6050 turns - yes. balance - no. help

[RoddyVR]

in some thread that i now cant find i read instructions for how to make the game go 1 year a turn from 4000 bc to 2050 ad. which i think is great. my next game that's what i'll do (i'll find that thread to get the instructions, or figure it out, i vagualy remember what to change).

there's a problem though.
the changes sugested in that thread only said how to make the game give me more turns to play, but even with marathon speed settings for tech pace and production, i will be launching space ships in BC if i dont change anything else.

i need help figuring out everything i would have to change so that the tech pace would still make my game come out to have a future techs be researched in the 2000 ad range, and not in the 2000bc range.

would probably have to up the costs of buildings and stuff too. if it'll take 200 turns to research masonry, i dont want it to take 20 to build the piramids.

unit production costs probably dont realy have to be tinkered with much cause unbalancing those just means more or less units on the map, but still relatively same proportions per civ.

i'm fairly confident that my computer will be able to handle the huge map 6k turns into the game, even if it is full of units. (ok, i'm not confident, i'm optimistic. lol).

anyway, if someone who has done game speed modding would be helpfull enough to list the things i should change, so that i dont get into the middle ages of my game and realize that i forgot to change how quickly great people are born or something obscure like that. would be much appreciated.

i'm not very familiar with where which setting/variable is in the xml files, so if you know it offhand, please mention that too, will save me search times when i mod my game.

 

[Half Fast]

Interesting. Have you thought about reducing unit support costs? With all that time you'd want to build lots of units, but it would be hard to support as many units as you could build. Maybe you could put bigger bonuses in the game or something, ya know like x units are free.

 

[Lunargent]

would probably have to up the costs of buildings and stuff too. if it'll take 200 turns to research masonry, i dont want it to take 20 to build the piramids.

Why not? It better reflects how it happened in real life anyway. (they took 10-20 years each) Discovering things takes a long time, but making them doesn't in comparison.

Even units balance out. The AI can build just as many as you can. The only one that should be changed IMO is the settler.. it needs to take longer for it to make a city. Population and culture growth in general would have to be regulated-slowed down alot.

 

[Carmina]

To lower the city growth, it's may be interesting to make the city itself only producing 1 or even 0 bread. Or to prevent any case to produce more than 1 bread until agriculture ( exepted perhaps with animal bonuses ).
I'd like a technology " extensive agriculture" at the beginning with a +1 bonus for farms, then later a "intensive agriculture" with a cumulative +1 bonus. In fact, in early ages I think only hunting should provide food, then farming succeeds ...

 

[DSChapin]

Happily for you, just about everything you need to modify is in one file:

Assets/XML/GameInfo/CIV4GameSpeedInfo.xml

The main change is going to be

<GameTurnInfos>
<GameTurnInfo>
<iYearIncrement>1</iYearIncrement>
<iTurnsPerIncrement>6050</iTurnsPerIncrement>
</GameTurnInfo>
</GameTurnInfos>

However, to address the other issues you were worried about, you'll want to change all the other values listed in there. You'll have to change them by quite a lot to handle a turn count like 6000... if you look at the difference between Quick and Marathon, you'll get a sense of what direction the numbers should be going in.

You're not really done at that point, though you could play it. If you want to get anything like the tech rate of the original game speeds, you'll want to modify the costs in Assets/XML/Technologies/CIV4TechInfos.xml . Otherwise, the early techs will come very fast, and the later techs very slow.


Finally, realize that any change like this is going to make warfare vastly more important. As it is, military units and UUs become more important on the slower game speeds. At 1 year per turn, you'd see a lot of games won in the Ancient age.

 

[Crayton]

Hey I saw this and went ahead and made it for you. I've upped the anti for everything. Masonry takes about 80 turns, and my first warrior took 150 turns! Don't worry, it is very balanced here is the link.

