My one gripe about civ 4

[Da_V_Man]

I love civ 4,don't get me wrong, but my one gripe about it is that of the 500 turns that repreents human history, only ~130 turns are spent during the majority of time. I mean, the first 4000 years go by with a snap of a finger. Sometimes i don't notice how far time has passed because it goes by so quickly. Someone might advise to play on marathon, but that doesn't help, as the rest of the game is 3x as long! What do you guys think?

[Spearthrower]

Find a suitable mod - I totally agree, but there are plenty of modders who do too!

Look for FexFX's mod - that greatly extends the time you play in each age, and makes the ancient ages feel longer.

Alternatively you could mod in that 54000 (or whatever it is for 1 turn per year from whenever the date is) turn mod that I saw someone working on!!

[Figaro]

The game represents a steady continuation of human developement. Human developement has varied greatly in speed, and not always even linear - Homo Sapiens has been on the planet 200,000 years or so but only really started to settle down into towns about 6,000-7,000 years ago. Since then, the rate of developement has increased dramatically - consider the technological advances made in the last 100 years compared to, say, 1000-11000 AD?

What Civ4 does is have the clock gradually slow down to give each stage of human development the same ammount of attention, even if the period of time varied greatly. Seriously - if it were constant, say 1 turn to 10 years, you would spend the first 200 turns doing very little but by the end see an insane flurry of activity over the course of just 50 or so turns.

[Spearthrower]

Originally Posted by Figaro

The game represents a steady continuation of human developement. Human developement has varied greatly in speed, and not always even linear - Homo Sapiens has been on the planet 200,000 years or so but only really started to settle down into towns about 6,000-7,000 years ago. Since then, the rate of developement has increased dramatically - consider the technological advances made in the last 100 years compared to, say, 1000-11000 AD?

This is generally right, except I'm really not sure what was happening prior to the last Ice Age - but something was surely going on... I'd go so far as to say that urbanisation had started, but I only have scraps of evidence to support it.

Originally Posted by Figaro

What Civ4 does is have the clock gradually slow down to give each stage of human development the same ammount of attention, even if the period of time varied greatly. Seriously - if it were constant, say 1 turn to 10 years, you would spend the first 200 turns doing very little but by the end see an insane flurry of activity over the course of just 50 or so turns.

Completely right, but you can fill those turns with more protracted wars - yeah it takes 100 turns to research something, but you can still build 30 spearmen and go for the attack. With some mods, there is a playable balance depending on your tastes.

I wouldnt want to play like it too often, but I do like a modified extremely long game (2000+ turns)

[Figaro]

Then people would complain that the game was always over before they'd researched anything worthwhile.

I do like long games, don't get me wrong - but I don't think the answer is to swell out the early era, as the OP suggests. I like the way each era is roughly the same length.

[Spearthrower]

It does entirely depend on settings and playstyle - I have played 3 or 4 games of absurd length with absolutely gigantic maps and it all worked well. I enjoyed it anyway!

[Da_V_Man]

Originally Posted by Figaro

The game represents a steady continuation of human developement. Human developement has varied greatly in speed, and not always even linear - Homo Sapiens has been on the planet 200,000 years or so but only really started to settle down into towns about 6,000-7,000 years ago. Since then, the rate of developement has increased dramatically - consider the technological advances made in the last 100 years compared to, say, 1000-11000 AD?

What Civ4 does is have the clock gradually slow down to give each stage of human development the same ammount of attention, even if the period of time varied greatly. Seriously - if it were constant, say 1 turn to 10 years, you would spend the first 200 turns doing very little but by the end see an insane flurry of activity over the course of just 50 or so turns.

I understand what your saying, but that doesn't mean that you can't play longer in the earlier eras. Even though we've advanced more in the past 100 years than we have in the past 6000, people still lived back then. People were born, grew old and died just like they do today. Wars were fought and entire empires grew and collapsed in what would otherwise be just a few turns. One of the nice things in civ 3 was that in the beginning, the ancient era lasted a while. Sure it took a while to advance but at least the majority of the game (in years) was not so under-represented, but then again the maps were bigger too.

[Yzman]

The problem I see with that is like others have said...not much happens in the first few thousand years of the game. I find myself hitting enter half the time turn after turn. And the problem with warring lasting a lot longer in that era is that, true in real life civilizations warred and died out. But with the limited amount of civilizations we have...can't afford to have many die out early.

If they did make the beginning game longer, I would propose them finding more things for the player to do during those years and also implement a system where new civilizations have a chance of popping up later in the game. Maybe for example they could have it where if a barbarian state is allowed to grow to a few cities, then it just pops up a new civilization. This would be nice. Or lets say that a civilization was destroyed early in the game and their cities razed. Have the game remember culture of the tiles still(which I don't believe it does when a civ gets totally destroyed) and then that civilization has a chance of being reborn under a new leader if the culture remains untouched by another civ for a long enough time.

