C2C : Game Speed

[Questdog]

Then we're adding a new gamespeed at the end of it all and making it, what, twice as long? I mean, is this enough though? Should we have two increments difference? One being 1 and 1/2 as long and one being twice as long as the current longest gamespeed (eternity)? In the latter, we also add one at the end (in name) and call it Neverending.

Now, if we can come up with a consensus, in all fairness, who would be the one to make the final decision that the idea is a go and who would make the adjustments in the gamespeed file?

ETERNITY needs to be 3 to 4 times slower in the research department. Changes to build times, etc. are not needed. That being said, however, the first era at 4 times slower is too slow. I am currently playing a game at Monarch level on a Gigantic map and have the research modifier set to 2000. Default was 800. It is still too quick at the Ancient Era, but a bit slow in the first era. Although anyone wanting to play a slow game shouldn't complain since the turns are pretty fast early on with few units to manage and only one city, plus on smaller maps research times would be less.

All that being said, however, I'm not going to raise a ruckus if you don't set it the way I desire since I can always go in and set it the way I want.

 

[Thunderbrd]

I fixed that bug so you can have month increments before AD now.

Wow... nicely done

ETERNITY needs to be 3 to 4 times slower in the research department. Changes to build times, etc. are not needed. That being said, however, the first era at 4 times slower is too slow. I am currently playing a game at Monarch level on a Gigantic map and have the research modifier set to 2000. Default was 800. It is still too quick at the Ancient Era, but a bit slow in the first era. Although anyone wanting to play a slow game shouldn't complain since the turns are pretty fast early on with few units to manage and only one city, plus on smaller maps research times would be less.

All that being said, however, I'm not going to raise a ruckus if you don't set it the way I desire since I can always go in and set it the way I want.

If our research ratios are differing from the length of time ratios between game speeds, then we have an issue with the research COSTS that should be addressed, not through the gamespeed.

Since this is a big part of the econaudit I'm working on now, I suggest we simply enforce the gamespeed ratios to be equivalent across the board to start as a base calibration for the rest of the game system.

What I mean is: at Normal game speed, we zero out. The research costs and production costs etc are set at 100%. Then for each gamespeed defined, we keep those percentages statically comparable to the same fraction that the amount of time the turn takes differs. This is not usually completely mathematically possible but we can get a pretty close approximation usually.

Generally we have tried to keep this conversion ratio pure but it does vary oddly in places.

Then, if production to research rates are still a problem we DON'T fix it on the game speed file, we fix it on the research costs or production costs of what buildings and techs are being achieved in a given era.

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

The point you seem to be making then is that we need a slower speed setting still beyond eternity. I actually agree.

Guys, it looks to me that you're really missing the point. Even adding a slower speed setting won't solve anything: you'll end up with a game where surely you need 20, 30 or 50 turns to research a tech, as you wish, but the main point is that at 50% of the turns you won't have anything else to do because you'll already have researched every tech and probably conquered everyone. Right now at snail speed I researched every tech by turn 4500/9900. Wouldn't it be better to re-scale research to make it so that the last techs are researched around turn 8900? That way it would take longer to research every single tech without needing another slower speed setting. Am I wrong?

 

[AIAndy]

Wow... nicely done


If our research ratios are differing from the length of time ratios between game speeds, then we have an issue with the research COSTS that should be addressed, not through the gamespeed.

Since this is a big part of the econaudit I'm working on now, I suggest we simply enforce the gamespeed ratios to be equivalent across the board to start as a base calibration for the rest of the game system.

What I mean is: at Normal game speed, we zero out. The research costs and production costs etc are set at 100%. Then for each gamespeed defined, we keep those percentages statically comparable to the same fraction that the amount of time the turn takes differs. This is not usually completely mathematically possible but we can get a pretty close approximation usually.

Generally we have tried to keep this conversion ratio pure but it does vary oddly in places.

Then, if production to research rates are still a problem we DON'T fix it on the game speed file, we fix it on the research costs or production costs of what buildings and techs are being achieved in a given era.

Well, I'd assume that usually you want production faster compared to research on the slower speeds. If you keep production tied to research then the slower game speeds only have a lot more turns to move and fight wars but not the production capability to actually fuel those wars.

 

[Questdog]

Well, I'd assume that usually you want production faster compared to research on the slower speeds. If you keep production tied to research then the slower game speeds only have a lot more turns to move and fight wars but not the production capability to actually fuel those wars.

