Building Re-Costing Project

[Thunderbrd]

A truly scientific approach would not be looking at a game in 'play' but rather staged situations. But we can always take account of various random samples of the many options we have in-play at various stages.

 

[Hydromancerx]

Well when testing I would always play as Rome on the PW map on Snail speed. While not everyone would use these setting it at least gave me a consistent base to work from.

 

[JosEPh_II]

Setting every Era iConstruct at 50 is making all buildings now much cheaper than before the re-costing. This has a big impact on GS balance as I knew it would. I will be changing every Era after Ancient back to 100%. Preh Era will go to 75% and Ancient to 90%. I will do more tests before I do this to confirm what I'm seeing so far.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Setting every Era iConstruct at 50 is making all buildings now much cheaper than before the re-costing.

In what era? Cheaper by half? PreH at 75 would be way too much. At 60 I was just under the amount of time it took to get a tech for each building and that's far too demanding on cost - who wants the tech to go that much faster than their build options? Those playing the upscaled option I guess, but not most I wouldn't think. At 60 it played ok but was still too demanding and didn't leave enough time to build units while somewhat keeping up if you just worried about production+ buildings mostly. Perhaps beyond Prehistoric it gets a bit easier but I tested out to mid-prehistoric.

If you don't make the increases by era from there gradual it's going to be extremely jarring. I would not advise increasing the era adjustment by more than 10% at a time from the previous era.

 

[JosEPh_II]

In what era?

ALL. Did your recosting not increase Every Building?

Cheaper by half?

That depends upon your Recost.

PreH at 75 would be way too much.

No it is not especially on any GS below Snail. You can Not gauge every GS by Snail. And your impression of snail. Eternity players have already commented that buildingss now cost half what they did before. And we have no real Eon players to speak of either.

At 60 I was just under the amount of time it took to get a tech for each building and that's far too demanding on cost - who wants the tech to go that much faster than their build options?

And you base this off of one Snail game that has not even made Tribalism? Really? C'mon T-brd.

Perhaps beyond Prehistoric it gets a bit easier but I tested out to mid-prehistoric.

There is no "perhaps" it gets progressively easier with each era even Before your Recosting and now your Era iConstruct reaction to your own recosts.

If you don't make the increases by era from there gradual it's going to be extremely jarring.

And you have actual evidence of this? I don't think so.

I would not advise increasing the era adjustment by more than 10% at a time from the previous era.

And you are basing this off of your limited play to mid Preh era. Your sample size is way too small to make this statement. You talk of scientific approach yet you break a basic rule?

Look T-brd basically you overreacted. It's that simple. And because you made the commit to change the iConstruct from 100 to 50 for all eras you have skewed the whole mod balance. You jumped into balancing with out adequate testing or experience in all GS and the balance that is was there.

 

[Thunderbrd]

ALL. Did your recosting not increase Every Building?

Differently by era.

Do you have a save for each era of the game that you can open up and look at how long things take for cities? If so, I'd appreciate you sharing so I can use this for testing personally.

That depends upon your Recost.

I'm getting the impression you don't have the direct visibility on these from having the numerous saves for sampling I thought you must have. If not, what are you going off of here?

I asked what era because it doesn't sound like you are speaking for the prehistoric era where the affected buildings appeared to leap up in cost by 400% over what they previously had been, when some may have doubled in cost at most at a base level.

Once I had gotten to where costs were more similar to the original costs they had in the previous cost arrangement, they were still getting back down to the point where they were roughly when the overall iConstruction for the era was at about 50%, taking about 2-4 rounds each to complete.

No it is not especially on any GS below Snail. You can Not gauge every GS by Snail. And your impression of snail. Eternity players have already commented that buildingss now cost half what they did before. And we have no real Eon players to speak of either.

So you're basing your assessment on a few players making comments? Where have they made these comments? I've been reading all the posts as well.

Given that everything is based on clear ratios from one game speed to another, why would I not be able to judge all gamespeeds by an experience in one?

