Dynamic Game Speed

Ok, so I'm very happy that we are allowed to change the game speed to what we like ourselves. People who want to play many games often choose the quick version so that they can build everything faster and don't need to spend so much time doing the same thing. Those that want to have units that are able to get from your city to the enemy before they become obsolete usually chooses Epic or Marathon games, Normal is somewhere in between.

If you want to really understand what I mean read the following, if you just want to post read the conclusion at the bottom.




I remember back in Civ III days I used to mod the game speed and what units upgraded to so that I didn't have to disband my Cavalry by the time I got to Mass Production and Tanks. This was done for me actually building Cavalry because I never wanted units that became obsolete, I also always went for stashing up shields and then hope for the best when trying to complete Leonardo's Workshop.

But I've realized that most of the time the reason for why I am changing the game speed to slower than normal, is because I want to play more in a specific age. To do that I have till (wait don't say dumbass just yet) I get to that specific age from the Ancient Era to that Age. I realize we now have the Advanced option, and the earlier start option, but these just don't do it for me. I need to have played the game from the very beginning, meaning 4000BC with Settler and Warrior (or Scout). I always want to expand in the beginning, it feels strange doing it in the Enlightenment Age, (I know they expanded their colonies a lot in the 16-hundreds but not their real country that much) but it's just how Civ is for me.

So I've come up with an idea, (I didn't see it anywhere, just came back from the local pub, and felt for writing a post about this, but if you have had the same idea, please direct me to thread/post/website). What if we had a Dynamic Game Speed? I'll try to explain what I mean (is dynamic the right word for it btw?)

Dynamic Game Speed:
I know it's not only me that starts a new game and thinks, ahh can't wait till I get to i.e. the Age of Sail, Frigates, Privateers, Man-of-Wars (ol' school Ship-of-the-Lines, or that in the DYP mod ), or the age of Macemen, with some Trebuchets, or maybe the Modern Era is more your thing and you just want to build your empire from scratch, but not wanting to play marathon speed till you get there.

Then what if you were able to have different speeds in the game? Like quick game speed from Ancient till Medieval Age, and then Marathon to really plunder your enemy civs with your heavy duty Cavalry and Catapults, without having to struggle through all the earlier techs and stuff for 3 hours instead of 15 minutes? Maybe you want to play two ages on slow speed while fast forwarding the other times? Or maybe you even want to stop teching at some point to play it that way the rest of the game?

This would be a very good addition to the game I believe, you could choose at the beginning which Eras to go in slow motion, while the others just went by in the fast lane. Or if you changed your opinion during the game and decided you don't want to spend a hell'o'a'lot of time in the Enlightenment age you could just decide it to be faster. You could change it ingame.

If you had a base amount of shields for each unit at normal speed, beakers for each tech, and so on, you could have a slider, that went from a quick game speed at 200% game speed requiring only half the amount of beakers/shields for each tech/unit, to 100% being Normal Speed, and 50% Epic, 25% Marathon, or even 10% and 5% since it's just the base speed of everything multiplied by the percentage.

Now, I do realize how this could be used as cheat; The enemy declares war on you, and his stack enters your territory, but it takes him 2 turns to reach your first border city, no worries you just flip the game speed slider up to 200% and build lots of defensive units in that city. This is NOT possible though if you have a period of turns between you set the slider to what you want it to be at the moment. Meaning if you set the slider from 50% to 200%, it takes some 5/10/15/20 turns till that game speed is assigned, stopping this from being misused.

Conclusion:
Now I want this to be a discussion thread, no flaming please, don't tell me to use the advanced start, and start in different era, if you're going to post that read the rest of the post, I have explained why I don't wanna do that.

Dynamic Game Speed, a slider that you can change the game speed during a game to stop having to bore through the boring stuff and have good time to play with the good stuff before it goes obsolete, or play with it till the end. (More explained under Dynamic Game Speed)

So what do you think? Come with ideas, advantages/disadvantages, solutions, hints, spellchecks (hehe). And try to be on topic, don't want this going all the way off-topic with people starting to whine about Praet and Axe rush is the best and only playstyle.



Alendo

Sounds cool.

Very cool indeed.

If the change between game speeds is simply formulaic (and doesn't need to switch xml files) ie. 1/2x-1x-2x-3x I don't see why someone couldn't create hack that allows you to change game-speed "on-the-fly".