I agree that the ratio of production to research should NOT stay the same on slower levels. Most people want the slower game speeds so they can spend more time fighting wars not looking at their cities building ques have 40 turns to make a clubman.

Research times need to be changed, nothing else. As mentioned, the best way would be to recalculate the costs of each tech, but it is a lot easier just to change the game speed research times (athough, as I have said before, the early techs are much higher priced than the later techs, so it would be good if someone wanted to do all the work to calibrate things).

 

[EldrinFal]

When I did the first edit on gamespeed for the mod, I noticed that the afforess version hadn't maintained equality in research and production etc... ratios. I thought that odd and that it may cause trouble down the road.

But I didn't change it cuz I was just trying to make it so that:

a) the tech progress tended to match fairly close to Theocracy achieved on or around 0 AD.
and
b) we no longer had month increments being introduced before AD (causes a nasty effect as bad or worse than a crash) in any gamespeed

Now, since then, I believe we've had a few more adjustments made to the gamespeed file and I've been trusting they've been made with competence as I had faith in Praetyre's abilities there. I'm not sure if anyone else has touched the file since.

But aligning the % of production, research, etc... to the same ratio difference as the game speed increments is something we should streamline still yes.

So the idea to create a shift doesn't cause any trouble because we AREN'T removing a gamespeed... we're adding a new one - just, in name, doing so at the fast end and calling it lightning (but we're not making a faster speed, just changing the gamespeed increment NAMES to adjust them all one category so yeah, individual ongoing games would just suddenly have a different gamespeed name, not an actual new gamespeed definition (unless we do some tinkering there too.))

Then we're adding a new gamespeed at the end of it all and making it, what, twice as long? I mean, is this enough though? Should we have two increments difference? One being 1 and 1/2 as long and one being twice as long as the current longest gamespeed (eternity)? In the latter, we also add one at the end (in name) and call it Neverending.

Now, if we can come up with a consensus, in all fairness, who would be the one to make the final decision that the idea is a go and who would make the adjustments in the gamespeed file?

I have already been modifying the gamespeed file, so I'll retain that responsibility. But we need some consensus on how to modify further.

I'm going to get the TOTAL turns proportional later tonight, but we need to look at the increments and # of turns per increment. There is flexibility there on how to arrange those.

BTW.. Eternity is 50% slower than Snail, so I would suggest the next speed be 100% slower than Snail.

After that, we can look at the ratios better to determine if we keep the same, or do some kind of consistent increase.

 

[Necratoid]

I think Questdog is more concerned that all techs will be available before the half way point in the game than that the name eternity is misleading. In short the post new research time is somthing like 6-9k turns of no new things (by Questdog's timeline)... if your trying to be slow at research in Questdog's world. Questdog sees the near pointless 'extra' turns as little more than score buffering for completing things 'early'. Questdog wants have the last new tech completed either just past the 85-90% mark in game turns... apparrently on average for speed.

Not my theory on fun gaming really... but I also realize that the modders are going to need buffer room once they finalize the prehistoric era and beyond. I don't see a point in setting things to the research speed level Questdog wants as then the modders'll have to do massive time consuming ballancing and endless reballancing with every new thing added. This is a Beta and thus a work in progress... those empty end turns are the new things buffer.

Granted I started a random raging barbs game as (randomly selected) Brenus, of the Holy Roman Empire and its taking the kind of 25-30 turn per tech Questdog seems to wants... its also around year 5500 BC (During the Neanderhal rush waves so only one city for you) and 4 out of 50 Civs are still alive on a Giant map. So go figure.

I'm also thinking that Questdog turns his effective player level up to the level Questdog sets the AI at... average 6 turns a tech seems to take absurd optimizing or maybe Questdog is expanding way to fast.

Reguardless you can't actually please Questdog completely at this point without adding hundreds or thousands of man hours in tweeking... for every version update. I only see this mod at around 40-43% complete as is. A lot of what Questdog's issues are seem based around finishing work at the 85%+ completion level.

In short, don't try to set everything to the level Questdog wants it at... it won't ever work. You'll bore the lower skilled players out of things with the slog. The empty turns will be filled with war out of bordom and the steal % research promotion will make the game speed up, research wise, anyway. Don't disreguard Questdog's comments either... but be aware that Questdog is basically complaining that the new content buffer turns aren't filled yet.

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Okay... I kept getting server too busy notes when I tried to post this last... a quick glance over says this wasn't invalidated though.

