Alternative for Turns

[MAHRana]

But how exactly would this work? If I understand you correctly, rather than units moving at more or less the same speed, the speed they moved at would be determined by how many actions were left in that turn. So a settler who moved as the first of thirty actions would creep along really slowly, but a cavalry who attacked in the last of those thirty actions would move really fast?

I just can't wrap my head around how this would work.

What I meant that throughout the turn the actions chosen at the beginning of the turn would be active throughout the turn and would be complete at the very end of the turn:

Suppose you would choose to attack a city with a soldier at the very start of the turn, near the end of the turn, the soldier would already be right beside whatever is defending it by slowly moving towards the defender throughout the turn so it keeps the map active.

What I basically would like to see is an active map.

 

[Suho1004]

Oh... so you want to define all the actions first, and then have all of those actions acted out simultaneously?

 

[MAHRana]

Oh... so you want to define all the actions first, and then have all of those actions acted out simultaneously?

Kind of, yeah.
I don't want Civ to be a RTS though, but the gameplay to be a bit more fluent, if you know what I mean.

 

[Suho1004]

OK, yeah, I think I know what you mean. But it seems to me that you'd still have a phase where you would be giving orders to units and nothing would be happening. Then, once you've given all your orders, you would just be sitting back and watching stuff happen for a minute or two. I think I would find this a bit tedious after a while.

 

[MAHRana]

OK, yeah, I think I know what you mean. But it seems to me that you'd still have a phase where you would be giving orders to units and nothing would be happening. Then, once you've given all your orders, you would just be sitting back and watching stuff happen for a minute or two. I think I would find this a bit tedious after a while.

A bit yeah, well then in that case maybe for each action you do, the previous action can start to become active, but that may become complicated.

 

[Schuesseled]

I was thinking, turns sometimes take up a lot of time and takes away a bit of realism from the game, and I was wondering about a new system without turns.

I came up with an idea that instead of "turns", there could be "periods" so that what one unit would usually do in one turn would take one period. A period could be a minute or a few minutes (depending on settings) and the year would slowly pass by as one period progresses. You shouldn't need to press enter or a button that ends the turn for you.

It would be nice as well, if, suppose you move a unit to a space which would take one period, halfway through the period, the unit would be halfway to it's destination. It might be a radical change, but could be possible.

this would be even wrose than simultaneous turns, when i play civ and a isee a enemy unit sitting somewhere on my turn i expect it to stay there, not move about whilst im doing something else.

 

[Aesir Rising]

I thought an older version of Civ had an option to pause only when user interaction was required. I might be mixing this up with a different game, but the concept applied as an example to Civ would be as follows (again, just an illustrative example):

Start a scenario, build the city, move your warrior to the city and fortify, select your starting tech research and city build order. The game then runs through each subsequent turn until user interaction is required. So, in this example, user input is required when any one of the following is true:
* research completes, and you need to select a new tech
* city build order completes, and you need to select a new build order
* you are found by another civ, and get the talking head dialog
* game random event (e.g., "helpful local peasants construct a pasture near your city", blah blah)
* barbarians (enemy) sighted near your city
* and so on.

The idea is that you're no longer clicking every turn while you have queued orders and what-not. I would probably play with this option if it were available, because sometimes I have to click many times in a row especially when the game is first running through it's first opening sequences.

 

[MAHRana]

I thought an older version of Civ had an option to pause only when user interaction was required. I might be mixing this up with a different game, but the concept applied as an example to Civ would be as follows (again, just an illustrative example):

Start a scenario, build the city, move your warrior to the city and fortify, select your starting tech research and city build order. The game then runs through each subsequent turn until user interaction is required. So, in this example, user input is required when any one of the following is true:
* research completes, and you need to select a new tech
* city build order completes, and you need to select a new build order
* you are found by another civ, and get the talking head dialog
* game random event (e.g., "helpful local peasants construct a pasture near your city", blah blah)
* barbarians (enemy) sighted near your city
* and so on.

The idea is that you're no longer clicking every turn while you have queued orders and what-not. I would probably play with this option if it were available, because sometimes I have to click many times in a row especially when the game is first running through it's first opening sequences.

Basically, so it minimizes the amount of clicking and maximizes the activeness of the whole map.

 

[deanej]

The problem is, if you need to give new orders to a unit, and there aren't any units that need orders, you can't do it because the game automatically moves to the next turn.

 

[aziantuntija]

I thought an older version of Civ had an option to pause only when user interaction was required. I might be mixing this up with a different game, but the concept applied as an example to Civ would be as follows (again, just an illustrative example):

Start a scenario, build the city, move your warrior to the city and fortify, select your starting tech research and city build order. The game then runs through each subsequent turn until user interaction is required. So, in this example, user input is required when any one of the following is true:
* research completes, and you need to select a new tech
* city build order completes, and you need to select a new build order
* you are found by another civ, and get the talking head dialog
* game random event (e.g., "helpful local peasants construct a pasture near your city", blah blah)
* barbarians (enemy) sighted near your city
* and so on.

The idea is that you're no longer clicking every turn while you have queued orders and what-not. I would probably play with this option if it were available, because sometimes I have to click many times in a row especially when the game is first running through it's first opening sequences.

