hey justo, sorry that this may hav been asked but is there a way to speed up the turn speed, also whats this talk of making the scenario lik aoi, when coud this be expected?
hi Lord Dom
yes, there are some ways to speed the turns up some. and the primary one is to remove the 'show unit anim's' in the preferences screen. this does not compromise game play at all and it imo helps reduce the times some.
as for the TCW revision - i don't know when it'll be finished to be honest. i have the vietnam files on my plate right now and i want to finish them and then move onto the TCW ones. however, i was able to get a good deal of the R&D stuff out of the way over the last few months. the R&D (research and design) stuff is absolutely the most brutal aspect of putting a scenario like this together. so that is good news.
what to expect? well, the new version will differ some from the previous incarnations. first, there's a bigger map. i know turn times are an issue but hang with me on this. this larger map will enable for much, much more use of the oceans (ie subs), more production centers, and just an overall boost in gameplay due to more locations etc. also, this version will be restricted to the 1950s only (for now). thus a rough turn limit of 180 turns will be in effect. as a result, the unit lines will be more diverse (as depicted in some of those screenies from last month w/ the air units). there'll be more autoproducing wonders (mainly for subs and some capital ships like CVs). but most importantly, the context of the scenario will be altered some to mirror that of AoI.
the similarities w/ AoI will be the 'raw material' race. now, i can't transfer the exact model from AoI into TCW b/c of the alliance issues (locked alliances w/ the 'reverse capture the flag' [ie the raw materials] feature produce undesirable results). so, instead of having to ship the goods by sea, the TCW raw materials will be shipped over land to bypass the undesirable effects of the locked alliances.
for example - in AoI, one had to ship their RMs back from, say, Africa, to the mainland (where the VP is so that they can be cashed in for points). in the new TCW, these RMs will not have to travel overseas to end up at a VP b/c VPs will be placed on the map to accomodate land travel. as a result, RMs won't be getting dropped off onto an ally's land (ie the undesirable effects).
the RM outlets will be determined by the resources ont he map (which've been completely overhauled already). so the mountains in wyoming have uranium. Cheyenne can then build a Uranium Enrichment Plant since the resource is within its city radius. this building will then autoproduce a raw material-like unit every so many turns which would then be shipped back to the continental VP for points. another example would for the french city of Bordeaux. since Wines are w/in its city radius, it can build the Wine Industry building and spawn its product (ie an RM) every so many turns and then be sent to the VP city of Paris for shipping (ie VPs).
the key to all of this will lye in the economics of the game. this aspect is also receiving quite an overhaul. the point is to chip away at the huge gold reserves that accumulate during the course of the game. so we're going to test out a whole new scheme where we jack up the unit support costs (per govt type - and there's lots of new unique govt types in now too). units like armor and capital ships will cost plenty to operate. foot units though will not have support costs. however, w/ each return of an RM to a VP, a healthy sum of gold will be awarded (AoI grants 25 gold/return). the gold value will likely be much higher than that for AoI. we'll need to determine all of the finite details of this once testing has begun to have a more firm idea of where it'll be. if i were to guess, i'd say they'd be several hundred up to maybe 1000. i don't know for sure though...
so the name of the game for the new TCW version will be to accumulate resources, then build the appropriate city imp's and wonders to spawn the RMs to generate both VPs and scratch
all in an effort to fuel your war machine. so you want piles and piles of armor? you're gonna have to have a good enough economy to support it.
we'd also like to look at reformatting the small sized TCW map w/ some of the above. that project though is behind the others though. an MP version of the 50s biq will also be a priority at some point.
why are turn times in AoI faster in AoI compared to TCW? that is a good question actually
I_Batman asked me that a few times over the last year or so and honestly, i don't have a good answer. the TCW map is actually a smidge smaller than the one for AoI
and despite what cubsfan posted, there are actually far more units on the AoI map than TCW. the 2 things that struck me as a possibility are the espionage abilities in TCW (from the get-go unlike AoI). tech stealing is disabled in AoI and not in TCW. the locked alliances may also play a part but i can't say for certain.