 

[Questdog]

I think Questdog is more concerned that all techs will be available before the half way point in the game than that the name eternity is misleading. In short the post new research time is somthing like 6-9k turns of no new things (by Questdog's timeline)... if your trying to be slow at research in Questdog's world. Questdog sees the near pointless 'extra' turns as little more than score buffering for completing things 'early'. Questdog wants have the last new tech completed either just past the 85-90% mark in game turns... apparrently on average for speed.

Not my theory on fun gaming really... but I also realize that the modders are going to need buffer room once they finalize the prehistoric era and beyond. I don't see a point in setting things to the research speed level Questdog wants as then the modders'll have to do massive time consuming ballancing and endless reballancing with every new thing added. This is a Beta and thus a work in progress... those empty end turns are the new things buffer.

Granted I started a random raging barbs game as (randomly selected) Brenus, of the Holy Roman Empire and its taking the kind of 25-30 turn per tech Questdog seems to wants... its also around year 5500 BC (During the Neanderhal rush waves so only one city for you) and 4 out of 50 Civs are still alive on a Giant map. So go figure.

I'm also thinking that Questdog turns his effective player level up to the level Questdog sets the AI at... average 6 turns a tech seems to take absurd optimizing or maybe Questdog is expanding way to fast.

Reguardless you can't actually please Questdog completely at this point without adding hundreds or thousands of man hours in tweeking... for every version update. I only see this mod at around 40-43% complete as is. A lot of what Questdog's issues are seem based around finishing work at the 85%+ completion level.

In short, don't try to set everything to the level Questdog wants it at... it won't ever work. You'll bore the lower skilled players out of things with the slog. The empty turns will be filled with war out of bordom and the steal % research promotion will make the game speed up, research wise, anyway. Don't disreguard Questdog's comments either... but be aware that Questdog is basically complaining that the new content buffer turns aren't filled yet.

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Okay... I kept getting server too busy notes when I tried to post this last... a quick glance over says this wasn't invalidated though.

I don't think you understand Questdog's concerns. It has nothing to do with buffer turns or when the tech tree is exhausted. And pleasing Questdog should be no one's concern but Questdog's.

Questdog's concerns are basically twofold. The first is just personal preference for a style of play, but the second is that the current settings are just broken.

#1) I like to play slow. Relish each new unit and revel in each new tech so that each new one feels like a big deal, not just a temporary stop on to better things. To do that, in C2C, there has to be at least 10 turns between techs, preferably more. I see no reason why one of the game speed options should not accommodate such a desire as I hope I am not the only one who likes to play protracted games. But if not, no big deal; I can always adjust research times myself pretty easily as long as the modders have the relative costs set up well.

#2) Currently, the Eternity game speed (and probably others, but I haven't played them for a while) is not set up properly. Research times are way out of whack with build times and worker action times. On Eternity speed with a new gatherer it currently takes 80 (!!) turns to build a Stone Tools Workshop on a forested hill on a Gigantic map, but only about 10-12 turns to research the tech. Same thing for techs with units to build: 10-12 turns for the tech (Prehistoric Era) and 15 or more turns for the unit. With this set up it is IMPOSSIBLE to build the great majority of buildings and units that you research. And as the Eras progress, it only gets worse: techs come quicker, units and buildings come slower. By the Medieval Era you have gobs and gobs of stuff to build but no time to build but a small fraction of it. People say, "That's why you specialize". But I say that you can't even build all the buildings from your specialty. To stop a city from constructing buildings and try to make a unit forces you to make the decision that at least one more round of building upgrades must be skipped. And I for one don't see the fun of researching techs for things that I'll never use. I just want the time between techs to build stuff and make some units. Is that an unreasonable request?

 

[Necratoid]

I can agree on the worker turns forever... I'm always annoyed and confused why having a cart path/mud path/road completely fails reduce the time it takes to make a mud path/road/paved road on the exact same square. You have to go extremely far out of your way to not reuse a solid inch to make a better road way.

At the same time it takes a single turn to upgrade to or from a mine... logic fail. Lets see 44 years a turn for 80 turns is 320+3200=3520 years to make a stone tools workshop... lets not ignore that this time is shrunk repeated by -25% to work times techs... so it ends up like 20*44= 880 years. Again logic fail. 10*44=440 years. In short that number is insane... granted gathers can cluster up and shrink that time, but that is crazy... and it take all of one turn to sack it.

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Still I'm not sure how your getting the 6 turns thing to work... if you haven't changed something around yourself. I don't have that kind of turn speed and do have the ability to build all the buildings and many wonders.... Its also rather easy to pass an age by ignoring all but one research path of that age.

