[Freeciv-Dev] Re: (PR#12638) Remove reputation from the game

["Christian Knoke" <chrisk@xxxxxxxxx>]

<URL: http://bugs.freeciv.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=12638 >

On Sun, Mar 27, 2005 at 05:27:53AM -0800, Per I. Mathisen wrote:
> 
> On Sun, 27 Mar 2005, Christian Knoke wrote:
> > Its not long time ago that people begged for a senate in Freeciv and this
> > was welcomed as a feature.
> 
> No, senate has been in Freeciv for many many years and nobody knew about
> it. It was not recently added at all. I made some changes (made reputation
> regain more slowly) that made senate more apparent, but still the senate
> is mostly unknown.
> 
> > I'd say micromangement *is* a core concept of Freeciv (that I like).
> 
> This is different discussion, but anyway...
> 
> Freeciv is a 4X strategy game, it is not a puzzle game. The four x'es
> stand for: explore, expand, exploit and exterminate. The 'expand' part
> means that we start small and grow incrementally from start until the end
> in terms of game entities in need of management.

I miss Evolution here: growing in quality, building infrastructure. You
cannot subsummize this under Expansion I think. 5E ;-)

> The game fun can be seen as a balance between chore tasks and novelties.
> You do the chore tasks (moving units, placing citizens, etc) in order to
> achieve novelties (new achievements in the game). If the ratio of chore
> tasks to novelties becomes too high, the game becomes boring to the
> overwhelming amount of the players. Each game entity has some chore tasks
> associated with it - moving, placing, etc.. As the number of game entities
> grow, the amount of chore tasks grows too. If the number of novelties
> increase in the same scale, this is okay (eg in Freeciv late game, techs
> come much faster).

Ok so far.

> But this is rarely possible, and we can see many
> examples of games that have been ruined by not managing to deal with this
> increase in scale of chore tasks, or how otherwise good games have
> suffered from them.

I absolutely agree that the amount of chore tasks shouldn't ruin a game, and
that this is a problem in online games. But I don't think that removing
these tasks is a solution. I think these tasks are the job of client-based
agents.

> In Freeciv the best example of this is perhaps placing citizens. When you
> get a large number of cities, this chore tasks becomes just impossible if
> you play with someone else. Hence CMA - but CMA is fundamentally a kludge
> around a broken rule; if the rules were well designed in the first place,
> CMA would not have to exist.

Maybe, but what 'well-designed' rules do you suggest? The odds and evens of
terrain are the basis of the game. Making good use of terrain (ressources,
defense and attack, infrastructure) wins a game. Placing workers seems an
oddity to you, but placing workers gives me broad choice on my development.
The CMA has improved my play a lot.

> So I am unsure what you mean when you say that you like micromanagement.

See above. Making decisions about development. 'Micromanagement', as you
call it, is 2 third of a solitaire game for me.

> There is no problem with in the early game, when the number of game
> entities is small. But do you really like it equally well when each turn
> takes almost forever doing them? Do you not use CMA to speed up your
> turns?

Absolutely. And I want more and better agents with which I can interact
intellible.

> > Back to reputation, without reputation there cannot be a senate, without
> > senate no anarchy, without anarchy not concept of peace and war.
> 
> This is totally wrong. The senate after removing reputation is _much_ more
> powerful. Now nobody will not know about the senate existing. Try to
> declare unjust war with Republic and you will be thrown right into
> anarchy.

Ok what I wrote above was a bit wrong and too short.

I have not tested this much, but if breaking treaties has no consequence any
more, I fear only unexperienced players will fulfill them. Isn't reputation
a measure to hinder misuse of diplomacy? I don't say that it is good like it
is now (its a rather new feature).

OTOH making unjust wars in democracy impossible isn't quite realistic.

> > Imagine there were only client side AI's: what kind of diplomacy mechanism
> > could serve as a communicator between peace and war? How could players (AI
> > or human) trade/handle their diplomatic states?
> 
> The AIs already use a different mechanism for tracking diplomatic states,
> called sometimes 'AI love'. You see it in the player dialog already, as
> 'attitude' IIRC.

Some global logging of reputation of any (all) players can both be a help
for AI as well as human players. How this measure is taken can/should be
discussed.

Christian

-- 
Christian Knoke            * * *            http://cknoke.de
* * * * * * * * *  Ceterum censeo Microsoft esse dividendum.