Timescale

I've written about it in another topic but after some other try, I definetly think this is a problem; sorry if it's been discussed somewhere else but I haven't found anything about it. Are you sure that the timescale is working properly? I've made a couple of quick games using AI Autoplay both with Normal and Epic speed and in both cases I ended up discovering middle age techs around the year 1900 (and the same goes for more advanced civs)... Moreover, playing with normal speed, I think the turn/years ratio is totally random; after about 240 turns (20 years/turn or something like that), the game suddenly switched to 6 months/turn for about 100 turns, then switched back to more years/turn (this happened only on normal speed). Is it possible to look into this problem? I'm now playing with normal speed because I think 1047 turns are enough for my first try with C2C; but right now I'm around 2400 AD and I still don't have musketeers (about 30% of the game). And another try I've done with epic speed and autoplay ended up in year 1800AD and only 16% of the game played. So I definetly think there is a problem between years and turns; what do you think?

Turn settings are determined in the GameSpeed.xml file, and if you want consistent year-tech-historical ratios, you'd really need to play on one map size and one difficulty or tweak all the settings so that all map sizes and all difficulties use the same multipliers as the one you want (though, that'd end up weird if, like in my scenario, you have the Prehistoric age alone lasting 4 times longer than a Blitz game).

Yeah, I know, but my point is that somehow the timescale has been altered because it never happened to me in any other game or any other mod that turns were passing first in years, then in months, then in years again. I've tried normal and huge maps on noble difficulty with PerfectWorld 2f and PerfectMongoose. I don't think a real perfect match between "real" and game timescales is necessary; but at least a little bit closer. It's totally weird that after playing 25% of the turns I'm already in 2400 AD... what year is the game supposed to end?

The game is ment to be played on snail or longer speeds... so they may have glossed over the time scales on the too fast to bother playing at speeds. Faster than snail and buildings keep going obsolete, twice over, before you can actually do something about it... like build them.

45°38'N-13°47'E;10937941 said:

Yeah, I know, but my point is that somehow the timescale has been altered because it never happened to me in any other game or any other mod that turns were passing first in years, then in months, then in years again. I've tried normal and huge maps on noble difficulty with PerfectWorld 2f and PerfectMongoose. I don't think a real perfect match between "real" and game timescales is necessary; but at least a little bit closer. It's totally weird that after playing 25% of the turns I'm already in 2400 AD... what year is the game supposed to end?

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The faster speed settings are rarely used with this mod so it is likely no one has looked into those time settings for some time.
Best play around with the time/turn settings in CIV4GameSpeedInfo.xml until it fits the technology progress that you or the AI get.
It is a sequence of <GameTurnInfo> tags that each specify a number of months that pass each turn and a number of turns that this progress lasts.

Don't forget that when the game switches from years to months that until 0AD turns should be year equivalents. The engine does not like turns of less that a year BC but insists that turns are in months after a specific unchangeable turn number.

Isn't it possible to remove the years/turn and instead set a fixed number that changes when certain techs are discovered by anyone? Meaning it would state "Turn 498 - 4000 BC to 1 AD" where the "4000 BC to 1 AD" doesn't change until Christianity is actually founded, at which point it would change to "1 to 1200 AD" until a key tech late in medieval era.

No.

The amount of time between turns is fixed and changes in pre-established intervals. It does not base on your tech level because all civs must have one turn equal the same amount of time irregardless of their technology status.


BTW: so far the timeline is keeping pretty good pace. We're a little ahead I think, technology to years, but not insufferably so. We're playing a NON-TECH TRADING game thought and that may have a lot to do with it. I'd think we'd be way ahead on techs than RL parallel if we were allowing tech trades. We're on a Snail/Monarch/team game.

This is something that will take further tweaking down the road, I'm sure, as we continue to adjust tech development rates. It's been discussed elsewhere to slow down later tech development and I think that discussion is headed in the right direction so it may well even lead to matching the timeline even better here.


One thought... after some research on human development, it appears we should be starting the game at a much earlier date... but for now we're subjectively ok.

Along that line of thinking, we should then have two different sets of animals and an extinction event date that would change which set we're using. At that point we go from Mammoths and Sabretooth Tigers to modern animals. It's an eventual goal anyhow.

BlueGenie said:

Isn't it possible to remove the years/turn and instead set a fixed number that changes when certain techs are discovered by anyone? Meaning it would state "Turn 498 - 4000 BC to 1 AD" where the "4000 BC to 1 AD" doesn't change until Christianity is actually founded, at which point it would change to "1 to 1200 AD" until a key tech late in medieval era.

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If you just mean in the display. Then that is what happens on the left of the screen where it tells you the era you are in. All we need do is turn off the date on the right hand side and leave the turn counters on.

Thunderbrd said:

Along that line of thinking, we should then have two different sets of animals and an extinction event date that would change which set we're using. At that point we go from Mammoths and Sabretooth Tigers to modern animals. It's an eventual goal anyhow.

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Mammoths and Sabertooths start reducing in spawn rate at around 4000BC and stop spawning around 2000BC.

I was thinking of suggesting an event that caused the mammoth resource to start to disappear after that date it they have not been improved to a camp or fort. Maybe even a disease that sweeps through all herd buildings and camps also. With another event or building late period to bring them back.

Yup, only meant the display.

I'm posting again this question as maybe I still don't get the answer; so I'll try it a different way: which YEAR is the game supposed to end? I'm trying a snail game now, I'm around year 1900 and still at 17-18% of the game. How is that possible? I'm at turn 1700/9900 but it seems impossible to me that there are still more than 8000 turns to play when I have just discovered steel. Of course the game can't end in 2050 or 2100 as it used to but even if it should end in (let's say) 2500, I suppose I'll get to the end of the tech tree well before 8000 turns have passed. Or am I missing something important about C2C?

45°38'N-13°47'E;10982923 said:

I'm posting again this question as maybe I still don't get the answer; so I'll try it a different way: which YEAR is the game supposed to end? I'm trying a snail game now, I'm around year 1900 and still at 17-18% of the game. How is that possible? I'm at turn 1700/9900 but it seems impossible to me that there are still more than 8000 turns to play when I have just discovered steel. Of course the game can't end in 2050 or 2100 as it used to but even if it should end in (let's say) 2500, I suppose I'll get to the end of the tech tree well before 8000 turns have passed. Or am I missing something important about C2C?

Click to expand...

Check of this thread:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=443456

If you look at the GameSpeed xml file, you'll see that the way it's done is that turns are associated with a certain number of months for X number of turns, and then that increment changes and lasts Y number of turns, and so on until you reach the last stage on the bottom of the list which lasts for the longest number of turns.

I am not certain what year each game is supposed to end at. That isn't listed. You could figure it out if you calculated it I suppose. What I CAN say is that the ratio is out of whack between the various game speeds. However, changing the increments and all that may break saves, so I didn't adjust those when I recently adjusted the various multipliers for each speed.