

[Amicalola]

What are the units/properties of those units you are using in this state of the game?

I would also be quite interested in this question.

[HansLemurson]

What are the units/properties of those units you are using in this state of the game?

I would also be quite interested in this question.

The Attack and Defense strengths are largely copied from Civ2, but there are a few changes.
Combat works the same way Civ2's documentation said it behaved:
Attack and Defense strengths are compared and they give the odds of one unit or the other dealing a "hit" in battle.  3vs2 means 60% chance for attacker.
This hit reduces the HP of the unit by whatever the "Firepower" rating of that unit is.
Fight continues until one unit runs out of HP, and the survivor wins and possibly receives an experience promotion.

Units that have been featured so far...

(Attack/Defense/Movement, HP)
Land:
Warriors:  1/1/2, 10HP
Phalanx: 1/2/2, 10HP
Horsemen: 2/1/4, 10HP
Swordsmen: 4/2/2, 10HP
Catapults: 5/0/3, 10HP (double damage against cities)
Diplomats: 0/0/5, 10HP (does special missions)
Sea:
Longboat: 0/1/8, 8HP (designed to be easier to kill by Triremes, can't carry soldiers)
Trireme: 1/1/8, 10HP (cannot leave shallow water, CAN move onto land via river tiles)
Caravel: 1/2/9, 10HP
Square-Rigged Caravel: 3/2/9, 8HP (somebody thought these needed to be nerfed???)

How do the random plagues work? (Apologies if you already explained this, I actually skipped a lot of reports because I got tired of having to expand every spoiler every time and at least half the things I am reading I don't understand. ) What do the players think about this randomness, in general?  Most people react negatively to randomness so I was wondering.

Also I find it hilarious that the crappier workshop is a Great Wonder and Leonardo's is merely a "Small" Wonder.

Yeah, the Great Wonder being the "cheap knockoff" of the Small Wonder is a bit funny.  I think it's really just to say "Whoever gets Invention first gets 3 upgrades/turn, not just 2!".  So it's just a hack to get a "first-comer" bonus, and create a dilemma about gaining a bonus, but also letting your Colossus go obsolete sooner.  Verrochio's Workshop costs 70p to build, whereas Leonardo's costs 200p, so it's not designed to be a burden to get.

Random plagues happen by a percentage chance that grows with a city's population.  Is visible in the lower left-hand corner of screenshots that show a full city-screen.  What do people think about them?  "That's just how the rules are."  People playing a ruleset that evolved from a hybrid of Civ2 and Civ3 are going to be naturally conservative in their outlook.  But in any case there's been constant evolution and changes, and no two games have exactly the same rules due to constant tweaking.  The plagues are frequent enough that the law of large numbers means that nobody gets punished too much for getting a plague at an extra-unlucky time.  Not unless they somehow viewed the population growth of the biggest cities in the world as some sort of race...

As for the density of information in the posts, I'd like some feedback.  I don't want to deny my audience the information they need to understand what's going on, but at the same time, such massive posts each day are probably like drinking from a firehose.  They also take a bit of effort to compile.

• What segments do you find the most interesting? 
  
• What do you not find valuable? 
  
• What would you like to see more of?
  

I don't think I've taken the opportunity to really reflect on what a report really does or does not need to show, and have just been operating on the principle of "Document it all, sort it out later".

[civac2]

I like the daily overviews of demographics and domestic affairs. The exploration and especially war are a bit harder to follow and could use some more focused but less frequent treatment. Not sure it this would lighten the reporting burden though. Posting a full map of an opponent/new island is easy enough but war reporting would require some saved screenshots or even notes.

[Sullla]

The turn by turn reporting is wonderful to read through each turn even if this is a game that I would never want to play. (Maybe especially because this is a game that I would never play; Freeciv looks like some kind of mutant abomination from a design standpoint.) But it would be much easier to follow along if you didn't put every image in a spoiler tag and crop them all down to tiny sizes. This isn't 1997, we can view full sized screenshots just fine and there's a lot useful information in them that would make the game more understandable. Just having the minimap in each screenshot would do a lot to visualize where everything is taking place each turn.

