Freeciv LongTurn (LT57 report)

[HansLemurson]

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?

Yeah, and I just figured out that I can pop the minimap out of the interface, so I can probably move it into the zone for pictures to give them context.

Tribal Workers, the ones you start with, were made to be non-capturable so that players starting next to idlers can't get a big boost from just walking in and capturing their workers, thus throwing off the game.  Tribals have the strength of Warriors, just 1 Defense, but since they can gain levels from working, they often end up with big strength multipliers, so can often defend as well as a Phalanx.  When defeated, they die like everything else.

Workers can actually defend cities too.  In fact, units that are capturable can be captured in exactly one situation: When they are attacked in the open and don't share a tile with ANY non-capturable units.  I once had a situation where I had a fort near an enemy city filled with Cannons, ready to attack, but I didn't assign enough Rifles to defend.  The enemy sallied forth with Cavalry and took out my rifles and captured the fort and all the cannons in it.  I of course had other armies available, and counter-attacked to retake the fort.  One of their defending cavalry got lucky and survived a battle with 1 HP left.  This wouldn't be a problem, except that now meant that the Cannons were now technically the stronger defender in the fort.  If I attacked, I couldn't capture my Cannons back, because there was an enemy cavalry with them.  But I also couldn't kill that Cavalry, since the strongest unit always defends.  So in the end I had to kill-off my entire siege-group instead of just being able to recapture my units.

In a city, no unit can be captured, so Catapults and Workers alike act as defenders and "go down with the ship", no matter how much you would have liked to capture them.  It's a common tactic to do this to deny the spoils of war to your enemy.

So it was misleading to say "Tribal Workers can defend cities", since ALL unit can defend cities.  And yes, any unit that defends and loses dies.

Tribal Workers are merely special because they can't be captured in the field.  That means they can irrigate grassland on a coastline facing the enemy and not have to worry about a warrior telling them to "get on the boat".

[DaveV]

Can diplomats pay money to capture enemy units and cities? That was one of their most unbalanced abilities in Civ 2.

[Sullla]

This format is much more readable, thank you! Having the minimap present in each screenshot makes it vastly easier to make sense of the game and understand where the action is taking place.

[HansLemurson]

Can diplomats pay money to capture enemy units and cities? That was one of their most unbalanced abilities in Civ 2.

Of course they can! You could do it in Civ2, therefore it *must* be a good idea.
Several balance changes were made to nerf diplomats though:
-They only have a ~30% chance of actually inciting a rebellion in a city. Those that fail, die.
-Courthouses increase the incitement cost 4x. Large cities can easily have incite costs that run into the thousands.
-Diplomats and spies can't perform their nasty deeds from a boat.
-Some Small Wonders like the Mausoleum grant temporary immunity to incitement.
-More governments than just Democracy are incitement-immune.

That said, it's still extremely powerful.

Bribery is left in largely unchanged. Only solitary units can be bribed, so it forces militaries to adopt the "Buddy system".
Stack-kill is also on, so any defeat on a group of units kills them all. This means that most military deployments opt to be spread out in pairs, like you saw with Ste's landing of the Czech army onto Bronn Island. Protects against bribery, while minimizing losses from counter-attacks.

Is any of this a truly good game design idea? Well, there's a simple answer to that: Civ2 did it!

This format is much more readable, thank you! Having the minimap present in each screenshot makes it vastly easier to make sense of the game and understand where the action is taking place.

I'm gonna crop some pictures when it's really focused, but I'll often try to include the minimap. We'll see how things look for this next update.

[civac2]

In Smac they reduced stack damage from 100% to 30%. I think combat works fairly well with this rule. It's very scrappy and guerilla-esque though. In a historical game this might be off-putting. Bribing individual units is fine too. What was absurdly unbalanced was that you could buy bases and got every single unit in its base radius too if you were successful. That's ridiculous. I assume it works like that in FreeCiv too?

[HansLemurson]

Turn 47

Top 5 Cities:

Two Hanseatic cities!
The list seems to bias recent arrivals as a tie-breaker.

Demographics:

#1 In population!
Research high since I'm going for Invention.
No Econ growth since last turn, since I haven't had spare gold to buy more buildings.
-

Science:

Invention, here I come!
-

Invasion of Bronn[38]:

Initial attacks.  Horseman killed warrior by Kallag, and got a seconD-rank promotion.
Horse died attacking Konk Kerne.  Chariot finished the job.


One city captured, one burned due to conquest pop-loss.  Bronn is on its own.



