Odd thought...Time Travel in BE?

D

DarkestOnion

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I was musing about Sci-Fi tropes that could be included in Civ:BE and I began to wonder if Time Travel could be somehow abstracted? I am at a loss to suggest how this could be done or how it would play out. As such I would like to hear everyone's thoughts on how it might be done. However, I also welcome discussion as to why it would be a bad idea in Civ:BE, as long as we can all play nice folks.
 
Time travel? As in what, you drop futuristic Robots on top of ancient swordsmen in the middle ages? Not sure what your idea is here, can you elaborate a bit?
 
Time Travel? As in the human going back in time by reloading an old save? Yes, that's existed in all versions of Civilization and will still exist in BE. Technically even the "Iron Man" advanced setting of SMAC had it, but it made it a bit more painful since it would exit the game upon saving.

Or future shock as in somebody's army is several centuries more modern (historically speaking) than their opponent? That's always existed as well. If the human doesn't focus enough on science and the difficulty level is high enough he could experience future shock, but it's more commonly an AI occurrence.

Edit: It also occurs to me that SMAC had a tech called "Temporal Mechanics", and if I recall correctly it added the most powerful "armor" in the game. (Stasis Field or something similar) We don't know if a similar tech exists or not in BE but BE units are along Civ V lines, it's just that a BE melee strength of 3 may be equivalent to a Civ V strength of 300 if they met in combat. We may need to wait for the entire unit list to be reveled to know if one or more units try to use time as a weapon.

This "armor" worked by generating stasis fields around the attacker. (From the perspective of the outside world they are frozen in time, from their own perspective the whole universe will fly by.) It would be logical for some late game BE units to be described as working this way as there's no reason this couldn't be used for attacking as well.

The "weapon" that was is contemporary was a Singularly Inducer, it would create a mini black hole in the middle of the defenders. This size of black holes actually decays instantly so it's not quite sure which of the many harmful effects of having a black hole inside you is actually what kills you. This would also be logical for some late game BE units to be described as working this way, it might make more sense for this to be on a ranged unit than a melee unit.
 
Time travel would work as a "Victory Condition"

ie..to travel to the past, the time travel machine needs to be in the past.

Which means as soon as you build the machine you would get advanced knowledge/advanced troops coming back.. essentially at that point you would discover all techs that will ever be discovered before the universe dies.

That sounds like a victory condition to me.
 
If you allow for time travel backward, you effectively destroy the point from which you jumped from. "Butterfly effect" at a minimum, but the real hazard is that if you CAN travel back in time, you can take advantage of perfect 20/20 hindsight and take all of the tech and advanced equipment and materials needed to initiate that tech in the earlier time. For example, if a Colonist travels back in time taking with him tech and equipment to start interstellar travel a couple centuries before the Launch Day of BE, by the time the calendar catches up to the date where the time traveler jumped, there would already be advanced colonies on practically every suitable planet within range of Earth. Further, the overcrowding, environmental damage, and resource shortages would have been solved by the advanced tech PLUS FURTHER RESEARCH the traveler initiated.

In short, jumping backward in time is effectively a one-way trip and everything left behind has become irrelevant.

Jumping forward in time is a different story. The only question there is what kind of reception will be waiting upon the traveler's arrival? After all, the people at the future knew he was coming for ages.
 
Time Machine, city improvement. You get units the turn you start building them instead of at the end, however if you change the que before it's finished 'building' the unit disappears. (Just a tad abusable y'think?)
 
Gar said:
Time Machine, city improvement. You get units the turn you start building them instead of at the end, however if you change the que before it's finished 'building' the unit disappears. (Just a tad abusable y'think?)
Click to expand...

That sounds like an excellent idea for a wonder. Maybe make it a tile improvement that must be worked by a city, and forfeits an entire tile?
 
One idea that comes to mind is that you might have a very small chance to discover a Unit which requires a Tech that you have yet to research. Imagine the look on someones face when you have a Great War Bomber paving the way for your Swordsmen (using Civ 5 terms as a placeholder there mind you). However, this would have to be a singular event or it could get ridiculous.

I also love the idea of a Time Travel Victory. I think it would rely heavily on the new Quest System. I envision a Spy from a dystopian future being discovered at an Expedition Site. She claims to have come back in time to save the world, but can you trust her intentions?
 
If they could time travel back to cIV and have random events, unit stacking, etc. then I'd be all for it. ;)
 
Or you could build a Time Machine National Wonder which generates a Great Time Traveler (H.G. Wells, Dr. Who, etc.) who can travel to the past with current technology to give to your Civ in its past. The result could be a massive Research Boost. This could of course be way too broken, but still an interesting idea.
 
Or perhaps a future Temporal Watchmen that appear to STOP any time travel attempts, for fear that it may endanger their timeline.