[DaveV]

Those movement values are really high. I dabbled in civ 2 multiplayer, and there were two completely different games being played: the vanilla one, which I favored, and 2x2x, which doubled all production and movement. Your movement values look more like the latter (or even higher in the case of one of the most dangerous units, the diplomat). Do units still receive the movement bonus on enemy roads? This seems like a game where a single turn can result in the crippling or elimination of an enemy.

[HansLemurson]

I like the daily overviews of demographics and domestic affairs. The exploration and especially war are a bit harder to follow and could use some more focused but less frequent treatment. Not sure it this would lighten the reporting burden though. Posting a full map of an opponent/new island is easy enough but war reporting would require some saved screenshots or even notes.

The turn by turn reporting is wonderful to read through each turn even if this is a game that I would never want to play. (Maybe especially because this is a game that I would never play; Freeciv looks like some kind of mutant abomination from a design standpoint.) But it would be much easier to follow along if you didn't put every image in a spoiler tag and crop them all down to tiny sizes. This isn't 1997, we can view full sized screenshots just fine and there's a lot useful information in them that would make the game more understandable. Just having the minimap in each screenshot would do a lot to visualize where everything is taking place each turn.

Oh yes, Freeciv is most definitely a mutant abomination. The only "polish" the designers are aware of is in the language support files.
And then the "Long-Turn" ruleset makes it crazypants...

The spoilers were there not so much to save screen-space, but to put a fig-leaf veneer of secrecy over the sensitive bits of my empire.
I also found it a little helpful to use them as subject groupings, but what I'm hearing is that a post that can be read through in one go is preferred.

And full-screen shots to add more context? I think I can arrange for that as well.

Those movement values are really high. I dabbled in civ 2 multiplayer, and there were two completely different games being played: the vanilla one, which I favored, and 2x2x, which doubled all production and movement. Your movement values look more like the latter (or even higher in the case of one of the most dangerous units, the diplomat). Do units still receive the movement bonus on enemy roads? This seems like a game where a single turn can result in the crippling or elimination of an enemy.

The movement values are high. They are 2x or even 3x the base movement of Civ2. And yes, roads give tripled movement. Units can move very far in a turn. The costs of all buildings has been halved compared to the Civ2 standard, so it's almost 2x Production as well.

Unit speeds were universally tripled when I first started playing in 2018, but the speeds of the early units have been reduced to be roughly 2x, except for the Diplomat, which has to serve in both early and mid-game, so was given just enough MP to run through a forest and still be able to move.

[HansLemurson]

Ok, let's try out a slightly modified update format.


Turn 46

Top 5 Cities:

The Irish join the upper-ranks of the cities.

Just one spoiler tag to put a fig-leaf over my secret parts.  Maybe it doesn't really matter. But, one thing at a time.

Demographics:

343 Trade?!!  Wow!  That's up 10% from last turn.
I'm #2 in Population, and even my production doesn't look so bad.  
I think I'm going to do ok.

Events:

Here's what the "Event" screen looks like.

Nations:


Science:

Here's the full-screen view of Research.
My team persuaded me in no uncertain terms that I was to proceed to Invention as soon as possible in order to grab the coveted prize of "Verrochio's Workshop", or at least deny it to the enemy.
There's a chance I might be too late for it, or there will be a hilarious tie-breaker.  We'll see.

Adventuring:

This image was taken while I was still cropping.  This ship has sailed North and East of Osilia to discover what I believe to be the Aramean home-island.
I have a horseman on the ship, and the city is undefended.  I'm out of sight range.  I may try to be a cheeky bastard and land my horse at the end of next turn so that panch93 won't have time to rush-buy a defender.
Then again, my Fuel Budget is pretty tight.  I have only a few spare moves before I have to bee-line for the nearest city, or just accept this ship as a loss.
Maybe the exploration knowledge will be worth sacrificing this ship.  Cgalik is hungry for map intel to plan attacks.