When the first buildings take longer to build than the first techs are to research, we have a problem (especially when I'm judging that on a city that has a very fortunate 4 hammer initial tile to work.) At least in my opinion.

So is your determination coming from personal testing experience or a few basic comments (observations rather than requests from what I can see, and usually limited to the era based time frame they were in when the changes were made) from some players?

My initial, and not final judgement, was to set numbers so the beginning of the game played out properly. We can always adjust from there based on experiences as we playtest through. If they are bringing building costs later in the game down, we must first figure out how the late prehistoric plays out to make sure that the current cost adjustments continue to give a proper feel. Then figure out how Ancient plays and adjust Ancient. Then the next era and so on.

And you base this off of one Snail game that has not even made Tribalism? Really? C'mon T-brd.

The recharting affected the first half of the prehistoric more severely than the second. The second half, the buildings were much closer to original values. I realize it will take more testing, which I figured you'd be doing personally. Are you saying you've played some games on the new values up to and past Ancient now on multiple speeds to get a better feel for how this was currently working yourself or are you taking random guesses as well?

Not all buildings were increased in value so much as the discord between many different cost baselines being applied to numerous different buildings were unified. This means some buildings were given more and others brought down some. Most came up a bit. And you cannot judge anything based on the national and world wonders and any buildings in modules because those buildings haven't been recosted yet.

My determination was based off about 5 games using varying settings, but hey, who's counting right? 1... 5... what's the diff?

There is no "perhaps" it gets progressively easier with each era even Before your Recosting and now your Era iConstruct reaction to your own recosts.

So you do have some measures in each era then?

That it gets progressively easier with each era is exactly the sort of thing we need to know for sure because then we should NOT be establishing the iConstruction as the same for each era past tribalism. If that's the case, then we need to be increasing iConstruction each era and with the smooth arc of this base chart, we should be able to make it the same amount of +% in iConstruction more for each subsequent era.

And you have actual evidence of this? I don't think so.

Yes. The evidence, which you can see for yourself as well, is the chart itself. It increases cumulatively for each X-grid. And does so very smoothly. So with any given era boundary, if you add too much iConstruction cost, you'll end up with each era feeling like it suddenly took a huge jump up. I actually like it when techs feel this way but when standard buildings suddenly cost 6 rounds to build when the ones being revealed at the end of the previous era were taking 2 rounds to build, that, I would call, jarring.

And you are basing this off of your limited play to mid Preh era. Your sample size is way too small to make this statement. You talk of scientific approach yet you break a basic rule?

That's the only sample that really matters to establish all that's been established so far. It has proven that 50-60 is where the game NEEDS to start at. From there we can push up the iConstruction at a gradual increase. This will make there be a noteworthy 'step' up a player could feel, but not a tremendously jarring one and one that helps to make the first part of any age feel a little tougher, like you'll have to kinda start over again making things cheap and quick for you to get through. That wouldn't be a bad way to experience the game as long as it applied to all eras.

Since you're thinking that Ancient should be as high as 100%, may I at least suggest a compromise:
Prehistoric: 60%
Ancient: 80%
and then +20% over the previous era for each era after that. This will help with the "it gets progressively easier with each era" issue you felt we already had too. I suspected we had that problem as well and expected we'd have to do something along these lines.

Then see how things go with testing and feedback.

And because you made the commit to change the iConstruct from 100 to 50 for all eras you have skewed the whole mod balance

I reacted to the needs of the play experiences I explored. It was never intended to be a final call.

Out of curiosity, have you explored those same samples and variations of them, such as the first half of prehistoric on another gamespeed you'd normally have a 'good feel for'?

 

[Thunderbrd]

Looking at the code to hopefully understand why Normal speed comes across so differently than Snail, I've found a few answers to some questions, though I suspect that production modifier differences, not just cost modifier differences also necessary to evaluate how that can differ from one gamespeed to another.