Or even a save-game hack that adjusts the game-speed?

This sounds great, but I think that if it could be made, it wouldn't be usable in HoF games because of its advantages. For own use, it would be very good option, I think.

one observation: you hit the desired age (say mace and knights) but the AIs are currently back with swords and archers. You change from quick to marathon and have lots of time before they catch up tech wise. This would unbalance the game. How about you adjust the speed slider but it only applies to anyone in the same age as you. People in older ages still play at quick.

ruff_hi said:

one observation: you hit the desired age (say mace and knights) but the AIs are currently back with swords and archers. You change from quick to marathon and have lots of time before they catch up tech wise. This would unbalance the game. How about you adjust the speed slider but it only applies to anyone in the same age as you. People in older ages still play at quick.

Click to expand...

Didn't think about so huge cap. Maybe the choices should be made in the start, and speed would only last an era (this has the problem that one could skip Classical era by taking Theology from The Oracle) or a specific amount of years (meaning that for example when you reach 1500AD, the speed changes). But the later has same problem you spoke about. So how about this: each civ starts with a stack of 20-year periods using different game speeds and it can use them in the order that player/AI wants. That would allow each civ have same amount of turns before 2050AD.

Boring stuff? There's boring stuff in Civ?

Well, perhaps the modern era, but I like all the other eras very much...

ruff_hi said:

one observation: you hit the desired age (say mace and knights) but the AIs are currently back with swords and archers. You change from quick to marathon and have lots of time before they catch up tech wise. This would unbalance the game. How about you adjust the speed slider but it only applies to anyone in the same age as you. People in older ages still play at quick.

Click to expand...

The thing is, that they would probably be lagging behind tech wise if you were playing marathon from the beginning too. So I don't really see the problem here, and also, to not be able to take advantage of this there could be a delay between switching game speeds and when it actually happens, as I have talked about before.

Didn't think about so huge cap. Maybe the choices should be made in the start, and speed would only last an era (this has the problem that one could skip Classical era by taking Theology from The Oracle) or a specific amount of years (meaning that for example when you reach 1500AD, the speed changes). But the later has same problem you spoke about. So how about this: each civ starts with a stack of 20-year periods using different game speeds and it can use them in the order that player/AI wants. That would allow each civ have same amount of turns before 2050AD.

Click to expand...

Therefore I would rather like the option that you could decide when to switch game speed while in the game and the appropriate time comes you choose to go slower/faster. Then you wouldn't have that problem.

Wolfwood said:

Boring stuff? There's boring stuff in Civ?

Well, perhaps the modern era, but I like all the other eras very much...

Click to expand...

Well then maybe you would want to make those eras slower, or you could decide that you would stop before the modern era. Meaning you could have fun with those wooden ships as long as you want.

Yup, I do like the idea of expanding the early parts of the game and perhaps even disabling the modern era, or making it come at a really late point in the game.

What about making an option that increase Tech research costs for each selected era?
That I would love more tbh, I'd slow down renaissance and industrial age for sure.

I deffinatly agree with you on make some more creative game speed options. Personaly I love the classical age. Ya know swords/cats/etc. The ancited units can still be used here to and I really feel like im play an ancient civ. Lucky for me thats one of the longest ages.

I wonder if an age stop where you just cut the tech tree short at a certian age so you could play the rest of the game out in that age would be possible. The only problem I see is that managing reaserch is a major part of civ. Without having to reserch the economys would get all screwy.

Your dynamic system seems to fix this. Yes I agree the transistion would be a little wierd. What If the techs were static but the rest changed. Here is what I mean. When one person reaches the "marathon" age or whatever everyones game switched to marathons speed. EXCEPT. The techs for players who havn't reached the age are still cheep/on the faster setting.

This would keep people from exploiting a wierd tech advantage as the slow computers woudl catch up quickly to your age but the change i build times for everyone would keep them from staying back to quickly build a wonder or something.

I wonder if an age stop where you just cut the tech tree short at a certian age so you could play the rest of the game out in that age would be possible. The only problem I see is that managing reaserch is a major part of civ. Without having to reserch the economys would get all screwy.

Click to expand...

Future Tech?

