Here goes, my first try for this so be gentle...
I'm someone who always plays Marathon speed games, on the largest possible maps, I were generally annoyed (and still am) about Civ5 never getting around to fixing the game speed scaling issues.
Since it's early days for Civ6 I thought I'd try and get in front of these and maybe we'll get them fixed in a timely manner.
Please post any correction or additional issues you've seen and I'll try and add them to the list!
Note: These observations are based on
Barbarians
Exploration experience
As a general rule I find that the current state of game speed scaling, or rather lack thereof, tends to make several key game aspects tougher for the player (barbarians, AI scaling, unit experience) on slower speeds and supercharged (harvesting resources, city projects, unit experience, tribal village rewards) for players on Quick and Online speeds.
I wouldn't argue this is quite as high priority as the AI issues and obvious bugs/exploits but it's a significant concern, and one that may go largely overlooked by players who only play on Standard speed. Or feel, correctly so, too powerful by players focusing on Quick and Online speed games.
I'm someone who always plays Marathon speed games, on the largest possible maps, I were generally annoyed (and still am) about Civ5 never getting around to fixing the game speed scaling issues.
Since it's early days for Civ6 I thought I'd try and get in front of these and maybe we'll get them fixed in a timely manner.
Please post any correction or additional issues you've seen and I'll try and add them to the list!
Note: These observations are based on
- Patch 1.0.0.26 (221715) / Patch 1.0.0.38 (235603)
- Marathon game speed, Standard for reference
- Prince difficulty level
- Huge map size.
- No game speed-related issues were mentioned in the official patch notes.
- So far I've been unable to confirm any undocumented game speed-related fixes in the game.
- Updates as I go along.
Barbarians
- Clearing a camp yields 45 gold, an odd number as the AI gets 50, on every game speed. (Not fixed as of 1.0.0.38)
- Camps and units spawn at the same rate regardless of game speed, which means you can end up struggling to build enough units to stop an early onslaught on Marathon while Quick and Online should be relatively painless.
- Yields the same rewards on every game speed. (Not fixed as of 1.0.0.38)
- Seems hardcoded for Quick or Online speed, as 20 faith doesn't even net you a Pantheon on Standard and 40 gold is rather pitiful overall.
- Does Tribal Village rewards that have a game turn minimum scale with game speed? Ie. does turn 50 rewards on Standard only trigger on turn 150 on Marathon? If so that shouldn't be the case, as map exploration isn't any slower on Marathon than it is on faster game speeds.
- City projects (Holy Site prayers etc.) takes three times as long to produce on Marathon but doesn't yield three times the amount of great person points. (Not fixed as of 1.0.0.38)
- Generates the same yields on every game speed. Clearing a forest in the late Renaissance era to remove 3 turns from my 93-turn Huey Teocalli build isn't particularly meaningful. (Not fixed as of 1.0.0.38)
- This also means that harvesting resources is likely to be stupidly powerful on Quick or Online speed.
- The Indulgence Vendor promotion (100 gold on first city conversion) doesn't scale with game speed.
- This one is more nefarious to judge but at least the early build times seem out of whack on Marathon.
- I've seen the AI sporting at least 2 Warriors, 1 Scout and 1 Settler with a population 2 capital around turn ~30-35 on Marathon. As a Scout takes ~20 turns to build with good production that just can't be right.
- The AI struggles to keep up on science and culture from the Medieval era and forward but units keep getting produced remarkably quickly.
- In general the AI getting frontloaded with units or bonuses early on is much worse at slower game speed, because the ability to settle a second city or improve tiles immediately is much stronger when others are 50-100 turns away from being able to do so.
- Non-gold commodities in trade deals with the AI need to be valued based on game speed. Ie. selling a spare luxury resource should get me three times as much gold and/or GPT on Marathon as on Standard because gold is worth a third as much. (Not fixed as of 1.0.0.38)
- Trade agreements last the same amount of turns on every game speed (30), which wasn't the case in Civ5 but I honestly think this is ideal and not in need of change.
- Units which provide additional great general/admiral points need to be investigated, do they scale based on game speed or not?
- Does slower game speeds require more accumulated religious pressure to convert citizens, as opposed to reducing actual (passive) pressure?
- Religious units needs to be investigated, they seem to convert fewer citizens on Marathon than on Standard when manually spreading. (~1 citizen per spread charge using a missionary, ie. converting a 5-pop city with no religious citizen requires 3 charges to get a majority conversion)
- Assuming the first point holds, ie. slower game speeds require more total pressure to convert citizens, and as the religious units don't scale their spread/combat power by game speed they might be proportionally stronger/weaker on faster/slower game speeds.
- As the cost of religious units, like all other units, scale with game speed their spread effect and combat pressure shouldn't be any stronger/weaker than it is at Standard speed.
- If Civ6, like Civ5, instead scales the actual passive pressure exerted by religious cities then religious units are likely working as intended while pressure probably isn't (notably, the Scripture belief didn't work well on slower game speeds in Civ5).
Exploration experience
- Finding a Natural Wonder or exploring a Tribal Village gives the same experience to Recon units regardless of game speed. (Not fixed as of 1.0.0.38)
- I'm not sure this should be changed however, see the next point..
- This actually does scale, as units require three times the amount of experience on Marathon to gain a level as they do on Standard.
- This probably shouldn't scale, as you're not going to be fighting more units, exploring more or doing more of anything that generate experience than you would on other game speeds.
- While the game lasts three times as long it's also three times as expensive to build units, ie. there won't be more of them on a Marathon game.
- Even with the Exploration policy in effect on Marathon you probably won't make level 3 with a Recon-class unit, ever, unless you have a single unit literally discovering every natural wonder and a ton of Tribal Villages on it's own.
- The only way to actually get experienced troops on Marathon is to farm 0-health cities with Ranged and Bombard units for experience, which is clearly an exploit/bug in the first place.
- Promotion notifications in the floating combat text, as opposed to the right-hand side notification bar, seem to (intermittently at least, it's hard to see) trigger at the threshold for Standard speed games, meaning i see those pop up on combat/exploration while I'm a third of the way to an actual promotion.
As a general rule I find that the current state of game speed scaling, or rather lack thereof, tends to make several key game aspects tougher for the player (barbarians, AI scaling, unit experience) on slower speeds and supercharged (harvesting resources, city projects, unit experience, tribal village rewards) for players on Quick and Online speeds.
I wouldn't argue this is quite as high priority as the AI issues and obvious bugs/exploits but it's a significant concern, and one that may go largely overlooked by players who only play on Standard speed. Or feel, correctly so, too powerful by players focusing on Quick and Online speed games.
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