Modding the aspects of "Game Speed"

Doskei said:
No, suspendinlight, I did it the hard way - tedious editing of the CIV4TechInfos.xml file. I decided I wanted about normal-cost techs to start, and about 12x techs by the end. Made that decision based on the fact that I wanted a game that was 3-4 times slower than normal, and the fact that the game is sped up 3-4 times in the lategame, and 3-4 times 3-4 is about twelve, so I made that my final goal. Then I took the number of "tiers" in the tech tree (19) and tried to gradually scale up my cost increases. I multiplied all the techs in tier 1 (Fishing, The Wheel, Agriculture, Hunting, Mysticism, and Mining) by 1.02. Tier 2 by 1.63. Tier 3 by 2.24. Increments of +61% all the way up to Fusion and Future tech, which were cost-increased to 12.00x of their original values.
I did make a new CIV4GameSpeed.xml file, mostly to give me infinite turns available. I also changed the iResearchPercent file in all game speeds to 100%. I've only played my mod in my own gamespeed (realtime), and may eventually remove the other gamespeeds from my mod entirely (if you load my mod, you're doing so to play on "realtime" so why have any other options?) Anyway my point is that the costs I gave to all the techs don't stack on anything in my mod. I've taken the research scalar out of the map sizes, the game speeds, and the difficulty levels. It's only at testing stages right now so I may put some of those scalars back in, but for now the costs are the costs, in any game.
I've included a ZIP file that should extract to TechCalculator.xls (Excel File). Excel was not one of the supported attachment filetypes, but Word is, and if you have Word, you probably have Excel. Anyway this is the file I created when I was working out the costs I was going to use. Let me know if you find it useful or have any questions about it.
View attachment 102967

There's an error in your file. The default cost of Monarchy is 300, and you have it listed as 51 and 176 after adjusting the new cost.
 
Anyone kind enough to paste me up what I need to use to say, change 2 hours of gametime into 6? This means instead of getting gunpowder in two hours gametime, I want to get it in six hours gametime.

And to make everything coinside with that fact..
 
Is anyone else having a problem with Civ not reading changes to the techinfos.xml file? I've changed the cost, but they don't get changed in game.
 
JeBuS27 said:
Is anyone else having a problem with Civ not reading changes to the techinfos.xml file? I've changed the cost, but they don't get changed in game.

Delete the contents of your cache folder (back them up somewhere).

C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\My Games\Civilization 4\cache
 
Doskei, would you mind putting up your CIV4TechInfos.xml instead? Would save me a lot of work.

ritterpa, I make game speed changes for single player, so I test it in single player. If I made a MP mod I would test it in MP.
 
Rock on, Gufnork.

So, any progress? I'm anxiously waiting by the table for scraps. I'd be working on it myself if it weren't for last minute house projects before the Iowa snow hits. Promise!

Basically, I'd love to play any mod that someone feels is an improvement over the epic setting. So whats the progress report for those working hard?
 
ritterpa said:
Max, yes there were others who were concerned about those effects and discussed modifying expansion/economic speeds to compensate, which caused me to express my concern with that idea.

The points you made that I addressed - quite specifically - were these:

"-possibility that your cities will spend large periods of time producing military units or producing nothing at all"

"-possibility that expansion will be very slow"

"-possibility that most of your turns will simply be pressing the enter button"

Up until the time you made your post, the only person who thought these things might be a problem was you. The other posts you mentioned were concerning gold production for upkeep, and you'll note that they have *nothing whatsoever* to do with the items you listed, or I responded to.

I don't understand the aggression towards me

That's because it doesn't exist. Disagreement does not constitute aggression.

Max
 
Max,

I think "gold production for upkeep" (your words) goes hand in hand with "expansion speeds and economics" (my words). If you have more gold for upkeep, you can expand quicker. So while others were thinking, "I could use more gold to maintain my empire!" I was thinking, "If you get more gold, you'll be able to expand earlier, which will throw all of the research adjustments you made out of whack!" My claim has been corraborated by both Doskei and Roma Victa, so I don't exactly think I was grabbing at straws.

I just have to ask--why are you so concerned with my post? If you found it worthless, wouldn't it have been easy to just ignore it instead of making it some issue that it doesn't need to be?
 