But here we have final cost assignments in the code:

   int iProductionNeeded;

   iProductionNeeded = GC.getBuildingInfo(eBuilding).getProductionCost();

   iProductionNeeded *= GC.getDefineINT("BUILDING_PRODUCTION_PERCENT");
   iProductionNeeded /= 100;

   iProductionNeeded *= GC.getGameSpeedInfo(GC.getGameINLINE().getGameSpeedType()).getConstructPercent();
   iProductionNeeded /= 100;

   iProductionNeeded *= GC.getEraInfo(GC.getGameINLINE().getStartEra()).getConstructPercent();
   iProductionNeeded /= 100;

It then goes on to some things we don't have to worry about.

But here again we see the approach that some factors will mean more than others.

First of all, we DO have an overall global modifier. That's cool. We may be able to dial things in a little better just from that alone. At first.

Then we have the Gamespeed info applying, so I'll bet when I initially was working on that level it would not have made quite the difference in effect from normal to snail, but I also understand there's a lot of cause not to approach from that direction given that we have a number of alternative settings and so on.

Then we include the era info. I REALLY don't like that the era info only is based on the START era - that totally screws up the intent of being able to have the costs adjust based on the era the building is sourced from. I'm going to HAVE to change that so that it's based on current era for the player at least, though I'd prefer to even base it on the era the building's X grid is in. I'm a little worried that might cause a bit of slowdown to check every building for that at this stage of things. It'd need to be cached to avoid that and we're trying to be a little more data sensitive too so for now I may just get the player's current era since this is in CvPlayer anyhow. What this will mean is that once you hit a new era, all buildings you haven't built from the previous era are going to get more expensive too. A rather interesting experience might come from that approach and it might be kinda fun, a little like a natural beeline sting effect on building construction costs.

I might have to look at this for units too since they probably act in the same order of things and are base on the same calls.

I don't have further time for analysis but I'd like to take a deeper look at some samples to see why the effect seems to differ so much for one gamespeed to the next to adjust things by era only. Of course, things AREN'T adjusted by Era only, but for gamespeed, the production and construction modifiers from one gamespeed to the next ARE the same right? I'm out of time for deeper eval tonight.

@Toffer90 : I have always greatly appreciated your ability to mathematically show how the differences in approaches can make a difference so I'd love to hear from you on this too if you'd be willing to comment.

 

[Toffer90]

The only change needed in this calculation is, as you said, to base that last calculation on current era instead of start era. It might be strange that buildings from earlier eras increase in cost when you enter a new era, but it might not be a big problem either.

iProductionNeeded *= GC.getEraInfo(GC.getGameINLINE().getStartEra()).getConstructPercent(); →→​

→→ iProductionNeeded *= GC.getEraInfo(GC.getGameINLINE().get(iPlayer).getEra()).getConstructPercent();

If this cannot be done so that the building cost is different between two players who are in different eras; then you would need to do a check for the latest tech requirement for the building and decide what era the building belongs to before calculating final cost for that building.

Spoiler Code outline for the alternative suggestion :

  int iProductionNeeded;

   iProductionNeeded = GC.getBuildingInfo(eBuilding).getProductionCost();

   iProductionNeeded *= GC.getDefineINT("BUILDING_PRODUCTION_PERCENT");
   iProductionNeeded /= 100;

   iProductionNeeded *= GC.getGameSpeedInfo(GC.getGameINLINE().getGameSpeedType()).getConstructPercent();
   iProductionNeeded /= 100;

   # Written in python as that's what I'm most familiar with.
        CvTechInfo = gc.getTechInfo(eBuilding.getPrereqAndTech())
        if CvTechInfo == None:
            iEra = 0
        else:
            iEra = CvTechInfo.getEra()
        i = 0
        while True:
            CvTechInfo = gc.getTechInfo(eBuilding.getPrereqAndTechs(i))
            if CvTechInfo == None:
                break
            iEraTemp = CvTechInfo.getEra()
            if iEraTemp > iEra:
                iEra = iEraTemp
            i += 1

   iProductionNeeded *= GC.getEraInfo(iEra).getConstructPercent();
   iProductionNeeded /= 100;

 

[Thunderbrd]