Thoughts?

[Carnage04]

Barbarian cities that survived a set amount of time or grew to a certain size spawning a new civ would be awesome.

[phungus420]

Originally Posted by Spearthrower

This is generally right, except I'm really not sure what was happening prior to the last Ice Age - but something was surely going on... I'd go so far as to say that urbanisation had started, but I only have scraps of evidence to support it.

I wish you did have evidence to support pre Ice Age civilizations. You'de win a noble prize, which would be cool for you, and I'd find the information facinating. As is though, I've seen nor heard, nor read of anything indicative of agricultural societies prior to the end of the last ice age.

[George2816]

Originally Posted by Figaro

The game represents a steady continuation of human developement. Human developement has varied greatly in speed, and not always even linear - Homo Sapiens has been on the planet 200,000 years or so but only really started to settle down into towns about 6,000-7,000 years ago. Since then, the rate of developement has increased dramatically - consider the technological advances made in the last 100 years compared to, say, 1000-11000 AD?

What Civ4 does is have the clock gradually slow down to give each stage of human development the same ammount of attention, even if the period of time varied greatly. Seriously - if it were constant, say 1 turn to 10 years, you would spend the first 200 turns doing very little but by the end see an insane flurry of activity over the course of just 50 or so turns.

Some people think that humans have only been on the earth for 6,000 years and before the humans were on the earth it was nothing.

[Fire.Soul]

Although I completely see your point, I think the time is pretty well balanced and distributed according to the relevance/density of each era, allowing for a constant stream of historical points of interest. But obviously early eras clearly go by before you know it. That's the price to pay.

[Spearthrower]

Originally Posted by phungus420

I wish you did have evidence to support pre Ice Age civilizations. You'de win a noble prize, which would be cool for you, and I'd find the information facinating. As is though, I've seen nor heard, nor read of anything indicative of agricultural societies prior to the end of the last ice age.

Hardly so, there are plenty of people from different disciplines beginning to make cautious claims about just such an idea now.

Just as an example, mitochondrial analysis of many ancient grains indicates a much more ancient domestication of some of these plants.

Evidence you can hold up and photograph though is a lot harder to come by!

I predict that over the next decade, we will start to see a shift in our understanding of pre-ancient society.... there is too much circumstantial evidence building to suggest this. It's only a matter of time before someone finds something more durably proveable, rather than indicative.

[Da_V_Man]

Originally Posted by Yzman

The problem I see with that is like others have said...not much happens in the first few thousand years of the game. I find myself hitting enter half the time turn after turn. And the problem with warring lasting a lot longer in that era is that, true in real life civilizations warred and died out. But with the limited amount of civilizations we have...can't afford to have many die out early.

If they did make the beginning game longer, I would propose them finding more things for the player to do during those years and also implement a system where new civilizations have a chance of popping up later in the game. Maybe for example they could have it where if a barbarian state is allowed to grow to a few cities, then it just pops up a new civilization. This would be nice. Or lets say that a civilization was destroyed early in the game and their cities razed. Have the game remember culture of the tiles still(which I don't believe it does when a civ gets totally destroyed) and then that civilization has a chance of being reborn under a new leader if the culture remains untouched by another civ for a long enough time.

Thoughts?

I like the idea of new civs popping up, like the resawning AI feature from civ 3, or setting a number of civs to randomly join the game. But otherwise, I agree with you in what you say. But it would be nice to be able to have the pyramids as a 4000 year old wonder eventually in a normal game without beelining to get it.

[50_dollar_bag]

Originally Posted by Yzman

The problem I see with that is like others have said...not much happens in the first few thousand years of the game. I find myself hitting enter half the time turn after turn. And the problem with warring lasting a lot longer in that era is that, true in real life civilizations warred and died out. But with the limited amount of civilizations we have...can't afford to have many die out early.

If they did make the beginning game longer, I would propose them finding more things for the player to do during those years and also implement a system where new civilizations have a chance of popping up later in the game. Maybe for example they could have it where if a barbarian state is allowed to grow to a few cities, then it just pops up a new civilization. This would be nice. Or lets say that a civilization was destroyed early in the game and their cities razed. Have the game remember culture of the tiles still(which I don't believe it does when a civ gets totally destroyed) and then that civilization has a chance of being reborn under a new leader if the culture remains untouched by another civ for a long enough time.

Thoughts?

Have you guys tried Rhye's and Fall of Civilization? It's a mod in BtS. It pretty much does what you were suggesting although you have to play on a set map of the earth. If you could put it into the Epic game then I agree that would be awesome.