Time Lag

[mathball31]

The first Civ game I bought was Civ5 after hearing about how awesome the franchise is. I love the game and recently bought the complete edition (steam sales ftw) which only increased my enjoyment of the game. Apart from the actual gameplay, I also enjoyed seeing how my history classes paralleled the history and advancements of the different civilizations throughout the game. As I learned more about world history, I began to realize some fairly major problems in the realism of the games. This thread is an effort to both fix these problems, as well as give a new twist to 4X gameplay. As a side bonus, it would give a solution to the ICS problem that so many people complain about.

Time Lag

The concept central to this thread, Time Lag (TL), is the fact that it takes time for information to travel distances. This isn’t reflected in the current mechanics. Rather than controlling a leader, the game has players controlling a god that can see and control everything about a civilization. Adding a time lag would make the game better represent the players’ role as leader, or king, or president of a civilization.

Range of Influence

The Range of Influence (RoI) is the area that the player can see and, to some extent, control. In current Civ games, the RoI consists of every where within a few tiles near any unit or city. With TL this would be reduced to a few tiles around the capital city. Anything within the RoI is considered under “control”
Expanding RoI
The RoI could be expanded in multiple ways. The default range is as fast as the fasted researched unit can move and would automatically increase as new techs that allow for faster movement are researched (horseback riding, machinery, combustion etc.). The RoI would also expand father along information routes (roads, railroads, telegram lines, phone lines etc.). For example, the player might only be able to influence 4 tiles around their capital, but along roads, out to 8. For constant monitoring and control of another city, it would have to be in the RoI (naturally, or through a telegram or other connection). Controlling a city would give a small boost in RoI around the city. Certain buildings could also be constructed to expand range (radio tower).
Orders Outside of RoI
Because of the drastically limited RoI, it becomes impossible to control an expansive empire on multiple continents, especially early game. A new unit type, the Messenger, would be used to give orders outside of the RoI. Messengers would require writing to build. Messengers would also have different levels (similar to warrior => swordsman=>long swordsman, but with higher speed (and, if possible with AI programming, intelligence)).
Messengers would be sent with orders including: production, citizen management, tile improvement orders, military orders, etc. After reaching its destination the messenger would stay for an ordered number of turns, and return with information including: map updates, city screen updates, production and research status, and thoughts from the mayors of cities and great generals.
Leadership Movement
If needed to, the player could choose to move their leader. This could be to personally head a military campaign, more closely, personally oversee a new colony, or other reasons. This would move the focus point of the RoI. This would create a unit in the city the leader is in allowing it to be moved.
Great Generals
Great Generals would become much more important with TL. Rather than just a flat combat bonus, they would intelligently oversee military operations following goals sent through messenger. Generals would level up becoming more intelligent and able to control more units eventually becoming a second focus for RoI.

False Messengers
It’s possible for messengers to return with false information. This could happen for multiple reasons. The chances would go up in cities for: distance from leader, unhappiness, different religion etc. and would go down with military presence, happiness, same religion, etc. Other Civs can also capture and bribe messengers to return false information. You can use methods of torture and interrogation to determine if the information is truthful, but will increase the chance of future lying.

Thank You
This is the gist of my idea for Time Lag. If I come up with anything else or really like someone’s suggestion, I might add it to this post. Thanks for reading. I’d Love any feedback you have on this concept.

 

[Browd]

This would be a pretty drastic change to the game. I understand that you might think this would make the game seem more realistic, but adding messenger mechanics would just add a new level of micromanagement that would probably be frustrating to many users. The whole false messengers section would be maddening IMO.

Also, the game does already reflect time lag through turn timings -- "instantaneous" ruler reaction to events still takes at least 1 turn to begin implementing.

At Standard speed, each of the first 75 turns represents 40 years of "real time," which is ample time for even the most primitive of tribal leaders to receive reports on that barb camp 5 tiles away, relay orders, get feedback, relay revised orders, etc. In fact, if that leader wanted to dispatch troops to clear that camp, it may take two centuries or longer in "real time" for the troops to arrive and finally clear the camp. During that 200+ years, the ruler should have no impact on what those troops are doing, since a messenger would take, say, 120 years to get to the capital from the battlefield, and another 120 years to return?