The only change needed in this calculation is, as you said, to base that last calculation on current era instead of start era. It might be strange that buildings from earlier eras increase in cost when you enter a new era, but it might not be a big problem either.

iProductionNeeded *= GC.getEraInfo(GC.getGameINLINE().getStartEra()).getConstructPercent(); →→​

→→ iProductionNeeded *= GC.getEraInfo(GC.getGameINLINE().get(iPlayer).getEra()).getConstructPercent();

If this cannot be done so that the building cost is different between two players who are in different eras; then you would need to do a check for the latest tech requirement for the building and decide what era the building belongs to before calculating final cost for that building.

Spoiler Code outline for the alternative suggestion :

  int iProductionNeeded;

   iProductionNeeded = GC.getBuildingInfo(eBuilding).getProductionCost();

   iProductionNeeded *= GC.getDefineINT("BUILDING_PRODUCTION_PERCENT");
   iProductionNeeded /= 100;

   iProductionNeeded *= GC.getGameSpeedInfo(GC.getGameINLINE().getGameSpeedType()).getConstructPercent();
   iProductionNeeded /= 100;

   # Written in python as that's what I'm most familiar with.
        CvTechInfo = gc.getTechInfo(eBuilding.getPrereqAndTech())
        if CvTechInfo == None:
            iEra = 0
        else:
            iEra = CvTechInfo.getEra()
        i = 0
        while True:
            CvTechInfo = gc.getTechInfo(eBuilding.getPrereqAndTechs(i))
            if CvTechInfo == None:
                break
            iEraTemp = CvTechInfo.getEra()
            if iEraTemp > iEra:
                iEra = iEraTemp
            i += 1

   iProductionNeeded *= GC.getEraInfo(iEra).getConstructPercent();
   iProductionNeeded /= 100;

All this is pretty much exactly what I was thinking. Obviously the syntax is a little different.

What I'm curious about is how far different results can be from an adjustment on the gamespeed file vs an adjustment on the era info based on the order of calculation.

 

[Toffer90]

What I'm curious about is how far different results can be from an adjustment on the gamespeed file vs an adjustment on the era info based on the order of calculation.

The order of calculation does not matter in multiplication; they are all affecting construction cost equally.
If one of them is set to 0 the end result is zero, if one of them is doubled the end result will also double.

Left side of the equation is a direct translation -of the code you presented- into math; the right side is a simplification of the left side.
( ( ( ( (iCost * BUILDING_PRODUCTION_PERCENT) / 100) * GameSpeed ) / 100 ) * iEra ) / 100 = ( iCost * BUILDING_PRODUCTION_PERCENT * GameSpeed * iEra ) / 1 000 000

 

[Thunderbrd]

Ok, @JosEPh_II : this pertains mostly to our continued discussion on this matter.

I changed the code so that it will change all building costs for the player based on the era they are IN as opposed to the starting era.

I also changed the iConstruction in erainfos to start at 60% and gains 20% each era thereafter.

I then played through a LITTLE of the Snail speed, and although once I hit the point where I was getting 11 rounds for a stick gatherer and freaking out, (way too much) I then also realized the city had shifted to a major food producing tile and away from its best production tile. Switching back it got a bit more reasonable.

I played much farther on a Normal gamespeed, all the way up to the point where I earned Sedentary Lifestyle. At this point, which, btw was I think the turn before BC 6000 (very impressive!) the second city showed a clear increase in the build times of its buildings, while the capital, a well developed production center, maintained the 1 round per building cost but 2 things should be considered on that.
1) I was unable to build all buildings from the prehistoric... an incredibly limited amount that demanded strategic decisionmaking to determine what was unnecessary and not bother with it.
2) When I did pause to build units, I was capable of building them quickly enough to be effective at fielding hunting and defensive forces but it always caused me some delay in developing the power of the city output so it really did force careful strategic consideration.
3) The whole playthrough definitely had that feel of being balanced between too much and too little production. Nothing was easy but nothing was impossible.
4) This was on Noble level so at harder gamespeeds it will certainly challenge even strong players. I'll have to see how much. But I doubt if on harder settings, I'd still be able to build normal buildings 1 per round even in my capital after this SedLif shift. The penalty to how much production was added to all the buildings I had chosen not to build was pretty stiff so it will now cost a lot for having rushed to SedLif while ignoring a lot of good buildings while trying to spread my empire quickly.

