I halved all production costs

[Leyrann]

And I love it! I changed game speed from normal to epic, and now there is just much more to do in each era; normally, if you slow down game speed to, say, marathon, you get to spend three times as much time in an era, but you also have to spend three times as many turns actually building stuff. This way, I'm looking at 50% extra time in every era while all production costs are a quarter less than what I'm used to.

I can very much recommend this to everyone, it just allows for much more 'game' to happen. I actually feel really involved in the game, which normally takes until it's in the industrial era at least, but I'm only barely in the medieval era instead.

 

[stinkubus]

How was this done and can it easily be reversed?

 

[Piruparka]

You could just use mods like "8 ages of pace".

 

[Art Morte]

Don't you run out of things to build, especially towards later stages?
Also, there will be more / better opportunities to build units, but can the AI take advantage of this?

 

[Leyrann]

How was this done and can it easily be reversed?

I simply changed the production costs mentioned in the Buildings.xml, Districts.xml, Projects.xml and Units.xml. Was about 30 minutes work. Of course, I did back up the files first, so I can just replace them with the old files to change it back. I did forget the unique units and buildings from DLC civs though, as they are in seperate folders, so now I'm going to see if changing it halfway through a game works.

Oh, and as for the projects, I actually didn't change most of those production times, only the nuke and spaceship projects, as most projects are meant primarily as endgame production sink where you don't want to be asked "what should I build now?" every few turns.

You could just use mods like "8 ages of pace".

I already do, but I prefer the game time associated with epic speed (up to 750 turns for a full game), while if I did that before I just felt like the production times were too high, which is what made me play on normal game speed.

Still got 8 Ages of Pace active, by the way, though I did remove the better roads file that I don't like.

Don't you run out of things to build, especially towards later stages?
Also, there will be more / better opportunities to build units, but can the AI take advantage of this?

Not sure yet, I'm only in medieval era. There's been a few short moments where I "didn't have anything to build" but I got a very militaristic Australia just north of me, so then I just built a few units.

As for the AI, I'm pretty sure that yes, they indeed build more units. Problem there, for me, is that I don't normally watch the AI very closely so I don't know what to compare to. Maybe I should just go for a war and see how much opposition I get.

 

[PYITE]

It's already a mod

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=894246552&searchtext=Production+

 

[Leyrann]

It's already a mod

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=894246552&searchtext=Production+

Didn't even know that lol. I only look at civfanatics.

 

[DizzKneeLand33]

@Leyrann, that's one of my things in my mod pre-summer, and it was great! I'm now just playing with one small adjustment (9 religions for 13 civs) to see how the game plays, but I'll probably revert back to this type of play in the future.

My take was a little different, it lengthened the civics and tech pace while keeping production the same. Yours seems like everything would be twice the pace of that, which may actually be better.

[OFF TOPIC: As for the 9 religions instead of the 6 by default on a large map, it makes the game *much* more interesting, and allows for players to get religion on high levels at the pace that the player chooses. After the 6th prophet is chosen (epic speed) the prophet cost goes from 180 to 360 as well, so there is a gap between religion 6 and the 7-9 ones, so there is a price for inefficiency. 9 is the max the game currently allows without a mod to add in beliefs (did that one too).]

 

[bbbt]

I think this is one of the many design 'tensions' in the game. Civ 6 is more of a 'race and optimize your path for victory' design - i.e. there's a lot of beelines in the tech tree, production costs are expensive to force you weigh your options and choose carefully what to build to achieve your goal, etc.

Unfortunately, it's basically the opposite of a more immersive, empire-building approach that a number of players (including myself), tend to lean towards. I.e. with lower production costs, making you complete most of the techs of one era before going to the next etc.

But luckily, it's very modable in those respects!

 

[Takfloyd]

It's better to slow down tech advancement than speed up production. That way you won't be in the modern age in 500 CE every game, and you can play on Standard without things going too fast or too slow.

There are already several mods that do this in a balanced way, increasing science costs gradually through the eras and increasing Great People costs to match so they aren't all gone early in the game.