So in short I think your doing something wrong. Perhaps its that your not playing at nobel and the AI boosting code speed it up too too fast. The higher the Civ skill level the faster stuff gets done.

 

[Questdog]

I'm currently playing gigantic games at Monarch level (smaller games on Emperor).

My style of play is slow, methodical and secure. I don't try to rush to anything. I build my base and expand slowly, never expanding unless I'm sure I can defend what I'm grabbing ('cause I HATE to lose a city above all else).

Ancient Era, by researching all techs (no beelining), I was taking exactly 6 turns per tech, except for the few that are less expensive. And I was not in the science lead.

 

[Necratoid]

Try playing on nobel for a bit and see if the tech speed is better.... I'm now more certain your complaint is that the research bonus for higher skill levels is too high.

 

[Questdog]

Try playing on nobel for a bit and see if the tech speed is better.... I'm now more certain your complaint is that the research bonus for higher skill levels is too high.

Isn't it only the AI that gets the bonuses?

 

[Necratoid]

Concidering thatin custom game you can set the player level as well as the Ai's and have each AI at it own level... and adding in your own input about crazy research speed... I'd say no. No it doesn't... granted I could be wrong, but I think you need to check on that.

 

[Questdog]

Concidering thatin custom game you can set the player level as well as the Ai's and have each AI at it own level... and adding in your own input about crazy research speed... I'd say no. No it doesn't... granted I could be wrong, but I think you need to check on that.

I'm pretty sure that only the AI gets bonuses at higher levels. On Noble, your tech rate ought to be better just from the fact that happiness and health levels let you grow quicker.

And my own input about my "crazy research speed" is changing one variable from 800 to 2000 to slow research down. But the 6 turns a tech problem is WHY I turned the tech rate down (i.e. I made no "crazy changes" in the games where this was happening).

 

[Thunderbrd]

I have already been modifying the gamespeed file, so I'll retain that responsibility. But we need some consensus on how to modify further.

I'm going to get the TOTAL turns proportional later tonight, but we need to look at the increments and # of turns per increment. There is flexibility there on how to arrange those.

BTW.. Eternity is 50% slower than Snail, so I would suggest the next speed be 100% slower than Snail.

After that, we can look at the ratios better to determine if we keep the same, or do some kind of consistent increase.

Sounds right to me.

RE: all those hundreds of endgame turns - this issue can be summarized as, Galactic era. See... when the game was designed, there was a concept that the BC era and before would be traversed faster as progress was so slow that to make it feel proportionately correct to modern progress, the turn times would represent a lot more actual time. Then when we reach modern era, after a bit of a gradient in the effect, we start seeing turn times be roughly a month a piece.

Take that into the galactic era and we have a problem. To get to the year 3500 we take a HELL of a lot of month by month turns from the modern era to then.

Praetyre and I did determine that you could start lengthening the amount of time per turn again after the modern era passed and figured that could be a solution to the fact that there are SO many turns in total to a timed game. But I don't think we ever really got to doing that to my recollection...

Perhaps something to consider if you're reworking the structure of the game speed file Eldrin.


Oh, and about the production rate and research rate and slower games... That actually makes a lot of sense but would have to be a slightly faster production rate and growing in a very gradual and measurable increment on the research rate as we go into slower and slower game speeds. But yeah, I see the point. Consider too, that this means that research buildings get built faster and earlier and speed up research a lot too. That makes it tougher to keep the slower speeds measured to the same era on the calendar. So there would be an adjustment to consider there too...

So if the setting slower than normal is 50% slower, and thus takes 50% more game time to get to the same stage in real time, then we add only 40% to production costs and add 60% to research costs. This would be the necessary offset I would think.

 

[Koshling]

Sounds right to me.

RE: all those hundreds of endgame turns - this issue can be summarized as, Galactic era. See... when the game was designed, there was a concept that the BC era and before would be traversed faster as progress was so slow that to make it feel proportionately correct to modern progress, the turn times would represent a lot more actual time. Then when we reach modern era, after a bit of a gradient in the effect, we start seeing turn times be roughly a month a piece.

Take that into the galactic era and we have a problem. To get to the year 3500 we take a HELL of a lot of month by month turns from the modern era to then.

Praetyre and I did determine that you could start lengthening the amount of time per turn again after the modern era passed and figured that could be a solution to the fact that there are SO many turns in total to a timed game. But I don't think we ever really got to doing that to my recollection...