In short, I LOVED this playthrough! It felt just right!

I'll have to finalize the testing on Snail speed and then I'll need to test a little on harder difficulties to see how intensely that impacts things.

I avoided building wonders intended to enhance progress through this era because they aren't currently at the correct, much larger costs, that they will be at.

Also consider that the buildings that will be getting unlocked throughout the ancient era will be more expensive than they were as well. But I'll have to continue to test to see if perhaps we need to increase the growth of iConstruction by era. The 20% jump was definitely felt in the 2nd city I have and will slow down that city's development in a very noteworthy way (another cause to delay so that your first cities can more quickly get on top of production building basics first.)

You and/or others might want to see how the costs adjust from the last round of researching Sedentary LIfestyle to the next so I'm uploading that save here for anyone to test and comment. You can see how many buildings had to be left behind. You can see how many techs have been ignored in the rush to sed lifestyle. You can see populations and where I'm at in all ways. It's fascinating how many different approaches could've been taken here that would've been able to offer potentially even better progress but at differing risk factors.

Normal speed is a trip... quick, but it's getting rather enjoyable actually.

See what you think. I know the rest of the game needs continued testing. I know your approach would be to establish the prehistoric at 75 - but man... that's too much struggle to build even for Normal gamespeed I believe. But I CAN see how it may be best to jump up to 100 for classical. But then I wonder if we could continue jumping up by 25% on each era... it would be nice if we can find the increment that works for every era to gain cumulatively but maybe that won't prove realistic... I'm not sure yet. After testing Snail, if it confirms to play out similarly, we'll have to test a larger jump to classical.

 

[Rmi]

Just thinking out loud here:

It matters a little bit wether 25% is additive or cumulative at the end. If not just for the odd numbers you get.

Changes in era are also vastly different. Ancient to classic should be fine but when power and factories are involved you should speed up production by more than 25%.

At that point you should have production mastery in your cities and have the ability to focus on units or excess wealth/science buildings and generally take the edge off.
If that 'ease of life' never happens it would start to seriously hurt your brain at 30+ cities at that amount of micro managing and turns do start to take ages later.

Above all offcourse, can the AI handle it. If we struggle with building selection and butter or guns problems won't the AI be devastated?

Anyway, my utmost respect for dealing with these things, i barely know enough to find the ON button on my PC.

 

[JosEPh_II]

@Thunderbrd ,
You post and observations all Sounds good! Especially that you are finding Normal GS "interesting" again.

In my latest commit the only thing I changed, in relation to any of this, was an iConstruct value for the AI on Nightmare. Regular Deity was at 60% but it looked like SO got confused a bit and put 100 in, the same as Noble. I changed that to 50 to match the other variables. This will impact the speed that the AI can build and should help it in a round about way of getting necessary buildings built when trouble hits. Noriad2 post which caused me to post code revealed the value being "off".

If we can make Noble a decent challange for the avg "joe" player it will be a great thing imhpo for the mod. Then players will respect the upper difficulty levels of C2C and start saying it's as tough as Vanilla BtS.

 

[Thunderbrd]

I just played through the Snail version of this and... wow... those settings are intense. You can't get on top of everything. You just can't. But you CAN, if you're strategic enough about it, do quite well. It's all about priorities, just as it really should be. Honestly, this is a trip and we've got the 'game' back in the game imo.

Changes in era are also vastly different. Ancient to classic should be fine but when power and factories are involved you should speed up production by more than 25%.

Well, this is possibly true that there could/should be some further adjustment due to the 'flavor' of the era, however, the base chart already has an increasing arc of cost assignment so there's a natural curvature as well as the step up at the eras. I again saved the game right before Sedentary Lifestyle (and after) and it's quite interesting what happens when the building costs surge. I'll upload the saves here tomorrow.