 

[RoddyVR]

... Have you thought about reducing unit support costs? ... Maybe ... ya know like x units are free.

i havent thought about it. good idea, but i dont think i will. in my last game (marathon huge 18civs) i actualy got to the point where even with my large empire the unit costs during a war were competing with the city maintanance.
i like that.
armies SHOULD be expencive. considering the amount of time that my cities (and ai cities) will have to produce stuff, there will be a lot of units anyway. the game needs some sort of a limiting factor on army sizes, and support seems to be the way to go.

.... Discovering things takes a long time, but making them doesn't in comparison.
...The only one that should be changed IMO is the settler.. it needs to take longer for it to make a city. Population and culture growth in general would have to be regulated-slowed down alot.

problem with leaving building/wonder costs at the "low" marathon levels is that this would encourage two things:
1. every city could easily build every improvement i have access to, and army size would still not suffer too much.
2. army size would get WAY too large. i'm not realy a war monger, i'm not doing this to be able to have 1000 swordmen fight 1200 axemen and see who wins.
i'm a builder by nature (in civ atleast,lol) so "allowing" myself to build every thing in every city would take the fun out of the balancing factor that a civ game has, where you need to decide if a library in a city that's not doing much science (but some) is realy worth more then another 3 catapults.

i agree with the settler issue though, i think they're too cheap in the standard game as it is. since i'm gonna be doing this modding anyway, i may just up the settler cost relative to everything else in the game.

To lower the city growth, it's may be interesting to make the city itself only producing 1 or even 0 bread. Or to prevent any case to produce more than 1 bread until agriculture ( exepted perhaps with animal bonuses ).
..... In fact, in early ages I think only hunting should provide food, then farming succeeds ...

interesting idea. only one problem though. MANY city locations depend on the city square's "free" bread to grow at all. an all plains (or plains and hills) city would be impossible if the city square didnt provide food (every plain will feed its worker, and there'll never be food to grow with).
this means that for a city to grow beyond size 1, it would HAVE to have a 3 food square in its radius. on some maps that would mean a prety swiss cheese looking empire.

and what's worse, how would you explain this change to the computer AIs?
they would still build cities in the spots that used to be "ok" and are now just horrible (ie a city in the tundra would now be a perpetualy starving size 1 city).

i like the hunting only thing. would make the decision for the initial city VERY different, and in most games i would bet that the capitol was almost NEVER one of the best cities. because in the initial turns it's placement would gear one towards spots that provide commerce to reasearch agriculture faster rather then the food bonuses that would let it grow.

Happily for you......
......

You're not really done at that point, though you could play it. If you want to get anything like the tech rate of the original game speeds, you'll want to modify the costs in Assets/XML/Technologies/CIV4TechInfos.xml . Otherwise, the early techs will come very fast, and the later techs very slow.

Finally, realize that any change like this is going to make warfare vastly more important. As it is, military units and UUs become more important on the slower game speeds. At 1 year per turn, you'd see a lot of games won in the Ancient age.

i dont quite understand your point about changing tech costs, i thought that one of the variables in the file is a scale to the tech costs.... why will it make late game techs slower in comparison to early ones? (actualy i dont mind slow techs at the end, its the fast techs in the beggining that you're worrying me with)

as for the warmongering part, yes i realize that units become MUCH faster in these settings, so wars become more prolonged and more important.
but games won in the ancient age? i doubt it. on huge maps with 18 civs, even the armies i'll be amassing here wont be too much.

the promotions i'll be getting though, now THAT will be fun.
with so many more units, and so many more years in each war, i'll have much more actual fighting, and i'm hoping to actualy get a unit promoted all the way up to where there's nothing worth getting.
even in marathon i was able ot get a swordsman up to 50exp before having to promote him. and with this speed, i think most units that dont die in their first few promotion levels will be going that high if not higher.



thanks to all of you for your advice and help. i'll try to keep you updated as to the progress of my game (like when i actualy start it for example)

 

[RoddyVR]

Hey I saw this and went ahead and made it for you. I've upped the anti for everything. Masonry takes about 80 turns, and my first warrior took 150 turns! Don't worry, it is very balanced here is the link.

cool. will definetly check it out.

