How Long Is A Walk In The Wasteland?

How Many Turns Should A Game Be

  • Less than 500

    Votes: 3 27.3%

  • More than 500

    Votes: 1 9.1%

  • Less than 1000

    Votes: 3 27.3%

  • More than 1000

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Less than 3000

    Votes: 1 9.1%

  • More than 3000

    Votes: 1 9.1%

  • Less than 5000

    Votes: 1 9.1%

  • More than 5000

    Votes: 2 18.2%
  • Total voters
    11
Lib.Spi't

Lib.Spi't

Overlord of the Wasteland
Joined
Feb 12, 2009
Messages
3,708
Location
UK
So this is a Polling thread to find out how long you want to play a game for.

My Current Goal is a Game of about 5000 turns (This is based purely on how the math shook out of a timeline of 100 years, with each turn being a 1 week.)

At the moment I don't know what difference there should be between Quick and Marathon(or whatever the top length is).

Honestly I have not thought that far yet, I am still working on gettting the mod working 'good' before I get onto alternate options.
 
that is up to the player base to decide, if we have a spread of 500-5000 then we know how long different people wnat it to be.

At the moment specific game speeds are not important, first we need to establish the lengths of games people look for, get it working for that speed, then adjust game speeds to suit the different appetites.
 
I prefer quick, sometimes normal speed games. So the lower end of this.
 
well, using just the game speed wsettings I just made a quick game where the AI finished the tech tree in under 250 turns! :D (More like just over 200... it is turn 230 and I am on about Wasteland Renaissance 15! :D) (Turn 250 was WR 29! :D)

There is still an issue with expansion, as more than half the map is unsettled...

I think though if I increase the quick setting by about 1-5% I should get a tech tree completion in the 330 area. (Which seems so weird to me! :D)

NCR Conquest Victory at turn 312, Tandi is as good as Shaka Zulu apparently. That seems like the AI did alright for itself, it jsut depends how much better a human player can do by comparison..

I am running one more test with a decreased tech rate to see if I can get it better. it finished on something like Wasteland Renaissance 80! Which is almost the same as the total number of techs!

It looked like quite an exciting game though, loads of pillaging, massive barbarian armies, wars being fought to the point of population attrition, all the things that I was hoping to see by the end game!

AI expansion is still an issue to be addressed (along with probably a whole host of things) but it seems to be moving in the right direction!
 
Ok, can you speedy players give this new game speed file a go and see how it plays for you?

So far it is just the quick speed that I have fiddled with and it should hopefully give you a game of about 300-350 turns.

I need to know how it actually plays, as I have watched the AI do it, but i don't know how much better a player will be.

If you could also tell me how the balance between unit/building times are as well as research times and everything in general, does it feel like everything is moving at more or less the same pace, or is one part of the game much faster/easier to move forward in than others.
 

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well, I am playing my quick game, turn 120 and I am making about 700 gold per turn with a science rate of 30% and I am researching a tech every 1-3 turns, so I think prices are about right, I will see how things look at the end of the tech tree, currently still in the classical era I am almost at the half way mark of the tech tree, so I think it is on schedule for a 300 turn finish..
 
The quicker quick-speed file. I tried two different <Ctrl+Shift+X> games; they both gave me CTDs around turn 70-80. Maybe the multi-production is breaking?
(A possibly-related CTD: late-game, mouse over the hammer display area.)
Then I diverted to see what impassable radiation did to gameplay. (Nothing: there's none at the starts and not enough elsewhere to matter.)
Now I'm back -- in a manual game so I can change builds if it CTDs.
Spoiler :
Turn 2: this is ridiculously fast.
13: I build a Worker; I get 13 and population drops to 1.
Improvement costs aren't scaling. Should they?
Bottle Cap reserve: 317-2=330? -I go up faster than it says.
17: Zoroaster. I get a goody hut Settler! Harold started two tiles away and
moved a tile, but there is another Vault 3 tiles from him, so I will squeeze
him. Tandi started one tile from Maxson and will die eventually.
19. Bottle Caps + Wealth.
27: First improvement started - a ScavCamp.
31: Franklin. 32: Du Fu sent to Master's Choice, 2nd ScavCamp.
34: Refuge + Scientific Study.
36: Bohr. I like Academies, but they're restricted to SciStudy and Computer
Simulation is better, so I'll hold him until I get a Vinnie's resource.
40: Oops - I turn research down to 50%; should have done that a while back.
41: Event -> Logging Team.
42: Polo. Saved for Iguana Bob. Better save up for connections.
43: Connection made, Polo -> Iguana Bob.
47: 3 Settlers at once. #3 is going to need Wanderers and a wee hike.
50: Cities 3 & 4, connection made, Bohr -> Vinnie's.
51: 10 spies at once, my pop shrinks again, I delete all but 2 (unit costs).
Scores: *921, 421, 382, 372, 339, 325, **319, 306.
*A free Settler helps a lot. **Tandi moved! -I just noticed.
53: City #5. 55: Citizenship + Robotic Armies.
56: City #6, on the other side of New Reno. Connectable circuitously.
Capital built. Mass Religion discovered; time to start making T51bs.
Necropolis hits 50% Super Mutant and gets a revolt. All in one turn.
58: Entertainment -> GM -> Nuka-Cola
59: 'Bye, Harold; 'Bye, Bob. 63: Zero research.
67: I finally make a T51b. I need lair clearing & Settler escort.
Only one barb, though, a Militia that can't bring itself to attack.
70: 28 Sheriffs instead of 1. I reload; I'll just move some instead.
73: Tandi vassalized, Richardson beats me to a city.
75: City #8. 77: First 7 cities connected. No foreign cities, though.
77: Alcatraz hits 50% and revolts; Lost Hills hits 50% and doesn't.
79: Stocks and Shares. Protectrons espied. Nothing ever attacks. :sad:
84: I heal Steve, Alcatraz flips, I plant city #10 NNE of Tribes.
85: The only routes in the entire world are my roads. Why?
86: City #11. 87: City #12, Silver discovered, Bell -> Wannamingo.
Also, my first two cities have, in 24 turns at 0%, caught up in buildings.
89: City #13, discovered Munitions and Uranium, made 8 Settle-blimps, quit.
Scores: 3833, *346, 492, 477, 467, 448, 425. *vassal.
An entire game with only one attack into my territory and that because a barb
Militia had nowhere else to move. This Quick branch is 3.5-4x as fast as my
Normal branch, but nobody told the Barbs.
Is there supposed to be more than one "Steve" building? I see some in the tech
tree, but I've only ever gotten the House.
 