 

[Leyrann]

@Leyrann, that's one of my things in my mod pre-summer, and it was great! I'm now just playing with one small adjustment (9 religions for 13 civs) to see how the game plays, but I'll probably revert back to this type of play in the future.

My take was a little different, it lengthened the civics and tech pace while keeping production the same. Yours seems like everything would be twice the pace of that, which may actually be better.

[OFF TOPIC: As for the 9 religions instead of the 6 by default on a large map, it makes the game *much* more interesting, and allows for players to get religion on high levels at the pace that the player chooses. After the 6th prophet is chosen (epic speed) the prophet cost goes from 180 to 360 as well, so there is a gap between religion 6 and the 7-9 ones, so there is a price for inefficiency. 9 is the max the game currently allows without a mod to add in beliefs (did that one too).]

I actually use both at the same time; 8 Ages of Pace slows down techs and civics so that the turns to research something tends to stay more or less the same (except of course if you're focusing on science or culture... or get suzerainity of Nan Madol as Indonesia), and the lower production costs then allow for more things to be produced in every city in every era. So eras last longer (to the length that, in my opinion, should be standard, as the base game just goes too fast in the later stages) and then production costs are lower so that era's actually matter. I did, by the way, actually slow down the game time I'm playing on from normal to epic, as I prefer my game length closer to 750 than 500 turns, and the only thing that kept me from doing so was the production costs.

Funnily, I've actually already done the same thing with religion, though I'm playing on a YnAMP enormous map (16 civs). Apparently our thoughts align.

 

[Kyro]

I increase tech/culture costs by up to 3 times and push back era civics/techs in games to lengthen game duration...it sort of achieves the same effect you do.

If you half production values you'll have to more than double Tech/Culture costs if you want to maintain the pace of the game because the eased production results in two times as many cities and districts in the same period of time and tech buildings are out way faster than they were designed for.

 

[Leyrann]

I increase tech/culture costs by up to 3 times and push back era civics/techs in games to lengthen game duration...it sort of achieves the same effect you do.

If you half production values you'll have to more than double Tech/Culture costs if you want to maintain the pace of the game because the eased production results in two times as many cities and districts in the same period of time and tech buildings are out way faster than they were designed for.

What do you mean by "push back era civics/techs"?

As for the increased tech and culture costs, I have that as well, and I might even increase that a little bit more from classical era on to balance it out, but my main goal was to have more turns in every era without needing as much longer to actually build appropriate units and buildings for that era. I can confirm that mostly early expansion indeed goes a lot faster than it did. It does seem, however, to also make conquests harder, as the AI tends to have a LOT more units. Haven't fought a war yet, but I'm not far away from one, which I'll probably be fighting in medieval era, so I guess I'll see how well it goes.

 

[Kyro]

What do you mean by "push back era civics/techs"?

As for the increased tech and culture costs, I have that as well, and I might even increase that a little bit more from classical era on to balance it out, but my main goal was to have more turns in every era without needing as much longer to actually build appropriate units and buildings for that era. I can confirm that mostly early expansion indeed goes a lot faster than it did. It does seem, however, to also make conquests harder, as the AI tends to have a LOT more units. Haven't fought a war yet, but I'm not far away from one, which I'll probably be fighting in medieval era, so I guess I'll see how well it goes.

Oh I make the first tier of classical era techs(and civics) ancient, first tier of medieval era techs classical etc. and I make advancing to the next era much more expensive. The main reason why I do that besides to increase the number of turns per era is that it is the only feasible workaround the skipping of great people because of eras that really makes them rather non-existent earlier on.

I've tried triple tech costs on online pacing before...the AI does get much harder to defeat in war because they get 2x more units from the decreased production costs in relation to turn frequency and I'm guessing it did something to their unit generation tendencies because they do keep replacing lost units unlike normal games. Also the increased tech/cvic costs is only really felt after the renaissance era for some reason which I suspect is due to the extra base science/culture from new cities becoming less powerful against high costs as the game progresses.