Number of turns for each speed

[TheMeInTeam]

The computer gaming world. If you can't place that expression in it's proper context, then there's not much I can do for you. Whenever I read that some part of a game is broken, it almost always implies that it doesn't not work at all. There's a whole lexicon of terms for computer problems that obviously you need to learn about. In common usage within the context of computer games, broken means unplayable. Period. And I'm not going to argue it anymore, it's turning out to be a collossal waste of time. You obviously have a very narrow opinion about constitutes broken and you're not willing to consider any other definition but your own.

Actually that burden falls to you, who challenged my use of it in the first place. This isn't english class and even those who don't speak it as a 1st language likely don't want it to be. Generally people don't bother correcting usage/spelling/etc. to begin with (I'm not sure it's even within good forum etiquette to be honest), certainly not when a word is used correctly by at least ONE definition of it. You're basically getting defensive because I knocked a game speed and using semantics as the basis for complaining about it. Apparently, your definition of broken is used and understood in the gaming community (as mentioned by friend here), but it is 100% without a doubt not the ONLY one.

Clearly whatever definition you use is not the sole one either, but you're the one challenging the usage, not I, in case you forgot. It's hard to pin the "narrow minded" tag on me, when the one attempting to force an unintended definition was somebody else...who is being rather hypocritical about the whole thing really.

 

[grommit5]

Don't matter if its BROKEN or DIFFERENT. It's still a lot of players favorite speed, including me. I think it tends to make the game easier but sice I'm doing this for fun, easier can be a good thing. If I have to work at it too hard I may as well just stay at work and get paid for it.

 

[Deckhand]

Could someone please answer this question or provide a link to a nice summary?
don't ask us to interpret XML. I'm sure this has been answered before on these forums. Anyone know where that answer is?

I'd ... The game seems to keep switching between a turn every 10 years, 5 years, and 1 year at later stages, but I can't really tell when exactly it switches these numbers and thus the exact number of turns remains a mystery to me.

How any turns per game? per speed?
How many years (or months) does a turn represent and what year does it switch? per speed?

thanks for the help!

Spoiler :

this thread is broken

 

[Deckhand]

We should NOT be telling the newbs that the AP religious win is BROKEN. We should instead just tell them that it is DIFFERENT.

Despite the sarcasm, I agree with your statment.
The AP win is the only victory condition that I have not encountered (either me or the AI) in my games.

I have tried for the AP cheese win in three games and just missed it in various ways (e.g. AI creates vassal colony and new civ doesn't have the religion; only city of a civ with the AP religion gets captured by another AI; 10 votes short; etc)
My favorite personal expression is "it's easy when you know how". For the newb, Warlord is hard and AP religious wins are not a piece of cake.

 

[PieceOfMind]

Could someone please answer this question or provide a link to a nice summary?
don't ask us to interpret XML. I'm sure this has been answered before on these forums. Anyone know where that answer is?

How any turns per game? per speed?
How many years (or months) does a turn represent and what year does it switch? per speed?

thanks for the help!

Spoiler :

this thread is broken

It's all in the XML but interpreting it is not the easiest thing to do if you're not already very familiar with the game.

First of all, the easiest way to check how many turns there are left in a game is to go to the victory conditions screen and under Time victory it tells you how many turns are left.

Second, if you want to know exactly how many turns are done at each year/turn rate, you can refer to the XML.

For example, under normal speed the first entry might be (I'm making these up because I don't have access to the game right now)..

480 months/turn (translates as 40 years per turn)
50 turns

180 months/turn (25 years per turn)
40 turns

120 months/turn (10 years per turn)
100 turns

60 months/turn (5 years per turn)
100 turns

This would tell you that the first 50 turns mean 40 years go by each turn. Do the maths and you can work out that will take you from 4000BC to the date 2000BC. The years/turn then changes to 25 so 1975BC, 1950BC, ... all the way to 1000BC.
Then 960BC, 920BC, all the way to 1AD (or 0AD, which interestingly the programmers felt uncomfortable about displaying, instead opting for 1AD ). And so on...

I forget the exact name of the XML file but it's something like GameSpeedInfo.xml.

If you're good with a program like MS Excel, you should be able to set up most of the above calculations automatically, requiring only a few input parameters for each speed which are displayed in the XML file.

 

[Orzio]

Do nukes stack with speed or is 2 nukes still enouth to take out an entire army on marathon?

 

[PieceOfMind]

The function of nukes has nothing to do with game speed. Nuke explosions work to injure combat units (if it didn't already kill them) by rolling a random number between two numbers A and B. I forget the exact numbers but it might be something like a random HP damage between 45 and 80. If that's the case, it wouldn't be hard to work out that most units on average will die after two nuke hits. The only ones that survive two hits will be severely crippled, and I don't think anything could survive 3 nukes.

 

[Willem]

Actually that burden falls to you, who challenged my use of it in the first place.

Fine. Just to clarify my position, in gaming terms broken = unplayable/unusable. Not working as it should = bugged. Marathon is not broken, it is bugged. But even that definition is suspect IMO. As far as I'm concerned it plays just fine as it is. There's no rule that states everything has to play out exactly like it does on Normal. Obviously Firaxis was trying for something different or they would have made unit production take 3x as long, just like everything else. I play nothing but Marathon, I won't even consider any other speed, and I have no problems getting enjoyable and challenging games to play. Just because the hardcore purists don't agree with how it works doesn't make it a broken speed.