Above all offcourse, can the AI handle it. If we struggle with building selection and butter or guns problems won't the AI be devastated?

The AI was doing pretty well. I'm actually finding it a little challenging. A little. And that's on Noble. I mean, I could've probably swept the board and tried to get all wonders and religions, both of which I almost entirely skipped for the sake of the test game, but suffice it to say I'm not WAAAY ahead when I get to Sedentary Lifestyle. On Normal, it's a little more challenging to get there quickly in years terms. I may not have played as well either. But I've come to understand that the main reason things feel a little differently on Normal speed is due to rounding and in a lot of ways it hurts the player progress, even with multiple production in effect. But on that game, the AI was doing much better.

I think the AI suffers from poor hunting more than anything now. There's also a lot of value placed on getting resources you don't already have and it might be distracting when it doesn't really do much for you. So one of the upcoming things I'll be concerned with is making it mean more for each and every one of those. Somewhat. Not my HIGHEST priority but high. Also inneffective hunting really hurts them because if they're hunting parties die, they spend a LOT of valuable time rebuilding them over and over as they are very high priority.

But all in all, they do pretty good with this build recost stuff. Would probably do better than a lot of players.

In my latest commit the only thing I changed, in relation to any of this, was an iConstruct value for the AI on Nightmare. Regular Deity was at 60% but it looked like SO got confused a bit and put 100 in, the same as Noble. I changed that to 50 to match the other variables. This will impact the speed that the AI can build and should help it in a round about way of getting necessary buildings built when trouble hits. Noriad2 post which caused me to post code revealed the value being "off".

I saw that... makes sense.

If we can make Noble a decent challange for the avg "joe" player it will be a great thing imhpo for the mod. Then players will respect the upper difficulty levels of C2C and start saying it's as tough as Vanilla BtS.

Seems it's helping. I'm playing on Noble and this is very challenging, however, I can ignore prioritizing some things on Noble that I wouldn't be able to ignore on higher difficulties. This allows me to address ONLY growth and getting ahead, which, with the AI being on Noble, would be pretty much how they experience the game regardless of your own game difficulty. However, more and more on harder settings, you cannot ignore the law enforcement or disease or even education, so those things really bog you down and distract you from being able to get aggressive, get effective hunting going, or even get your platform of production and then food buildings. Unhealth plays a greater role at higher difficulties which means a LOT of buildings I could ignore building would be something you'd not want to overlook on a higher difficulty level. All that would play greatly into delaying you over what the AI is experiencing.

The AI is nearly keeping up with me on Noble... I hate to think what it would be like on Deity now, let alone Deity-Nightmare!

Still wondering about that 20% and if it's enough. 60% for Prehistoric was great for the playthrough on Snail, but I DID get to Ancient at about 12000 BC and had 4 cities rather than 2, much of which because I could get more unit play in, which is good, but maybe if we adjust the tech costs a little to extend them a bit? I don't know... the building cost feels right - and maybe I just played more effectively this time. Going to 80% at Ancient, certainly was felt everywhere, even the capital, where most all buildings gained a round or two or 3 to complete.

I also played it differently this time by delaying getting to Sedentary Lifestyle as long as I could without going for any religions. That bought me a lot more time to get new cities out there and get them developed some before the 20% construction cost increase applied extra pain to the developing cities which feel it the most. Since I'm on Noble, I managed to get to SedLif first anyhow,even with the delay, but on a harder setting, would be unlikely to get the free tech that way.

 

[JosEPh_II]

I played your Normal save up to 3000BC last night. Kind of scratched my head over your 2nd city placement. But at 3000BC Stalin and Curtain are in a race for land. I lost a settler to a bad move and Stalin now has 6 cities to your 5. I did claim both horse resources that were close. But Stalin has horse on the other side of Moscow anyway. Several times he brought mini stacks to the border. I could rally enough counter force for him to back off. He did succeed in cutting me off from the NW part of the continent though.