Ok, first of all are you playing with your version of the mod or my version?
(as in all the adjustments you made to make your game faster?)

If you are playing your version, then unfortunately the speed feedback will be mostly meaningless..

You do get multiple builds in this version, but I was getting about 3-5 early stage, rather than double figures, which makes me think you are using your costs not the standard costs, because your experiences are completely different to mine...

I can't quite figure out how you got so far ahead by turn 89, I hit the overtake at about turn 150.

Maybe you just pushed and played harder than me, and expanded yourself faster..

The Hammer display bug is a known issue (it is in the bug thread) I only experienced it once and neither archid nor Night could track it to a source, even the reason for the bug appeared to change and there was absolutely no consistency to it. We hoped it was a one off aborration but now you have found it too.

With CTDs we need saves from when it crashes, otherwise there is nothing we can do about it.
Also if you are using your modified xml, then we probably can't use those saves.

As for the Steve story line, I am still having trouble getting it to work right. I think I need to just increase the ivalue(I think that is the one) for each eventtrigger, as the 1st event can choose from any player city, but after that it will only occur in that one city, so I think for it to hit the trigger value, it needs tobe much higher than other events. There is no documentation on the math of it, so it really is just trial and error.
 
Ok, first of all are you playing with your version of the mod or my version?
Click to expand...
Yours, with the patch. Using it with mine would be hilarious but unenlightening.

Maybe you just pushed and played harder than me, and expanded yourself faster..
Click to expand...
Yes. I think that Settler made a huge difference.

The Hammer display bug
Click to expand...
I only noticed it recently. In those few games, I never got it early and always got it late. I'll try to keep an eye on it; maybe I can spot something (though it's unlikely if Archid couldn't).
 
if you can post save games of the crash occuring in the bug thread, with a description of what city it happens too, then maybe archid or night could find a pattern, we have only had one example and it didn't make any sense, if we can get hold of two or three that is better.

Were you a vault civ?

I am just trying to figure out how you got like 4 times (or more) produced units than me.

I may need to look through the games speed file and see about increasing everything if that is what you experienced... that is just way more than was happening with me...
 
Just noticed the follow-up questions.

Super Mutants, my first city was green, the second free one was mostly-green (Paradise) and there were Vaults all over I could expand to (mostly in not-very-good locations, but still). And I had a little luck - not a lot - with resource variety.

For units specifically, I didn't write down production + food, so the only real way to test would have been for both of us to try to build the same ones on the same turn after one turn of a multi-turn build -- that is, to isolate unit production from hammer carryover.
 
Chances are I just need to crank up the game speed percentages to a higher value, like 10-15%

Right now I am stuck because my version is broken, and we are trying to remember/figure out the solution.

So I can't even do tweak testing or anything..

With your personal build, with things like building and unit costs, how much did you reduce things roughly in percentage.

So for example you would consistently reduce some down to 10% of it's original price. 50,000 down to 5,000 say.

You have talked before about you were using a system or algorithm or equation, I was just wondering if you have any more details about that.

was it standardised or did it change like by era or whatever.

If we can find a 'golden percentage' more or less, then we will only have to fiddle with the game speed file.
 
With your personal build, with things like building and unit costs, how much did you reduce things roughly in percentage.

You have talked before about you were using a system or algorithm or equation, I was just wondering if you have any more details about that.

was it standardised or did it change like by era or whatever.
Click to expand...