No wait, there's more company!  Ste is going to attack at the beginning of T48.
Archers are 3 Attack 1 Defense.  Bronn has just a single Warrior defending.

Czech Probing:

Would you believe that Ste has even more ships and troops?  This looks like just a probe to see if there's any more undefended cities or workers.
YKnot's north here is not as vulnerable as his island.

Southern Seas:

On the other side of the world, my hunter is trying to return to Washington to present its catch of a v2 Worker.
But I've sighted a veteran Square-Rig!  The hunter has become the hunted.


I sail north to get to the Port of Washington, and spot another Veteran Caravel of the Czechs.
Ste is really the MVP of the enemy team right now.  
I gave my ship a "Goto" command to sail into Washington.  
It will execute immediately after TC, so I should make my escape.  
I made sure to move my ship more than 10 hours before TC so that the Goto command would fire correctly.


Incan (mis)Adventure:

I gave a Slovakian army a ride to Incan lands. They unloaded onto a Jungle and onto the Swamps next to Exarcheia.
The lone swordsman by the Size 1 city got bribed.


We decided that this whole expedition was a fiasco, and to take the troops home.
Complex plan involving ship-hopping to a Trireme that sailed out from Tom Hanks.


Bronn Siege Relief:

More ship-hopping plans!
My veteran Caravel had enough movement to reach Bronn, but it was carrying the Workers, not the Phalanxes.
So I sailed them over near Breslau and unloaded one Tribal Worker so that I'd have a spare slot to swap units with.
Swap performed!


Set a Goto order on the vet Caravel, it will just barely reach Bronn.
It will zip into the harbor at the beginning of Turn 48 before Ste can launch his assault.  ...Hopefully.
Bronn will also have City Walls by then, making it more painful to attack.
With luck, we may be able to turn the Defeat on Bronn into a Quagmire.  Or better yet: a Stalemate!


Diplomacy:

Cgalik arranges for a donation to the Church of Vectron, to aid in my war efforts.
100 Gold sent will result in 80 gold received.
-

Here's the whole Diplomacy window, and you can see how much gold I have now.
-

I was able to us that gold to finish the projects on Osilia.  It's currently defenseless, and I'd be in serious shit if Ste jumped his archers back in the boat and landed them on the Iron Mountain next to Bargen.

Scouting Aramea:

Sailing through the Aramean passage.  They saw my ship coming, so no end-of-turn surprises.  I'll just sail to Brave Robots to refuel.

Still getting used to the full-sized screenshots.  How do you insert them so that they can be expanded?

[Brian Shanahan]

Still getting used to the full-sized screenshots.  How do you insert them so that they can be expanded?

Instead of using the [ img][ /img] tags use [ screenshot][ /screenshot] ones instead (without spaces, I just put them in to make sure they would appear as writing).

There used be a button on the top of the post box that you could actually pick the screenshot tag, but that seems to have disappeared in the last update, so you'll have to manually stick it in.

[HansLemurson]

Turn 48  War: what is it good for?

Top 5 Cities:

3/5 Top cities are mine?  

I know I'm awesome and all, but I worry that I've just painted a giant target on my back. 
Don't get cocky, kid.

Demographics:

It's good to be surpassed by an Ally.  The Irish and I are competing with at least one other member of the enemy team for top pop stats.
We don't know whether it's Kevin551 or Ste.  
I hope it's Ste, because if it's not, then he has a lot of unfulfilled potential...
-


Science:

I'm going to need to pursue military techs.  As much as I'd like to beeline Sanitation, I'm too close to the fighting.  
Pikes (Att 2, Def 3) will be very valuable for protecting cities.
Feudalism also grants Sun Tzu's Art of War, which gives +1 veterancy level to all land units.  
Cities without barracks produce veterans (+50%).  Cities with barracks produce level 2 veterans (+75%).
Feudalism also leads to Chivalry and Knights, which are a very powerful (too powerful?) fast attack unit.  (Att 6, Def 3)

It also leads to Gunpowder, which is fairly expensive, but changes the game.  
With Musketeers (Att 3, Def 3, 20HP), you suddenly have a unit whose defense matches or exceeds that of contemporary attackers, and can match that with attack power as well.
You can make landings and push armies forwards that your opponents will have a hard time stopping if they don't also have muskets.  
However, with Knights having gotten buffed, maybe they're not as amazing as the last game...
We'll see.

