Modifyin Game Speed

[Zerrigan]

Hey everyone. I was reading through some tutorials and guides on how to mod Civ5's game speed (years per turn) and I can't quite figure it out. Basically, I want the game to last longer before 2050, but have the building/producting/etc speed of epic.

I go to CIV5GameSpeeds.XML and I change the value of Victory Delay percent, but it doesn't seem to change anything? I started an epic game before I modded the file and after 1 turn 25 years passed. I exited the game, changed the value (epic from 150 to 200) and restarted the game and ended a turn, but 25 years still passed.

Further in the XML file are a bunch of figures for months and turns, but there seems to be 8 categories for each speed and I think these are the values I need to change but I am wondering if it will affect the game if I fudge these numbers? For example the first set of values for epic is <GameSpeedType>GAMESPEED_EPIC</GameSpeedType> <MonthIncrement>300</MonthIncrement> <TurnsPerIncrement>140</TurnsPerIncrement> . Does this mean that for for 140 turns, each turn passes 300months/25 years, altogether 3500 years? If I changed it to 240 months and 175 turns will it work out just fine? While on the topic, could I actually just keep the values the same but increase the turns therefore having the game end in (hypothetically) 2150? Help would be appreciated

 

[Spatzimaus]

For example the first set of values for epic is <GameSpeedType>GAMESPEED_EPIC</GameSpeedType> <MonthIncrement>300</MonthIncrement> <TurnsPerIncrement>140</TurnsPerIncrement> . Does this mean that for for 140 turns, each turn passes 300months/25 years, altogether 3500 years?

Yes. That's exactly what it means. For each game speed, the appropriate entries are read in order; it does 140 turns at 300 months per turn, then the next X turns at Y per turn, and so on until it hits the end of the list. If you sum up the number of turns for each game speed, you'd get 350, 500, 750, and 1500; this is how many turns the game will run before it hits a Time victory.

If I changed it to 240 months and 175 turns will it work out just fine?

Not exactly. I mean it WOULD work, in that you'd hit 500 BC at the end of those 175 turns, instead of on turn 140. But this'd have several other effects:
1> The Time victory would be delayed by 35 turns.
2> Any late-era starts would be screwed up.

#2 requires more explanation. Let's say you decide to start a game in the Industrial Era, which is VERY common when playing mods that add future content to the end of the tech tree (like my own Ascension mod). Inside the Eras table, there's a variable "StartPercent" that determines your starting turn, which for the Industrial is set to 50. That means that if the game is normally 500 turns long on Standard, it'd start me on turn 250 (50% of the maximum) if I chose an Industrial start. But if you changed the gamespeed file to where you've added 20 extra turns in the first block, and don't change anything else, then that max of 500 becomes 520, and an Industrial start would now start me on turn 260 instead of 250.

If this sounds ridiculously petty, it's because this entire topic is dealing with an almost purely cosmetic variable. Internally the game uses turn number for just about everything; the gamespeeds matter in terms of their multipliers for research speed, building speed, etc., but the whole turn-to-year conversion is completely cosmetic and has no actual impact on anything beyond the Time victory (which almost never triggers).

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Now, if you ever looked at my own mod, you'd see that I've heavily modified the gamespeed settings, because quite a few of my balance changes are designed to slow down research and such, and then I add a whole bunch of future content to the end of the tree. So for my mod, Standard speed lasts 1000 turns instead of 500; it now takes about 700-750 turns to reach the end of the old content, and the new content adds a few hundred more turns to the end. I did a similar scaling for other speeds.
What I found, in the process of doing this, is that it's easier to wipe those existing year-per-turn entries and just rebuild the whole thing from scratch. Especially if you're going to try changing the game's balance to make certain parts last longer than before, but don't want the pacing to be altered for certain other parts.

 

[Zerrigan]

Thanks for the reply! I basically don't want a time victory and I've read that unchecking time victory doesn't take the 2050 limit off. If it does, there really isn't a point to messing with the xml, am I correct?

So 1. Does unchecking time victory actually mean the game will go until 5933 if no one wins through some other condition such as culture?

2. Assuming I don't use mods and start at the beginning (4000 BC isn't it?) and we use the method I was talking about, this will actually accomplish what I am wanting, which is basically a game that has a turn limit between epic and marathon, but has the build/growth/etc speed of epic?

If 1 is true, then I basically wasted your time. If it isn't and 2 is correct, you have done me a great service!