 

[DrakenKin]

From my experience with other games, if Marathon gives the player an unintended advantage (apparently everyone agrees to say that it does not scale properly), then it qualifies as broken. "broken" in gaming generally means unbalanced... Just like I would speak of a unit in warcraft or warhammer and say it is broken in the sens that the developers did not balance it properly and it ended up weaker or more powerful than it should, or simply did something unexpected.

Another argument is that when you select a difficulty level, you are aware that you are increasing or decreasing the challenge in the game. Playing on Marathon should simply make the game longer as advertised; and I think we can all agree that a decrease in difficulty is a unwanted side effect. Unwanted because the game does not clearly state that the mode is easier, just longer, and the majority of players are not aware of that fact when they first select Marathon... I know I wasn't before reading this topic. So we could call Mara broken even by the standard, non-gaming sens of the word.

But honestly, broken or not, who cares about terminology? It would be more interesting to discuss how Marathon is different from the other modes so everyone can decide objectively if they want to play it or not. And if they do, they would also know how to adapt their gameplay to those differences.

 

[conception]

Marathon is my favorite game speed. Playing the game any other way makes things go much too quickly once it gets into the meat of the game (renaissance, early modern era).

 

[Willem]

Playing on Marathon should simply make the game longer as advertised;

Who says? Is there some government law that states that all game speeds have to play out exactly the same way? Why shouldn't Marathon be somewhat different? Frankly if everything scaled equally, it would probably end up being quite boring. Imagine 9-15 turns of Anarchy everytime you made a civic change, where all you can do is click Enter over and over again. I think whatever people are calling bugs were actually intended for that speed. One of the mandates of Civ 4 was to remove some of the features of the game that were "unfun". Shortening things like Anarchy in that speed would certainly fall under that category.

 

[DrakenKin]

Because we are not talking about scaling anarchy here, as you say we are talking about something completely different. When I want to scale difficulty, there is a control for it. When I want to scale map size, there is a control for it. And when I want to scale game length or number of turns there is the speed setting.

Just imagine how confusing it would be if you tweak the difficulty and you end up with more water or some random other modification. Of cource... if you read a lot about the game and visit forums like this one, you will eventually learn about all these random modifications. But for your average player, it would just be confusing and counter intuitive. You might like it, but that's not the point... it is still a flaw, not a feature.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

The function of nukes has nothing to do with game speed. Nuke explosions work to injure combat units (if it didn't already kill them) by rolling a random number between two numbers A and B. I forget the exact numbers but it might be something like a random HP damage between 45 and 80. If that's the case, it wouldn't be hard to work out that most units on average will die after two nuke hits. The only ones that survive two hits will be severely crippled, and I don't think anything could survive 3 nukes.

Outside of cities it's true but don't forget that IN cities there is an improvement to reduce nuke damage and that is sufficient (assuming it isn't destroyed by the first nuke) to allow some redlined units to survive a triple-nuking.

 

[Orzio]

The function of nukes has nothing to do with game speed. Nuke explosions work to injure combat units (if it didn't already kill them) by rolling a random number between two numbers A and B. I forget the exact numbers but it might be something like a random HP damage between 45 and 80. If that's the case, it wouldn't be hard to work out that most units on average will die after two nuke hits. The only ones that survive two hits will be severely crippled, and I don't think anything could survive 3 nukes.

So basicly nuke the enemy sod with 3-4 nukes than you done and go in and clear the rest on marathon

 

[bestsss]

Nukes are totally irrelevant for marathon, the stronger part is the beginning not the end.

 

[obsolete]

From my observations, the shelter is always the last building to go.

 

[Orzio]

Nukes are totally irrelevant for marathon, the stronger part is the beginning not the end.

Destroy there sod with 3 nukes and they wont have time to build up any sort of defense before they are killed.

 

[Fleme]

Looks like this one strayed quite a bit from the original topic/question which obviously was answered but regardless of that, I'll toss in my 2 cents.

While I'm used to, and trust me, amused by obsolete here tooting his horn on how anything but normal speed is a "speed cheat" and lately seen even TMIT 'resort (shame on you, you're too nice to be judgemental) to this, I got to disagree.

I personally have not finished a single game of BtS that was in any other speed than Marathon. The first time I got the chance to play long games and tinker with detail to the extent that I wish. I had the chance to get a feel of each era rather than storming through them like I'd imagine you would in normal since I sometimes feel like I skip a whole era by a bulb heavy path down Philo->Edu->Lib and as such wouldn't even dream of playing faster games.

I won't argue on personal preference as I have the utmost respect for anyone who plays the game the way they wish to play it but as stated, I feel the need to mention that while Marathon is, as proven by the code itself, flawed in terms of scaling, it's still a feature of the game that shipped with it. So, with Normal being the default setting it obviously means that the slower speed is the broken one? People always resort to the ultimate claim that warfare is easier on Marathon and be that as it may, I can't help but wonder how different would the normal speed wargames be if you couldn't get up to 5 techs when suing for peace. Heck, I never get a tech unless it's something I'm one turn from finishing or something trivial like hunting - and that's talking late in the game.

So, this is how I feel about it. It's my game speed and having never played any other - it's not broken for me.

 

[PieceOfMind]

Outside of cities it's true but don't forget that IN cities there is an improvement to reduce nuke damage and that is sufficient (assuming it isn't destroyed by the first nuke) to allow some redlined units to survive a triple-nuking.

Good point. I forget exactly how the bomb shelter reduces the damage. By the way, I've a sneaky feeling the bomb shelter is actually immune to nukes so it can't be destroyed in that way.

 

[BibiTref]

I'm with TMIT on the gamer's usage of "broken," although I still don't agree it applies to marathon as he explains it. "Flawed" seems a better word, but that's to be expected from Firaxis.