Game pace; turns to relative years

[inthesomeday]

Does anybody know a rough comparison between the game paces' turn timings and what years they occur at? I play almost exclusively on quick speed and I'm not sure about what turns mean what years in other game speeds, I know my quick speed somewhat well though. I've just been wondering because most people in the forum discuss things in relation to standard speed, and I'm somewhat out of the loop here because quick speed games are 2/3 as long.

 

[Browd]

It always throws the forums for a loop when posters talk in terms of years ("it's 1789 and I just ...."), since everyone here tends to calibrate to turn count (I, for one, couldn't tell you what turn corresponds to the year 1789 -- turn 250 maybe? I'm probably off by 50 turns!).

For quick vs. standard, your 2/3 is about right (most, but not all, quick vs. standard conversions in the game use a 2/3 yardstick, just as epic tends to use 1.5x standard and marathon tends to use 3x standard). So, when poster playing standard talks about something being done by, e.g., turn 100, think turn 65-70 at quick. Conversely, if you think you should be doing something by turn 100 on quick, turn 150 on standard is a decent approximation.

 

[inthesomeday]

Alright thanks, I'll just think of it by the 2/3 metric. I usually think in terms of turn timings anyway, IE NC by turn 60 on tall and 75 on wide, etc etc, so I suppose the easiest way to go about conversions would be with 2/3 calculations.

 

[Thurman Merman]

It always throws the forums for a loop when posters talk in terms of years ("it's 1789 and I just ...."), since everyone here tends to calibrate to turn count (I, for one, couldn't tell you what turn corresponds to the year 1789 -- turn 250 maybe? I'm probably off by 50 turns!).

That's so weird to me. My thought would be that whether your in Marathon or Quick, everyone knows about where 1789 is. But if you just say turn 200, then you have to make an educated guess about the game speed based on other info. But good to know I'm in the minority - I'll remember that for turn/time posts in the future.

 

[Browd]

The unspoken "default" for discussion on the forum is turn count and standard speed (i.e., users should specify quick, epic or marathon if they are playing those games). One exception is the multiplayer forum, where I suspect the "default" may be quick.

Another unspoken default is that you are playing the BNW expansion (if you are playing G&K or the vanilla game you really should say that up front, otherwise everyone will get confused or give out confusing advice).

The last one I can think of is modded vs. unmodded game -- with the wealth of mods out there, if you are seeking advice about a strategy or a game mechanic or for help debugging a problem, it is critical that you state whether you are playing with mods and, if so, what mods. Sometimes it's obvious that you are playing a mod ("how come my [insert name of unique unit that is not in the unmodded game] can't do [action X]"), and responders can adjust how they respond (or not respond at all, if they aren't familiar with that mod).

But in most cases, not mentioning that you are playing with mods just breeds confusion and bad advice. I know that when someone reports a glitch in their game or the game's UI, my first question is always "are you playing with any mods?" (followed by "have you validated your game files through Steam?").

 

[claudiupb]

It is really impossible to make an accurate conversion. You can say if something is done by Turn X on standard speed, then on quick it should be done by 2/3 *X, but this isn't really the case since not all things scale properly with speed.

The most obvious one is the gold purchases, for example on marathon a settler costs 1160 Gold and on standard it is 500. And the 3/1 scale is not followed for any gold purchase not just settlers, making gold very valuable on slower speeds. This is the same with Epic speed (where the settler costs 680) and on Quick speed (where it costs 370 gold).

The gold purchasing does not scale with the speed (2/3, 1/1, 3/2 and 3/1 ratios are clearly not valid) making gold purchases more valuable as the game is slower. In fact I think everything involving gold has this odd scaling, even CS gifts.

I would expect Quick Speed turn milestones to be slightly above the 2/3 * X formula just because of this disadvantage. If other improper scaling is present there is even more inaccuracy in this formula.

 

[Browd]

All that is accurate. That's why I used words like "most, but not all" and "tends" when describing the game speed conversion formulas ("most, but not all, quick vs. standard conversions in the game use a 2/3 yardstick, just as epic tends to use 1.5x standard and marathon tends to use 3x standard").

The fact is, different game speeds make for different games -- any effort to equate turn times is, at best, a rough approximation.

 

[fyar]

I don't even think the years scale the same with different game speeds, if my memory serves me correctly. (Someone could maybe fact-check this.) What I mean is, let's say for the sake of argument that the year 1789 is turn 250 on standard speed. Then on Marathon, you would expect 1789 to be turn 750. But instead, I think they use different formulas, so maybe on Marathon it's, say, turn 762 or something.

Claudiupb mentioned gold purchases as something that does not fully scale with game-speed, so in slow game speeds I tend to put more emphasis on economy. But two other things that scale even more poorly with game speed are great musician concert tours and warfare.
-The first is a bug I'm pretty sure, because on marathon, concert tours should give 3 times as much tourism as on standard speed, but instead they give 3x3=9 times as much.
-The latter is not a bug at all, just a simple fact that it takes 3x as long to build an army but it does not take 3x as long to destroy it. So it's much easier to exploit a human's tactical advantages over the AI in warfare. I wouldn't be surprised if some people win domination victories by turn 200 or so on marathon, which should be like turn 67 on standard speed but in reality is not that much harder than a turn 200 standard domination victory.