King Jason said:
Tone down the attitudes in this thread.
The King hath spoken!
The thing to remember is that you don't hear conversational tone when you're reading a post, so it's always easier to hear implied malice than in a spoken conversation. I've never seen an argument like this deescalate to a productive conversation naturally. Let's just get back on track, or we're going to lose productive modders who don't want to read a flame war.

JeBuS27 said:
Doskei, on the issue of expansion and units beyond the 'normal' means, I'd still like to point out that a player can reduce his research spending to balance his budget. Essentially, that's what every civilization has had to do. Balance your budget, or screw your economy.
And I'd like to once again point out that I have no intention of removing these penalties, but only of expanding the limits they set in place. Just because I want to see more units, cities, and improvements does not mean I want them to be unlimited. If you're saying that that is game-imbalancing, you'll need to explain to me how that is, because I see it as a tradeoff (just like in vanilla), but with more of everything. Please do correct me if I'm wrong.

low said:
There's an error in your file. The default cost of Monarchy is 300, and you have it listed as 51 and 176 after adjusting the new cost.
Right you are, and thanks very much! As it turns out there was an error in my TechInfos file too - I never even changed it from 300. I can be pretty stupid sometimes.

VippiN said:
Anyone kind enough to paste me up what I need to use to say, change 2 hours of gametime into 6? This means instead of getting gunpowder in two hours gametime, I want to get it in six hours gametime.

And to make everything coinside with that fact..
I'll tell you what I told Richosh. Read this entire forum, and make a first attempt. We've filled all (so far) 11 pages with good info and there is no point asking us to repost all of it. All the information is available to you, all you have to do is take the time to read. If you do so, make an attempt, and have some specific problem, feel free to ask. But if you're asking for a GameSpeed Editing 101 class, you're in it. Take a seat and open your text to page 1.

Gufnork said:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=3274820&postcount=168
Happy to :)
View attachment GameSpeed.zip
 
Doskei said:
And I'd like to once again point out that I have no intention of removing these penalties, but only of expanding the limits they set in place. Just because I want to see more units, cities, and improvements does not mean I want them to be unlimited. If you're saying that that is game-imbalancing, you'll need to explain to me how that is, because I see it as a tradeoff (just like in vanilla), but with more of everything. Please do correct me if I'm wrong.

I see your point there, but also, trying without economic changes, I can still field a far larger military than is possible in Epic, at a (relatively) fast pace. This is all within the economic range of 'vanilla' ecomonics. What I'm trying to say is, you're mucking around with econ when it really doesn't need to be. Sure, you may get yourself a larger army out of it, but who knows what else will happen because of it?
 
I've been an avid follower of this thread, and appreciate everyone's efforts. I've been doing quite a bit of testing, based on ideas from this thread. There are clearly quite a few challenges to getting us a "perfect" solution. I'll leave that to our more experience modders, and hopefully, Fraxis.

My aim here is simply and only to provide a relatively quick fix for the time being. While not perfect, I think this definately makes things better. I see a two pronged approach:

1.) Ramp up the iResearch from the 150 value to around 200. I suggest limiting how much you scale it up due to the cascading problems everyone has mentioned.

2.) Identify the techs that change the military landscape and ramp up the tech requirement on that particular technology. E.g. Gunpowder, Rifling, Railroad (MG), Industrialism (tank), and Assembly line (infantry).

In other words, this is six value changes (5 minutes of effort), and I think the effect should be pretty good. (I haven't tested this *yet* -- just thought of it now based on all my previous/current testing, and wanted to share).
 
After having a go, somehow i've managed to start a game and 10 minutes into it have '53 turns left' come up. Hmm, that can't be good.

Rob
 
musides: i think that is an excellent distillation of this thread.
synching the turns per lump of time to cause the game to
accurately reflect passing time is nice, but the changes you
mention i think are at the root of granting us the type of
gameplay we are looking for.
 
This all looks great! I, too, found Civ 4 to be much too fast. But one question: will there be an "official" mod made out of this? I have read through this thread and I COULD make my own, but 1. I'm horrible at these things and would probably never get the balance right, 2. I simply don't have the time for a project like this.

At first it looked simple, just change some gamespeeds and make it so that eras last longer, etc, but everything would be thrown off balance. So if anybody is working on a publically downloadable mod that makes a slower and balanced game, I would worship you. ;)

By the way, I am in no way asking for something like this right now. I understand that you are all still figuring this stuff out. I was just wondering if something like this would be coming along in the near future. :)
 
I think there are three different ones available now in the modpacks sub-forum that extend the game. No doubt more will will come out of all this, and the ones available now will be improved upon.
 
