[Freeciv-Dev] long term questions again

[Horn Gábor <Horn.Gabor@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

(I've originally sent this to rt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx as i thought that is the
address of freeciv-dev list. Seems i was wrong so i resend it to here.
Sorry for duplication, but i'd really like to be sure it arrives to the
devs and interested in their and the player's opinion who read this
list)

Hi!

First i have to say i'm a player not a developer, so sorry if i'm wrong
in technical details. I write to you to give some feedback about
gameplay and ask what u plan to do do w/ some areas i think now became a
bit bottleneck in the gameplay. i also posted a vote about it on www.
freeciv.org so maybe u can get more player feedback too. Here r the
areas i think now could be improved:

1, generator: the most important. Random is fine, but we'd be very happy
if we could get balanced maps if we need. Now in serious duels we almost
always use referee who check if the map is fair (otherwise if players r
close in skill it might became a waste of time if circumstances r not
equal). Same true for team games, and even single ones. It's not rare
when on a map there r 3 and 11 whale main islands. I also see duel when
8 restart was needed to get an acceptable map. This can be frustrating
for players i think. I know of course refering a map properly is not
easy, but there r at least 10 players i think who can do that good
enough and would happily help the devs in that.

2, ai expansion/invasion: if we get the above coded, it's not that hard
to use a similar code for settling the ai i think. Anyway i don't think
it's that critical part, as freeciv is manily an online game for humans.
In invasion w/ some basic rules ai could be much better (atatck w/
horsemen instead of warriors, protected transports, at least 2 attacking
ship at once, etc)

3, ai diplo: u know exactly what i mean by that i think.

4, client authorization: as i now it's in progress already. What we'd
like is to prevent cheat w/ nicks (sy connect as a good player and loose
much point to his 'real' nick). It also would be nice to find a solution
to prevent people using multiple nicks. Many online games do that, w/
gamemasters or something similar.

5: too powerful diplo. This is hard to explain and as  i know pille
wrote some idea about it. diplchance itself is not enough, as w/ low
diplchance we cannot use diplos for liberate, which is not a goal imho. 

6: this just came to my mind: as i see almost all better players suffer
from gangbanging. It means when there's a good ranked player in a game,
others ally againts him from the very begining, using tech exchange,
shared vision, city giving etc. So the dude has to fight againts 5 times
prod, and no matter how he playes he gets vanished. This is frustrating
too. And sadly the gangbangers won't learn from it too, i think nobody
develops by getting empty cities and killing caravells w/ destroyers. I
even heard some case when really good people resigned from the game
because of it. I think the goal should be have many good players, so we
could have more balanced games and have more fun. Only tool for it as i
see is the ranking system atm. It's just unfair if a newbie ranked
player gets hundreds of points from a game when he does nothing but stab
in the back and split a better player w/ whom he agreed on peace. Does
those points represent skill in this case? I doubt :) The same when an
ally of 6 player kills a good one, the final winner earns the same
points as if he would do it alone. I don't have a final solution for
this of course, but a basic idea maybe u can use: when sy who wins is in
an ally, we should count it as a draw. Or eg if a 'looser' of this match
would loose 20 pts to the 'winner', and the winner has 4 ally, the
looser should only lose 20/5=4 points. Or something, maybe other players
have suggestions too.

So what do u think about these? Of course i know it's not your duty to
pay attention on these, and i say thank u for the work u have already
done. We enjoy much this game, but maybe together could make it even
better.

thx, hirisov