-
War from the Start

My Caravel full of Phalanxes made it into Bronn just in the nick of time.  Ste wasn't online at TC, so didn't see the ship sail into harbor.
Bronn will be safe for now.  Only Catapults in large numbers will be able to breach this city.

-

A different ship of mine though was caught by the enemy and went down.  And it's all my fault. 
The ship carrying 3 Tribal Workers (that was featured in the previous turn's ship-swapping) got sunk by Ste's navy.
I thought I had seen every warship that was in range, and so I deliberately wanted to tempt Ste to attack with his vCaravel in a battle where I had a 76% chance of victory.
Out of the fog sailed a Veteran Square-Rigged Caravel, and my treasure was sent to the bottom of the Ocean.  
Those units were irreplaceable.  You can't build Tribal Workers, and they worked without requiring support (which is a big deal when you're a republic).  
They could also have helped develop or eveb defend Osilia, and I needed that ship for more transportation. 

And my plan was stupid, even if it had succeeded.  That cargo was too valuable to risk on a 3:1 odds of victory.
Because even if it won, it's movement would be crippled, and it could be caught and finished off by another ship.
I should have sailed it far away from enemy waters.  I could have.  I didn't NEED to show it off.  But I thought I was too cool.

My only consolation was that Ste's Square-rig is itself crippled, and will run out of fuel and be lost at sea.  So...Eye for an Eye?

This also lead to complaints about the unforeseen consequences of Fuel on naval warfare.  Even in victory, you can still lose.

(Also note that there's a Catapult sitting alone below the Archers.  This was unloaded from the Square-Rig before it made its attack.)


Ste hoped he'd gotten my reinforcement ship to Bronn, and began an assault, but his catapult died.  I got lucky, and my Phalanx not only survived with 8/10HP, but even promoted to second rank!
(Also on this message, with Invention under my belt, I could begin work on Verrocchio's Workshop.)


Cgalik was there to give me some badly needed consolation and reassurance about this naval disaster.


Homefront


A bit more defense in the north, warriors being rushed out on Osilia and the Iron Mountain blocked from landings.  Still paper-thin, defended by ignorance and bluffing.
Ste withdraws from adjacency to Bronn.  No quick victory for him, the battle will be a siege now.



I take the plunge and build Verrochio's Workshop.  The extra unit upgrades will be mine!
Vectron's Glory was fortunately able to maintain its celebration even after the loss of the Colossus.
I didn't have a lot of gold this turn to buy buildings, so development has stalled.  I'm cutting science funding next turn so that I can afford the infrastructure I need to keep my cities growing.
Aqueducts, Temples, and Granaries when and where needed.  Then I'll focus on Markets and Courthouses.  Population always pays off in the end.

I did also rush the production of a replacement Caravel in Ossenbrugge.  Can't slack up on the war front, but nonetheless I don't have enough money to do everything I want.
The good news is that I'm one of the richest nations in the world.  So if I'm straining, then how badly are THEY suffering?


Southern Islands


Here is a picture of the island of Virginia, with cgalik's second city founded.  All the landing points are secured, and my Phalanx next to Washington is guarding the captured worker.  It's building a road through the forest so that all tiles can be accessed.  Otherwise a diplomat landing across the forest on the bonus grassland could do nasty things to the city.  (5MP is enough to go through a forest and then perform an action)

Slovakian Assault


Cgalik also felt ambitious and aggressive on his front, possibly because he has so many units on his island that he's complaining about the food upkeep.  If a city supports more units than its population, then it has to pay an extra 1 food per unit.
In any case, we discussed attack plans, and decided that the best procedure was to soften up the Pikeman guarding the river (UURR of Croatan, obscured by the Explorer), then follow it up with a Swordsman attack.
-

As luck would have it, despite 25% chance of victory, the Catapult actually won!
With the target beaten so cheaply, he decided to put his extra swordsman to use against the Phalanx guarding the mountain.


Total victory!!!
Boats carrying defending phalanxes move into place to protect the victorious units.  (Phalanxes in boats on rivers defend just fine.  Makes them like mobile defense platforms.)
Incan counterattack is unlikely, but better safe than sorry.
-

As a famous Civ-player once said..."sometimes better to be lucky than good."

Are the images in the screenshot tags showing up?  I'm just seeing broken images.
Ah, got it. The whole [ screenshot] image.png [/screenshot] has to be on one line.

[Brian Shanahan]

[HansLemurson]

The second tag is not done properly, the one showing you adding production to your wonder.

I think I've fixed it.

Coming up: more naval stupidity!