Your dynamic system seems to fix this. Yes I agree the transistion would be a little wierd. What If the techs were static but the rest changed. Here is what I mean. When one person reaches the "marathon" age or whatever everyones game switched to marathons speed. EXCEPT. The techs for players who havn't reached the age are still cheep/on the faster setting.

Click to expand...

To remove the confusion, I more or less proposed two different systems, one where you could choose which eras to be slow and fast, and another where you could choose when you want it to go fast and when you want it to go slow while in the game, with the delay mechanism. The latter is the one I would like the best, but the first would probably be the easiest to make in a mod.

I love the idea of dynamic speed. If this could be done, I would be very interested in seeing how, because one idea I've been toying with is an automatic change in speed any time a civ is in war (even to the point of skipping the civs that aren't in war x turns out of y so that they actually play at the slower rate...) but I don't know if it's possible or where in the files you'd have to make the changes.

The key thing would be to change how game speeds work

Right now
a marathon tech costs 900
Epic costs 450
Normal tech costs 300
Quick costs 200

You would have to change it so that it costs 300 for everyone BUT
Your Research/Production/Gold, etc. are all multiplied

So if a Marathon speed city produces 10 flasks/hammers, etc. per turn
The same city on Epic speed produces 20
The same city on Normal speed produces 30
The same city on Epic speed produces 45

By changing output v. others it wouldn't be as exploitable.

Read my mind

Youve got my vote . I particulary like the idea of slowing the game down for when Im in a war and I want to take my time burning their citys without being worried about losing the tech race

I was thinking about something similar the other day. To me, one of my biggest complaints is how long and drawn out the wars tend to be. How many people hae been at was with an AI for 2000+ years? How many people have camped outside an enemy city to pound down the walls or pillage improvements for 200+ years? Can anyone come up with a historical example of a 200 year city siege or a 2000 year war between two countries?

I'm not really sure how the mechanics would work, but my idea was to have the passagwe of time change dynamically in the game. While at peace and building your empire/researching techs, turns could be several years as they are now. When war is declared, the passage of time could slow down to where a turn represents days, weeks, or months of time. This would allow the wars to be fought within a particular era and to be a more decisive factor in the game rather than a tedious drawn out engagement.

Mesix said:

I was thinking about something similar the other day. To me, one of my biggest complaints is how long and drawn out the wars tend to be. How many people hae been at was with an AI for 2000+ years? How many people have camped outside an enemy city to pound down the walls or pillage improvements for 200+ years? Can anyone come up with a historical example of a 200 year city siege or a 2000 year war between two countries?

I'm not really sure how the mechanics would work, but my idea was to have the passagwe of time change dynamically in the game. While at peace and building your empire/researching techs, turns could be several years as they are now. When war is declared, the passage of time could slow down to where a turn represents days, weeks, or months of time. This would allow the wars to be fought within a particular era and to be a more decisive factor in the game rather than a tedious drawn out engagement.

Click to expand...

Longest war, if you look at it that way:

http://hnn.us/articles/29019.html Roughly 2000 years.

Sarajevo in modern times was under seige for nearly 4 years.

Going back into History - Heraklion is surrounded by a formidable medieval wall, which was used to protect it from enemies. Owing to this, the city enjoyed the reputation as a well-fortified state in the Mediterranean basin. It stood up to a siege from the Turks for 21 years, but was finally seized in 1669 after its betrayal by a Greek-Venetian engineer who informed the invaders of the walls' weaknesses at east and west bastions.

So yes, wars can wage for years and so can seige warfare. You would be rather silly to conclude it would take a matter of hours.

Although, I think they will never getting the 'passage of time' right in Civ games.

There are other examples of long sieges that lasted years. Granada and Kruja come to mind off the top of my head. I wasn't trying to imply that wars should be decided in hours. It's just that even in ancient times, it was possible for a large army to invade and conquer large amounts of territory in the span of a single turn of CIV. Alexander the Great conquered Asia Minor in a few years time in the 4th Century BC. Even on the slowest speed (where each turn is a shorter period of time), this feat cannot be modeled in the game.

From a game playing standpoint, it is very annoying that it takes several years to accomplish anything. There is nothing more frustrating than when you start marching on an enemy with the best troops available, and they are obsolete by the time they reach his city.

I realize that this would be difficult to make work, I was just pontificating on the subject of the thread.