I updated to SVN 9673 when I started and just updated to 9675 this morning. No play time yet.

I'm posting the 3000BC save game below so you can see the differences and how it's progressing in the Ancient era.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Kind of scratched my head over your 2nd city placement.

How so? I will admit I wasn't playing for the long haul so I didn't think it out TOO thoroughly, but I'm curious as to what made you question it.

But at 3000BC Stalin and Curtain are in a race for land. I lost a settler to a bad move and Stalin now has 6 cities to your 5. I did claim both horse resources that were close. But Stalin has horse on the other side of Moscow anyway. Several times he brought mini stacks to the border. I could rally enough counter force for him to back off. He did succeed in cutting me off from the NW part of the continent though.

And this is on Noble setting. Safe to say things are getting more competitive I think. What kind of makeup did those ministacks have?

 

[JosEPh_II]

Couple of atlatls, couple of log rams, stone ax or 2 and something else that is escaping me atm.

What killed me though was the barbs had a mini stack with a couple of Javileneers, couple of bow, and stone ax and they did not attack Stalin's newest city guarded by 1 atl. smh

As for that 2nd city what besides coast and rivers enticed you? There were other spots that had a resource or 2 and would have been more in line with keeping Stalin from settling in your direction so fast. Did not cut him off much of anything but the skinny snaky peninsula. To me getting a line of cities set up as a border wall is pretty important especially with resources involved. That 2nd city spot would've been back fill for me. As you will see from the save.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Yeah, I usually just surround my capital with a layer and go mostly for the best distance geometry including river and ocean if possible. I assume that resources will show up. Production had amazing potential in that spot and it was the best I could do in spacing... that is usually my top concern is how to begin spacing out the cities to maximum impact for each early city.

How did you feel the game played in terms of ideals? It seems techs are comin' very quickly, but what's the target date for entering Classical? Was it still 3000k BC? That might be something that would happen on Snail, as ahead as I was there.

I played through to get a comparison (not intending any competition though this could be an interesting way for players to compete without playing directly against each other IN a game!)

So far, I'm feeling like the game is progressing quite nicely as far as offering challenge and strategic decisionmaking in building and unit construction choices, particularly on Size Matters as this test is. Yeah, those barbs have been intense at times and I nearly lost a settling group myself, even my furthest city was under real threat for a moment.

I DID decide to hold off on getting Sedentary Lifestyle until I got all the techs I was about to leave behind so as to give more time for 2nd and 3d city development and constructing at a lower expense.

Here's how I managed to get the playtesting to go up to the same year you showed me on yours:

 

[JosEPh_II]

It seems techs are comin' very quickly, but what's the target date for entering Classical? Was it still 3000k BC?

2000BC is the Classical "target" date. But I'm finding most players get there sooner on almost all GS.

Before all the Math changes to the Hierarchy ladder for adjusting GS/Era/Handicap/ etc. for research modifiers I could more easily make adjustments as the Eras progressed. It does not seem to be as "easy" now. And of course Game set up Options and Leader Traits all make for more variables to the base numbers and reaching the Target dates too early or too late.

Reminder the Target dates to reach each New Era are:
1.Sed Life/Ancient ~6000BC
2. Classical ~2000BC
3. Medieval ~600AD
4. Ren ~ 1300-1400AD (some variance here as the game speeds get longer)
5. Industrial ~1700AD
6. Modern ~1900AD
7. Information ~1990AD
8. Nanotech ~2050AD
9. TH ~2200AD
10. Galactic ~3500AD
11. Cosmic ~5000AD
12. Transcendent ~7000AD
13. Future ~10,000AD

 

[Thunderbrd]

hmm... as of the last save it seems like I'm probably going to blow way past 2000BC before entering Classical but it's hard to say yet. On the Snail game I'll bet I'd be to Classical at or before then. Again hard to say. Going to take a while to find out too because I've gotta get back to working on completing the recosting. So far it seems like we have a good balance at the moment with the current approach though.