"A group of highly advanced, heavily-armed warriors appear and seize several specific scientists, several prototypes that the scientists had been working on, and then abruptly disappear through some kind of energy portal." Onlookers are left puzzled and scratching their heads while asking, 'What just happened'?"
 
CaptainPatch said:
Or perhaps a future Temporal Watchmen that appear to STOP any time travel attempts, for fear that it may endanger their timeline.

"A group of highly advanced, heavily-armed warriors appear and seize several specific scientists, several prototypes that the scientists had been working on, and then abruptly disappear through some kind of energy portal." Onlookers are left puzzled and scratching their heads while asking, 'What just happened'?"
Click to expand...

Oh that could become a Temporal Cold War :)
 
After building your time machine it is immediately seized by a megacorporation for their own ends. The scientific community is distraught at the loss of so valuable a device, byt the corp does manage to increase production and energy output in the city where it was built by 100%.

(Note there is a slowly rising 1% chance each turn that the city falls into a time paradox and ceases to exist)
 
I dislike time travel in SF because it cheapens everything by making it reversible and it tends to create paradoxes and plot holes. It is the save scumming of storytelling.
However, there are rare instances where it has been done well and it has crossed my mind that the aliens from the contact victory may be humans from the far future.
 
You could have the clichéd Victory Condition to build a time machine and travel into the past to prevent the Great Mistake ala the Terminator movies.
 
Time travel in the classic sense has no place in rational theory, but temporal distortion does exist on the quantum level, and more importantly it can be controlled.
Academician Prokhor Zakharov, "For I Have Tasted the Fruit"

That was the quote on time travel in SMAC. It gave awesome armor. But that's it. SMAC looks to be a little more 'hard' on the science than CBE, though. So who knows.
 
Thinking this through a bit more, how about the Time Machine is a World Wonder (Copying what was already stated by Gar) that causes units to appear in a city the turn they were started building, but if the production is changed before the unit is 'finished' and sent back in time, anything they did (Damage, killed units, built structures, etc.) is undone and removed? You could use a special tag that's removed upon unit completion for these things.
 
The only time travel I could think of that would make any sens in the game would be forward only time travel.

Basicly after you have built the time machine you will get outdated units from time to time.
 
Denkt said:
The only time travel I could think of that would make any sens in the game would be forward only time travel.

Basicly after you have built the time machine you will get outdated units from time to time.
Click to expand...
Hmm. That's an interesting thought. Rather than physical storage which takes up space for older units that get mothballed instead of scrapped. A mod for Fallout New Vegas had a "4D Storage device" along those lines. (Which for all intents and purposes was a Bag of Holding.) So, comes storage time, pop it into the forward-only Time Machine. The future point is whenever the item is extracted later. In between, it's never in the way, and it's always there when you want/need it. No Maintenance costs other than the cost of keeping the Time Machine ON. [chuckle](When the city gets attacked a random arty shell smashes the Time Machine. Suddenly, 40 years of stored units come tumbling into the building = more mass than the available volume of space. KABOOM? Or everything gets turned into paste and oozes out the doors, windows, holes in the wall?)
 
joncnunn said:
Time Travel? As in the human going back in time by reloading an old save? Yes, that's existed in all versions of Civilization and will still exist in BE. Technically even the "Iron Man" advanced setting of SMAC had it, but it made it a bit more painful since it would exit the game upon saving.

Or future shock as in somebody's army is several centuries more modern (historically speaking) than their opponent? That's always existed as well. If the human doesn't focus enough on science and the difficulty level is high enough he could experience future shock, but it's more commonly an AI occurrence.

Edit: It also occurs to me that SMAC had a tech called "Temporal Mechanics", and if I recall correctly it added the most powerful "armor" in the game. (Stasis Field or something similar) We don't know if a similar tech exists or not in BE but BE units are along Civ V lines, it's just that a BE melee strength of 3 may be equivalent to a Civ V strength of 300 if they met in combat. We may need to wait for the entire unit list to be reveled to know if one or more units try to use time as a weapon.

This "armor" worked by generating stasis fields around the attacker. (From the perspective of the outside world they are frozen in time, from their own perspective the whole universe will fly by.) It would be logical for some late game BE units to be described as working this way as there's no reason this couldn't be used for attacking as well.

The "weapon" that was is contemporary was a Singularly Inducer, it would create a mini black hole in the middle of the defenders. This size of black holes actually decays instantly so it's not quite sure which of the many harmful effects of having a black hole inside you is actually what kills you. This would also be logical for some late game BE units to be described as working this way, it might make more sense for this to be on a ranged unit than a melee unit.
Click to expand...

i think that by "time travel," he means actual in-universe time travel. did christopher columbus time travel in 1492?
 
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