This would be annoying if i wanted to change something but the game just runs trough turns, i also think it would feel a bit more like watching Civilization than actually playing a Civilization. Speaking the truth, i really dont want any changes to Civilization addictive "one more turn" thing, maybe you guys want to try some other games?

 

[Aesir Rising]

maybe you guys want to try some other games?

Certainly. I have and play many different game genre. I understand your point or concern about 'watching' the game instead of playing. Yet, clicking the end turn button or pressing enter doesn't add much game value to me, if all my orders are queued already and I'm just waiting for research to complete or a unit to build or a worker improvement to complete.

To address the concern about being able to stop or otherwise interrupt a queued sequence of turns, that's easily implemented by clicking the big red interrupt button. Again, I thought this was an option in a prior Civ game - but it may have been in another turn-based game (perhaps Baldur's Gate or similar).

 

[MAHRana]

I just would prefer a map with more people moving about, not exactly while you are making a turn though.
The game flows more without a turn button but I guess in Civ, that just can't happen in most cases.

 

[Craxymaxy]

sounds kinda like your talking about a hybrid of EU and Civ

 

[aziantuntija]

Certainly. I have and play many different game genre. I understand your point or concern about 'watching' the game instead of playing. Yet, clicking the end turn button or pressing enter doesn't add much game value to me, if all my orders are queued already and I'm just waiting for research to complete or a unit to build or a worker improvement to complete.

To address the concern about being able to stop or otherwise interrupt a queued sequence of turns, that's easily implemented by clicking the big red interrupt button. Again, I thought this was an option in a prior Civ game - but it may have been in another turn-based game (perhaps Baldur's Gate or similar).

Im sorry to hear that you are bothered by the fact that in turn based games you have to press the end turn button on every turn Altough it is pretty hilarious to really understand that we are speaking from THE KING of all turn based games, but yet you wanna have somekind of weird system you described before

Ill suggest that you, and everybody else who wants to change civs system to something else, takes a look what Sid might be thinkin about these ideas

Starts about 6:55

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcFaBLu2r_g&feature=related

 

[Aesir Rising]

Ill suggest that you, and everybody else who wants to change civs system to something else,

Relax aziantuntija, it's not as if anyone was asking for a radical change like 1UPT or hex grids. Jeez. Just looking to reduce clicks per game from 10000 to 9000.

The suggestion I made remains turn-based, while Sid speaks about a real-time version of Civ. That is not the suggestion here. You would see a check box option, or set of options, that defined when the game would stop - including the option to stop at the end of each turn. Not very weird sounding to me.

 

[Me,myself,and,I]

Maybe an impulse system like in World in Flames.

 

[Tylerryan79]

I play fps and have to click a lot, and in civ i mainly use the mouse except for some keyboard buttons like ctrl shift alt ect. I dont see the problem with one more click, or enter or space bar press. And as someone else mentioned, in the options menu you can choose to not have a wait at the end of the turn.

As for the OP he wants more action going on in turn, Ive never played mp, but from what people are saying it might be for you. The rest of use slow paced slugs can play how it is now. From the mention of EU i went out and got it. Ive only played The torturials, and If civ became this im screwed. I would like rts games if you started from scratch and built up, is there anything like that out there?

 

[aziantuntija]

The game then runs through each subsequent turn until user interaction is required.

This really isnt the way that turn based strategy games work No matter what you are saying

 

[Aesir Rising]

And as someone else mentioned, in the options menu you can choose to not have a wait at the end of the turn.

I see an option that sounds like it does that - but I must have some other option or .ini file setting conflicting because it always stops at the end of a turn for me, regardless. If it worked like I thought it would work - that is exactly what I was proposing.

I would like rts games if you started from scratch and built up, is there anything like that out there?

I don't have any 'tower defense' style games. Some may provide that type of game play (I don't know), though it appears to remove at least some aspects of what I like about base building.

The trend in the last couple of years*** has been to reduce "base building" in RTS. The last RTS I played where you build up from cave man to space man was Empire Earth. And it's sequels removed a lot of what I liked about that game, so I never got Empire Earth III after playing the demo. I'm told EE II was closer to the original, but I still have the original and play it periodically - especially after it (and EE II) was re-released with its expansion on gog.com. But they are both long-in-the-tooth graphics-wise.

*** Examples:
Warhammer 40k-Dawn of War had base structures and a need to build some kind of infrastructure. The sequel, Warhammer: Dawn of War II, focuses even more on map control and removes most structures entirely. The sister series from the same developer, Company of Heroes, has some structure building requirements, akin to the first Dawn of War. It has a more polished user-interface and better game-play - but the setting for both games doesn't cover a span of time - these are tactical games, not strategic-level games.

* Command & Conquer series had a base building requirement. C&C 4 removes most structures and focuses on map control. Tactical game.

* Supreme Commander and Forged Alliance have a base building requirement. The sequel, Supreme Commander 2 retains this to some extent - but the Commander Unit has been strengthened, relative to the 'normal' units, making a solo commander unit rush strategy viable. It's more tactical than the original SC, though probably more strategic level thinking required than the above examples.

While not the same type of situation, Civ V designers speak about 1UPT as being a way to move the fight out of the cities and out on to the map. A similar goal of the changes in the above examples, though perhaps the implementation is different.