General settings for GT12

[morphles]

You are ether playing with retards then, or have some very good deals in exchange for those techs. Well that's somethat drastic oversimplification, but realistically thats how it is. The point with tech trade is, it benefits weaker pleayers (as in not people who not know how to play, but as in weakened by earlier circumstances), more than stronger ones, so it evens out game somethat. Of course theres a problem, when you get cabal of some allied players who do nothing but tech trade while others battle and do other shit. But hopefully retarded limits on diplomats will be lifted, that should help some. And tech cost should decrease for all depending on the number of players that have that tech, so it shouldn't be that bad then.

[ifaesfu]

It only benefits players who have more time to chat and/or have more friends in the game. They can be weak or strong, that isn't the point.
Will a weak player without friends in the game and only connecting ten minutes a day benefit from tech sharing?
I think it is more than enough for those players with friends across the games and much time to be online to be able to coordinate military movements, gold, etc.
Tech trading is too much advantage.

[Corbeau]

Actually, has nothing with time online, but it does have to do with the number of friend. Two alliances, one twice as big as the other, the smaller one doesn't have a chance. Simply, it's lost the race on light bulbs. Military defence can work against a numerically stronger opponent, but not against a scientifically stronger one.

As for "weaker players not having a chance", well, there is still exchange available. Want to help them? Send them money so that they can divert their trade to science.

[morphles]

If you have realiable alliances there is no problem to setup tech trades in 10 min.

As for

Two alliances, one twice as big as the other, the smaller one doesn't have a chance. Simply, it's lost the race on light bulbs. Military defence can work against a numerically stronger opponent, but not against a scientifically stronger one.

Thats approaching nonsense. Cause trade or no trade when teams working properly it is very likely you'll lose on bulbs anyway. Because other factors very likely will confound science and you'll not be able to match them. Lets take simple numbers. Say one alliance is twice the size of other. Say smaller alliance spends 50% of resources on science 25% on military, and 25% on infrastructure. So for larger alliance to be safe it needs to match military strength, which means it needs ~13% military spending. Leaving another 12% percent to be dedicated to ether science or infrastructure. Ether way long term outcome does not look good for smaller players at all!

Now with full tech transfer package, that is, trade, unlimited diplomat stealing, conquest stealing. I'd say smaller alliance has much much better chances, they can spend something like 50% on infrastrucutre and 50% on military, and get tech by force. Though of course numbers will never look good for them, I still see this as being better. If larger alliance goes for tech, they will likely have hard time keeping it out of hands of enemies, if they forgo tech, well smaller alliance is boned, but it's only as bad as previously, with no tech transfer. Additionally if there is tech cost reduction depending on number of players (counting everyone), it looks even better for smaller alliance.

(while no trade and reduced costs could look very bad for them, larger alliance dedicates one player for reserach and bank them on everything, negligble cost reduction, but very good progress)

All in all, all such crap problems will be present in any multiplayer game, you can't do anything about larger party has advantage in muplitplayer game, this also involves significant luck factor, who ends up where. Not that I have much problem with that. What is problem and what has to be prevented is "permanent alliance" where certain players always ally, though I think so far this was not a problem on GT, but AFAIK LT has some serious issues with that.

[ifaesfu]

Doesn't it matter the time? If you haven't got much time and can only move your units and take a look at your cities, etc. How can you make treaties with 5, 10 or 20 players? Tech trading isn't an alliance issue, it's global. You can start trading them as soon as you get the first one with anybody you have contact with.
It is never better for smaller alliances. Presuming equal level of playing, the biggest alliance will build more diplomats/spies, more military units and if it wasn't enough, more nations will be able to invest all in science to share with their partners.

I repeat, tech trading is a broken setting in multiplayer games. You don't need any skill, only friends and time to do more friends.

[el_perdedor]

if we set tech traiding enabled, then i dont play.
as easy as that...