Tech: I basically tried to get the total cost per era about the same in the modified files as in vanilla. (And then had to make another pass to smooth it out; I'm not sure how close it is now.)

Units: For ground units, the base unit build cost in vanilla is about 8x strength.
I set FTTW units to be 40x before promotions and then modified them with my guess of what the starting promos were worth. As I said, that averaged about half what you had them at. It still feels a little high, but a post-apocalypse is supposed to have fewer units, right?

Buildings & Improvements: Again, I tried to roughly match vanilla. I forget how much the relative difference was.
My base values: happy/trade route/foreign trade route 32, food/health 16, hammer 8, commerce 4, bottlecap/research 2, safety/espionage 0.
E.g., a Garden gives 2 Food, +1 for irrigation, +3 @ Gardening = 6 Food.
6*16 = 96, so I declare the cost to be 96 bottle caps.
For buildings, I used [tech column]*12 + etc. (vanilla does similarly).
E.g., a Shack is column 2, and gives 1 hammer, 5 safety, 1 happy, 1 health:
2*12 + 1*8 +5*0 + 1*32 + 1*16 = 80, so I set the build cost to 80 hammers.
(Somewhat modified: I halved resource-added values for Ancient buildings, didn't count late resources until the Industrial era, always counted power, assumed 1% X = 1 X except for trade routes, ...)
 
I shouldn't have asked, it made my head spin! :D

You do make some interesting points and thoughts there.

I increased the game speed values slightly, for quick and normal. quick is now about 15% with I think a few things being slightly less. (buildings I think as you said you struggled to keep construction at a pace with research)

Then I put normal at 30% completely untested just double quick.

I am focussed on a lot of basic fiddle at the minute.

New map scripting to get 'better' maps, improving start position code to make starting points 'fairer', increasing the stats for bonus resources to be more in line with the improvements stats.

Now resources really boost locally, some have been upped 10x what they were, now having a bonus resource with an improvement is like having a top level improvement on a normal tile.

I probably need to do some more work for mines(mine resources too maybe), but I think I need to add a mine 'upgrade' as well.

Been trying to fix promotions, need to finish adding 'tag' promos to certain units.

Need to add more bonus resource boosts to the various buildings so that they process multiple goods instead of just 1.

One thing about the 'feel' of the game is I want the industrial/modernisation of the waste land to provide a much steeper curve of increased output than in vanilla. so life is much slower/harder/tougher to do things in the early game, but then by the end of the game you will have improved your output 200, 300 times maybe, where say vanilla would be only 100 times improved (those are just made up numbers) So also the cost of things increases with amuch steeper curve, so a power station is REALLY hard to build, power armour and vertibirds are the same and so on, so you need really big populations, and really high production power to get some where with these things, so not everywhere can build the best, and in a major war you may have to compromise on quality to get the manpower out there.

I want to take city specialism/focus even further with FTTW than civ did. So not just Gold/Production/Research and which to choose, but also food specialisation and things like that, as well as the ability to 'flow' some productivity out to your less capable cities, so taking a big food negative building in a 'rural' area, to invest in your production power houses that cannot produce food from their land, but need it to get the high populations to make the best troops and structures.
 
I'm not sure what to say about game length. Players should be able to decide for themselves using game speed, though it could be made possible to add a slow research game option where all research cost is multiplied by 2, possibly an extremely slow option where it is multiplied by 4.

Somehow I think less than 300 turns to fill the tech tree is too fast, but 5000 turns to do the same mean most players will only use the low tech part of it. I think 500-1000 turns to fill sounds right if it is combined with slow research options. That would likely make it possible to fit the needs for most players.

Lib.Spi't said:
So, some of the factors in the quick game might be a bit too quick... it's turn 21, I built a worker in 1 turn and it gave me 4!
Click to expand...
That has always been an issue with FTTW. It starts slowly and then suddenly it goes way too fast. The mod is great, but it could do with some balancing.
 
Yeah this thread was really about finding out how long people like to play, until I asked the question on the main modding thread, I never realised how 'fast' normal bts is.

I have played the 'kitchen sink' style mods for so long my view is skewed to long play like 1000-5000+ so when I found out a lot of people play 300-600 as standard I suddenly realised why people thought it was so slow :D because for me that was an era or 2 worth :D

There is still a lot of balancing to do to get all the numbers to line up right, but that takes lots of playing and feedback from ideally a number of sources.

For now I want to get all of the various mechanics/variables/ideas in my head in, then once we have everything on the page we can fiddle and tweak and jig till everything works just right.

That second comment you quoted was from working with the gamespeed file, which is just setting various things to a percentage of 100, so I am aiming for longer games as the 'standard' for gameplay, as that is what I like to play. Then it is just a case of working out what percentage delivers the quick and normal games of 300ish and 600ish which is what I have set now in the A5 version.

I just need people to play it and see if they get a good game and it comes in at those sort of numbers.
 
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