 

[RoddyVR]

now that Crayton was so nice to make the forever speed. i REALY want to know why DSChapin posted this:

You're not really done at that point, though you could play it. If you want to get anything like the tech rate of the original game speeds, you'll want to modify the costs in Assets/XML/Technologies/CIV4TechInfos.xml . Otherwise, the early techs will come very fast, and the later techs very slow.

can anyone explain that? is it something i should worry about before starting my game?
the gameinfo file has a
<iResearchPercent>1500</iResearchPercent>
line in it... which i assume makes the cost of each tech 1500 percent more then normal (ie 15 times bigger). why would that unbalance the tech pace?

as i typed it i think i know what you meant.
the 50 beacker cost of mysticism increased 15 times will take my initial city 15 times more turns to research then normal. which is good, considering i get about 15 times more turns in this game then normal.
while my empire grows i'll be fine, 15 times more turns, 15 times more beakers needed for each tech.
but once my empire stops growing .....
nope lost it, dont understand why you think this will unbalance the tech pace.

maybe you mean that in "years" the early techs will be much quicker then in normal game (because normaly early turns are many more years then later turns). but i dont realy care if when i'm up to cavalry and cannons the year is called 1bc or 1000ad. as long as the number of turns each unit tech is around is still in the same proportions as the original game (just considerably more turns for each, but same proportios).


edit: my appologies to the mods for my tripple post. but as you may be able to tell, i had completely different reasons for posting each, and didnt know i'd post the next when i was posting the previous.
and i if i put it all in one post things would get confused.

 

[Crayton]

In a normal-speed game, the mid-point is at the year 1400 AD, while in the forever-speed game, the mid-point is 975BC. Gunpowder may appear in the 10th century BC but, there are more turns.

 

[DSChapin]

i dont quite understand your point about changing tech costs, i thought that one of the variables in the file is a scale to the tech costs.... why will it make late game techs slower in comparison to early ones? (actualy i dont mind slow techs at the end, its the fast techs in the beggining that you're worrying me with)

In an ordinary game, years per turn may be something like 40 in the early game, and drop to 1 by the end game.
In this game, your years per turn will be 1 across the board.

That means that, if you only modify the game speed file, the number of techs you have at, say, 1 AD will be vastly higher than in the normal game. Now, this should start to balance out in the endgame, as techs are coming slower than in vanilla, but in terms of "history" it will produce some weird results.

 

[DSChapin]

maybe you mean that in "years" the early techs will be much quicker then in normal game (because normaly early turns are many more years then later turns). but i dont realy care if when i'm up to cavalry and cannons the year is called 1bc or 1000ad. as long as the number of turns each unit tech is around is still in the same proportions as the original game (just considerably more turns for each, but same proportios).

In that case, it's probably not an issue.

 

[RoddyVR]

oh, ok. so it was the history aspect that you were talking about, not gameplay. i'm fine with history taking a wierd turn (i could think of it as the renasaunce comming before the dark ages instead of after, lol).

now that i've been thoroughly beaten in the GOTM for march (and then got beaten in it 4 more times trying it again, emperor is WAY too hard for me), i think i'll start the forever game.

 

[Optimizer]

I would advise you to make a preliminary version of the mod which does not go all the way. In the original game the turn length shrinks from 50 years to one. In the preliminary game it could shrink from 5 years to 1.

Some suggestions:
* Terrain improvements and city buildings should provide a much greater bonus, so that productivity really differs with infrastructure. In the real world, the GDP per capita is about 100 times greater in the USA than in Bangladesh.
* Workers' work rate should increase substantially with technology. One could also consider adding more kinds of worker units - for instance a Bulldozer unit which requires oil and Combustion, but works twice as fast as a regular worker.
* Early exploration must be inhibited. I am currently experimenting with increasing the number of wild animals, and giving them a more defensive role.