[wieder]

Hi

We had some interesting discussion on the LT forums about how to plan the game and the ruleset for future games. First I'll tell you something about why I'm here. Then I'm trying to politely ask some questions that would hopefully help both GT and LT to improve.

I've played on LT since LT30 and the only GT game I have participated was GT00. Actually I joined GT01 twice but it was started 3 times and I missed the last one so that probably doesn't count. Now I'm an admin for the upcoming LT34, planned to be started in January.

I'm here because of some discussions about the GT rulesets and the "GT way of playing" I find hard to understand. There has been lots of plans to make LT34 a very easy game also for the beginners and for those who like just to play and not really participate huge alliances. In short, huge alliances can't gain advantage with tech trading and even stealing is gone. To make things easier the less experienced players will get the techs cheaper once someone else invents them. Without embassies. Should be nice for those who just want to play without the politics as an mandatory part of the game. In short we are trying to fix the unfairness LT33 had for the new players.

In the past games we had some issues with huge alliances and too many players allying against one powerful enemy. There has been some experiments with alliance sizes but they really didn't fully solve the problem. In a typical game the strongest alliance is destroyed once everyone else turns against them because they afraid of them. This is not really a problem we are trying to solve. However the problem we are looking to figure out is slightly similar.

In the last few games we have had lots of players who just like to play and not really try to win. This wouldn't be such a bad thing unless it had some side effects affecting the game for those who are more competitive. Typically it looks like the players who just want to survive are becoming a tool for those who like to win. This has resulted with new type of mega alliances where the core alliance has a limited number of players (like 6-8 on a 60 player game) and they get help from 10-20 players who are left alive when the game ends. Surviving has become a new way of winning on LT. Unfortunately with massive alliances.

Now the new plan for LT34 was to limit the number of the survivors but we got some feedback from more than one player who said that it would be "a bad idea". They didn't actually call it a bad idea but they definitely didn't like the plan. Not even while the space race will be enabled and with that the number of the survivors is not limited.

I have understood that GT used to have some kind of solution for letting the less competitive players to have a good gaming experience.

You apparently don't have any limitations for the alliance sizes or for the amount of the survivors. How does this work for you and how are the games? How can you do it without tons of survivors? How many survivors you usually have in GT games?

[XYZ]

I know of 3 cases: First one was total anarchy wich almost always lead to disontent due to massive alliance inbalance. Second case was a 3 member alliance limit wich from my pow worked quite good since it regionalized conflicts in the beginning and led to some sort of k.o system -though it was undermined by informal ceasefires (still, passing through other alliance territory or vision wasn't granted). Third case but wich only applied to scenarios with different starting premises (bigger territory, stronger army) was a point system in wich depending on the size of a nation you were allowed a limited number of alliances or even non.

[morphles]

Well, I have no experience with scenarios (and I'm not planning on getting it ), but as for FFA/no limits on alliances I had rather positive experience. Though it was in islands (with 3 kings per player to boot) game with very slow start, it become apparent that two players of one alliance we getting seriously seriously strong, one in territory, other in insane tech rate due to some wonders and concentrating on that. So me and my ally gathered as much as possible other people to fight against them, even then it was very tough win, we barely managed to keep up with tech while sharing. And most likely if they shared a bit more they could have won. Though there were some silly "timing issues" that is when and how engagement began. Also having concrete targets to eliminate helped greatly. Actually I do not know what my point is with this story . Most likely that wonders suck big time. And big wonders are shit with regards to balance, but that allying can counteract that.

As for that alliance size limited game (3 per side), well it was nice in theory. But it did not prevent submarine alliances. Also "informal cease fire" is putting that incredibly lightly. That was some trade route bullshit combined with positions that lead to great imbalance, and that "informal ceasefire" between separate alliances probably gave more benefit to those players in those alliance than they got from members of own alliances. My point here is that such limits are very likely to be bypassed in some way. In that instance it was trade routes (though, I do not fault anyone for that, well maybe person who came up with ridiculously broken idea of trade routes, cause that shit is very very seriously broken, probably 100x more than tech trade).