JeBuS27 said:
I see your point there, but also, trying without economic changes, I can still field a far larger military than is possible in Epic, at a (relatively) fast pace. This is all within the economic range of 'vanilla' ecomonics. What I'm trying to say is, you're mucking around with econ when it really doesn't need to be. Sure, you may get yourself a larger army out of it, but who knows what else will happen because of it?
OK, well, we can go back and forth on this forever. I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm simply saying that I've tried it both ways and so far I think some form of econ modification will improve the mod. I may end up testing more and decide that I can't get the proper balance, and cut economic modifications out, but for the moment I'm going to continue trying to find a new balance.

Essentially, I'm never going to shrink from changing something because it creates more work. More work is fine with me. I'd rather change one thing, have that thing lead to ten more things to change, change them all and end up with an awesome mod, over changing one thing, deciding that requires I change everything else, and give up. Unless you can prove to me that I can't strike a better balance than the game shipped with, I'm moving forward.

Thudd said:
This all looks great! I, too, found Civ 4 to be much too fast. But one question: will there be an "official" mod made out of this? I have read through this thread and I COULD make my own, but 1. I'm horrible at these things and would probably never get the balance right, 2. I simply don't have the time for a project like this.
Assuming all the modders here end up building their own versions of this, I'm sure you'll end up with quite a few to download, over a fairly sizable period of time. I for one promise to make mine downloadable when I'm done with it, although that might be a while.

It'd be nice if there were another forum for projects in progress. This is an excellent discussion of the ideas involved, but you really can't say we're making progress on a collective product. Obviously that's not the point of the thread, but at the same time there's clearly demand for such. Just look at all the other threads that have popped up about the same idea.

C'est la vie. Back to work. Everyone have a good one. :)
 
Doskei said:
Essentially, I'm never going to shrink from changing something because it creates more work. More work is fine with me. I'd rather change one thing, have that thing lead to ten more things to change, change them all and end up with an awesome mod, over changing one thing, deciding that requires I change everything else, and give up. Unless you can prove to me that I can't strike a better balance than the game shipped with, I'm moving forward.

And I'll second that. Frankly, I don't understand why some people - regardless of the game, it happens in every forum - think that others shouldn't muck with the game they paid for as they please. So what if something breaks? Any good modder knows they'll probably bust a thing or two (or a dozen) before they arrive at a satisfactory solution; that's how modding works. The faint of heart need not apply.

I've already completely revamped around thirty xml files to change the game to suit my tastes. A fan of vanilla Civ 4 wouldn't recognize much of the game that I've made, and quite likely wouldn't like what I've done. Do I care? No, of course not - why I should I? The game is being modded BY me FOR me, and that's all that really matters. If others can use bits and pieces that's fine, but if they can't, well, that's fine too. Ultimately as a modder the only opinion that matters is mine, because nobody's paying me for what I'm doing.

Civ 4 was trumpeted to the heavens as a modders wet dream. The more I play with it, the more it appears to be true. The game was meant to be changed, in any fashion we desire that Firaxis could accommodate; but even if it weren't it's still MY game.

Max
 
:lol:

Don't get me wrong, I love fiddling with games, it's fun tweaking things to make them as you please. I mean, heck, look at all the mucking about I did in MoO3 :p But, as the old adage goes, why fix it if it ain't broke?
 
Doskei said:
Because we think it is :)

Exactly. I like Civ 4 less than Civ 3, and I liked Civ 3 less than Civ 2. On the brighter side I can screw around with Civ 4 right off the bat in a way I never could with any previous civ game. Think about it: using only notepad I've radically changed the way the game works in the space of a few days, just messing about with xml files. I haven't even begun to explore the possibilities in using Python - a *real* programming language, not the pseudo-scripting garbage that shows up in most 'moddable' games (e.g., Morrowind, Europa Universalis).

I don't think vanilla Civ 4 is a great game. I don't even think it's a good game. In fact, I think the game mechanics in certain areas pretty much suck. I would never, ever have spent a dime on it if it hadn't come with the ability to change the way things work. But I can mod it; I can tear it apart and rebuild it to suit my tastes and my own penchant for putting together a system that makes some sort of rational sense. Which is what I've done.

And I have to say, that for the first time in a very, very long while I think I actually got my money's worth on a game. Not because of what the game is, but because of what I can make it.

Max
 
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