Road building / ship speed on gigantic maps

[Derek Brown]

Is it possible / easy to associate a map size variable into road building time? If so, I have a recommendation to make road building a little faster for larger maps. I don't mean as high as double but maybe +50% from smallest to largest size. (As a side suggestion, can it have two auto road buttons... the one for plastered country roads which it builds but also one for basic roads). Also, with the largest 2 map sizes, can ship speed be increased by 1? Playing epic / marathon speed does help but a little more ship speed would also be nice. I'd say that since more squares are used to represent the same area, the road building and ship speed increases would be reasonable.

What that will do is help encourage more expansive colonies with cities in strategic areas rather than building a orderly (and boring) grid of cities. Example - right now I'm playing a revolutionary, marathon, gigantic realistic map. I've got my main territory stretching from real life Rio to Uruguay. However I'm also setting up silver & gold mining towns in the Falkland Islands and a gem mining camp on Newfoundland. More speed would be nice to link these sub-colonies

 

[Nightinggale]

Is it possible / easy to associate a map size variable into road building time?

The short answer is no. Build time is set in xml and is completely unrelated to map size.

The long answer is that yes it's technically possible. We can do almost anything given enough effort. The question is however if it's worth the time and if we want it. My view on big map sizes is that you should have more colonies. More colonies means more units. More units means more pioneers. In other words rather than having faster pioneers on large maps, you should have more pioneers.

 

[Derek Brown]

Fully understood, thanks for taking a look

 

[raystuttgart]

@Derek Brown

Balancing is always a matter of personal taste.

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Considering Map Size Gigantic:

The balancing of the game has been made explicitly for Gigantic Maps.
Because Gigantic Maps is what most players play and the only Map size the originial creators of RaR (like Schmiddie and me) play.

Meaning it is almost exactly as we wanted it to. (Otherwise it would had been changed years ago.)
We wanted to have Gigantic Maps specificallly so gameplay (e.g. exploration and expansion) feels a little bit slower and more difficult.

Distance really matters if you play Gigantic Maps. And again, that is what we wanted.
(E.g. for Wars or for Transportation.)

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Generally considering Map Sizes:

The reasons why different Map sizes exist is exactly that they should allow a different feeling of gameplay.
So it is good that movement and distances on them feel different - not something we need to change.

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The solution to this: peronal ModMods

I am not a big fan of coding logic and game options to fulfill 100 different personal tastes considering balancing.
It will simply unnecessarily impact maintenance effort, performance and stability too much.

Please do not expect us to write code for fulfilling personal taste considering balancing only.
It is really a waste of time if all necessary XML balancing modifiers already exist.

No single mod can properly fulfill all personal tastes.
But again, everybody is free to create his own personal modmod.

 

[Vaeringjar]

Because Gigantic Maps is what most players play and the only Map size the originial creators of RaR (like Schmiddie and me) play

How many settlements do you create? There's so much space you can easily get over a hundred on that map size 0.o
And what speed do you guys play at?
Plus, I assumed gigantic would be MAF-prone?

(sry for the off-topic)

 

[raystuttgart]

How many settlements do you create?

30+ at least on Gigantic Maps.
Sometimes 50+ when I am in a mood to "max my empire".

And what speed do you guys play at?

Gamespeed "Normal".
Never play "Marathon" myself, but I know there are players that like to do so.

Plus, I assumed gigantic would be MAF-prone?

With today's hardware? No reason to worry.
The difference in turn times is the only thing you might notice.

 

[Nightinggale]

Plus, I assumed gigantic would be MAF-prone?

With today's hardware? No reason to worry.
The difference in turn times is the only thing you might notice.

Actually we still have only 32 bit address space meaning we can run out of memory even on modern systems. However you can increase the memory limit from 2 GB to 3.5 GB.

 

[Hrvoje193]

30+ at least on Gigantic Maps.
Sometimes 50+ when I am in a mood to "max my empire".


Gamespeed "Normal".
Never play "Marathon" myself, but I know there are players that like to do so.
.

Hi Ray,

Do you have issues in late game with saving on gigantic maps?I remember having problems saving RaR, and here is old thread:
New savegame format

 

[raystuttgart]

@Hrvoje193
I was not involved in anything added in the Release Candidate 2.8.2.0 (internally called "Big Merge") after "2.8.1 Challenge".
All the stuff I implemented is still in branch "Large Rivers" (based on Challenge) and is currently neither merged nor published.

About issue with Savegames in Late Game on Gigantic Maps:
No, I did not have any issues with Savegames but I have not played a longer game with WTP for quite a while.
Since beginning of the year I had taken a complete break from Civ4Col modding and WTP. (Due to motivation, private life and work.)

About the "New Savegame Format":
It was not implemented yet in branch "Challenge" and is not implemented in "Large Rivers".
I can not tell you anything about it. The team member that implemented it and knows it is @Nightinggale

 

[Guynemer]

my god how on earth do you settle 30+ cities in a normal speed game, you absolute madman

 

[historix69]

Is it possible / easy to associate a map size variable into road building time? If so, I have a recommendation to make road building a little faster for larger maps. I don't mean as high as double but maybe +50% from smallest to largest size. (As a side suggestion, can it have two auto road buttons... the one for plastered country roads which it builds but also one for basic roads). Also, with the largest 2 map sizes, can ship speed be increased by 1? Playing epic / marathon speed does help but a little more ship speed would also be nice. I'd say that since more squares are used to represent the same area, the road building and ship speed increases would be reasonable.

What that will do is help encourage more expansive colonies with cities in strategic areas rather than building a orderly (and boring) grid of cities. Example - right now I'm playing a revolutionary, marathon, gigantic realistic map. I've got my main territory stretching from real life Rio to Uruguay. However I'm also setting up silver & gold mining towns in the Falkland Islands and a gem mining camp on Newfoundland. More speed would be nice to link these sub-colonies

You actually can assign stacks of (hardy) pioneers to the same tile. If the stack is big enough, they can finish a road project in one turn even on marathon speed. A stack of 8 hardy pioneers should be able to place a normal road in jungle environment per turn.