Perhaps something to consider if you're reworking the structure of the game speed file Eldrin.


Oh, and about the production rate and research rate and slower games... That actually makes a lot of sense but would have to be a slightly faster production rate and growing in a very gradual and measurable increment on the research rate as we go into slower and slower game speeds. But yeah, I see the point. Consider too, that this means that research buildings get built faster and earlier and speed up research a lot too. That makes it tougher to keep the slower speeds measured to the same era on the calendar. So there would be an adjustment to consider there too...

So if the setting slower than normal is 50% slower, and thus takes 50% more game time to get to the same stage in real time, then we add only 40% to production costs and add 60% to research costs. This would be the necessary offset I would think.

The singularity is near.

No need to change the turn times. Time after the mid 21st century doesn't exist.

 

[Necratoid]

So... I just tried a quick psuedo run through at diety for a 100 turns... Nope... that slowed down my rate of research if anything (or the flat land starting location did). Which means that your stupidly fast rate of research is still inexplcable.

I can only think some old setting of yours left over from some previous version is causing that... because I'm not getting a 6 turns a tech rate with a leaders.

 

[Questdog]

So... I just tried a quick psuedo run through at diety for a 100 turns... Nope... that slowed down my rate of research if anything (or the flat land starting location did). Which means that your stupidly fast rate of research is still inexplcable.

I can only think some old setting of yours left over from some previous version is causing that... because I'm not getting a 6 turns a tech rate with a leaders.

The 6 turns per tech is at the Ancient Era, usually much further than 100 turns....

 

[EldrinFal]

The singularity is near.

No need to change the turn times. Time after the mid 21st century doesn't exist.

I'm not quite sure what to make of this post, Koshling. Though I did notice you revealed yourself as a Vorlon. I wondered if "Kosh" was the same taken from B5

Sounds right to me.

RE: all those hundreds of endgame turns - this issue can be summarized as, Galactic era. See... when the game was designed, there was a concept that the BC era and before would be traversed faster as progress was so slow that to make it feel proportionately correct to modern progress, the turn times would represent a lot more actual time. Then when we reach modern era, after a bit of a gradient in the effect, we start seeing turn times be roughly a month a piece.

Take that into the galactic era and we have a problem. To get to the year 3500 we take a HELL of a lot of month by month turns from the modern era to then.

Praetyre and I did determine that you could start lengthening the amount of time per turn again after the modern era passed and figured that could be a solution to the fact that there are SO many turns in total to a timed game. But I don't think we ever really got to doing that to my recollection...

Perhaps something to consider if you're reworking the structure of the game speed file Eldrin.


Oh, and about the production rate and research rate and slower games... That actually makes a lot of sense but would have to be a slightly faster production rate and growing in a very gradual and measurable increment on the research rate as we go into slower and slower game speeds. But yeah, I see the point. Consider too, that this means that research buildings get built faster and earlier and speed up research a lot too. That makes it tougher to keep the slower speeds measured to the same era on the calendar. So there would be an adjustment to consider there too...

So if the setting slower than normal is 50% slower, and thus takes 50% more game time to get to the same stage in real time, then we add only 40% to production costs and add 60% to research costs. This would be the necessary offset I would think.

Is it important to have the same exact ending game YEAR for all speeds?

I think matching tech discoveries with years is going to be difficult at best considering the number of techs and buildings in C2C that have been added-- and are continuing to be added regularly. Thunderbrd, if you can get those spreadsheets going that you are working on, I think that would help quite a bit. And besides matching up years and techs, the Spreadsheets should help with balancing buildings, research, and units overall.

 

[Praetyre]

What the heck is a Vorlon?

On topic; how will this matching up of years and techs be done? I am currently working on doing something very similar for a "grand campaign" scenario I'm making, but I'm doing it through adjusting the actual costs of the techs so they fall within the "eras" I've set (Prehistoric lasting 1000, Ancient 500, Classical 2500, Medieval 900 and so on). The adjustments made to food and gold have made my job massively easier (though I'm wondering if setting my growth to the level it was in Snail rather than Eternity is correct, given that while Snail is 9900 turns to my 10,000, the amount of time it allocates to the Classical era is probably shorter.), but while I can easily readjust tech costs to my liking using WinMerge every time a new version is out, other mechanics might require a change in strategy.

I don't mind a change in strategy, but I would like at least to hear what the proposed methods are, so I can adapt and prepare for them.