Ste slipped up.  He left a worker on shore next to Antinomia, but had no defender covering it. The Horse was probably unable to move due to the 10 hour unit timer. 
My warrior was able to capture the worker, and my ship made its escape.  I disbanded the warrior, since Square-Rigs can only carry 1 unit, and I didn't want to leave it on shore to be a target for for free combat-training or inexpensive bribery.
Cgalik and I got into a debate about whether my ship should sail further into enemy waters to get as much intel as possible before the enemy is able to build a defensive navy.
I decided to sail back to Virginia[16] with the free worker to help develop the island.
Was this the right decision?


Ste is no fool and likely figured out where my ship had come from.  He has sighted the coastal waters of Virginia[16] and next turn will be able to scout Washington.
Cgalik has a warrior sitting on the mountain to prevent landings there.  Mountains provide a painfully strong +200% defense bonus.

In the Upper-left of the image, you can see I have another Caravel.  I'm sailing a ship of Slovakian Swordsmen out to see if we can catch one of Bamskamp's Incan cities off-guard.  We are pretty sure that's the Incan homeland.


War/Island Overviews:
Bronn Invasion and Terrified Osilia:

When I recently logged on to finish up my turn and adjust research goals, I saw that YKnot was entertaining guests on Bronn [38].
Ste landed a whole armada.  Against a properly defended island, most of the attackers could be swept aside by a swift counterattack by Chariots, but YKnot doesn't even have Magnetism, and I neglected to provide him with a Caravel of mine to use.  The island never really stood a chance, and the fact that YKnot had left cities empty was a clear sign to Ste that it had inadequate defenses.
YKnot had been chastised just the turn before that Empty cities show weakness to the enemy and invite trouble, hence the warrior on the way to Kallag.

In the diagram, in green ink you can see what defenses are available, and in Orange are the enemy forces.

Explorers have just 1 Defense strength, so Konk Kerne's defneses are thin.  Not paper-thin though, since it's on a hill which gives +100% defense.  Being in a city also grants +50% defense.
Nonetheless, against 2 veteran Horsemen, the city is unlikely to survive.

Catapults are "Big Siege" units that can only be carried by Square-Rig Caravels, and I think that's true for Chariots too (wheeled, though).

In a truly sad twist, the undefended workers are busy clearing the swamp by the city of Bronn, which will turn it into open grassland allowing Ste's horses to attack the city.
He might not attack immediately, since he doesn't know how much the city is defended by.

But in general, our defenses in the area consist of Tissue-Paper and Wishful thinking.

I knew something like this was going to happen.  I think I even predicted an invasion before T50.  
yay me.

Ocean and Lemuria:

Here you can see the Island of Lemuria being swarmed by Workers.  I just got Bridge Building, so I can now put roads onto River tiles, allowing both for enhanced Trade output and better road connections.
Let's see how much longer "Security through obscurity" will hold up.

Ship Hopping:

I have a troop of Tribal Workers that I'm boat-hopping to get them delivered to the northern islands as soon as possible.  They can defend cities and can't be captured, so they can help develop Osilia even if it's under threat.
The emptied boat received a shipment of 3 veteran Phalanxes, which can provide defense to vulnerable cities.  Maybe I can even sail them to Bronn, but I think that's unlikely.

Main Islands:

My development plans have been thrown off a bit.  Spending all my money on Tech, and I need to build Units in my Barracks-cities, and build Barracks in cities with good production.
War is expensive!

Also seen: my workers are swarming over the river, building bridges all over it.  This will boost the Trade output for Mount Vectron nicely.

Ok, that's a sample of shifting into the new format.  
Any feedback on what you liked or didn't like would be helpful.

[NobleHelium]

One spoiler tag is a definite improvement. I appreciate the full maps but I also have to say that the images might be a bit too big now. You can use the [screenshot] tag for automatically shrinking/expandable images.

What do you mean by Tribal Workers being able to defend cities and can't be captured? Do they just get killed then, or what? What is their combat strength?