The next 60 turns are 25 year increments (an entire generation of troops will serve and retire in a single turn), then 25 turns of 20 year increments, 50 turns of 10 year increments, and 60 turns of 5 year increments -- all sufficiently long for messengers to be dispatched, reports received, orders to be issued, feedback obtained, revised orders issued, etc.

By the time you hit turn 270, the increment drops to 2 years -- but by turn 270 you should be deep into the Industrial era (if not Modern Era), with the associated technological and communication advances under your belt. By turn 320, you are down to turn increments of 1 year, which is the minimum for the rest of the game.

 

[Naokaukodem]

As I said in the topic where you first told about this :

I have had this idea of time lag before. It would be very good, because realistic. I don't remember in which occasions i got this idea though, so i will be a little short. I will only say that it may not be that realistic considering how the time goes through in Civ. Imagine you send a messenger to sign a peace treaty. Would it put 50 years to go into your enemy's land and 50 other years to come back ? I think this idea is not feasible without abandonning completely this way the time passes unfortunately. Civ now considers that your messengers have all the time they want to travel through the whole planet even depending on era. (1 turn = 1 year is only modern, but by that time coms are instantaneous)

 

[Kid R]

Agreed with the above. It's a shame - I think there's an interesting gameplay mechanic in there somewhere, but maybe not for Civ. Half the fun's moving the view around and surveying your lands and cities and units like a god. With the time lag maybe for a lot of the game you'd just be sat looking at the capital city and reading notification messages as they come in from around the empire (which wouldn't be very often at the start!) Bit like an old school text adventure

Tech micro-advances
Perhaps time lag needs to be in a game where time passes really slowly, like 1 turn is 1 day. But then you'd have to abandon the notion that a single play-through covers all of human history, otherwise it'd take millions of turns! It would have to be a game set in a specific time in history.

So would that mean the game could have no tech advance? If tech advance was dropped it would remove most or all of the "one more turn" urge, and I think then it wouldn't be Civ. Perhaps just enough tech/unit development could be kept, if the game was set in a period of rapid technological change, for example Rome where the techs you'd research would revolve around regional administration, sword platoon tactics, aquaducts, straight roads, whatever. Maybe 3 or 4 generations of military units and 50 or so techs total would be enough for decent strategic depth to a whole game, and be enough progress to keep you hitting "end turn". But the question remains would it be Civ?

Civ game not spanning all history
Perhaps there's a case for a main/numbered Civ version set at a point in time like this, e.g. in a particular famous civilization - how about "Civ 6: Rome" or "Civ 6: America"? It would be a huge departure and I doubt if they'd ever do it. Or maybe they could start with "Civ 6: Mesopotamia" and then release 20 or 30 expansions as DLC set in each major civilization in history, finally making "Civ 6: Complete" where the era setting would be a random game option at start-up time like the map type and climate! All that DLC should keep the accountants happy

But I'm rambling. I liked the time lag idea so I didn't want to just put it down. Come on mathball31 - can you save it?!

 

[mathball31]

At Standard speed, each of the first 75 turns represents 40 years of "real time," which is ample time for even the most primitive of tribal leaders to receive reports on that barb camp 5 tiles away, relay orders, get feedback, relay revised orders, etc. In fact, if that leader wanted to dispatch troops to clear that camp, it may take two centuries or longer in "real time" for the troops to arrive and finally clear the camp. During that 200+ years, the ruler should have no impact on what those troops are doing, since a messenger would take, say, 120 years to get to the capital from the battlefield, and another 120 years to return?

I Realized from the start that there would be major problems with the time scale. I still posted the idea because I think it has potential to be a core concept of a 4x game (even if it's too drastic of a change for civ). This problem already exists in the game as it is. Does it really 400 years for a scout to travel the distance a tank can in year?

One possible "solution" to the disparity in time/turn would be a progressive increase in the number of tiles taking up a certain space. As the years progressed, tiles would split into smaller tiles. This would represent more turns, but the same (or less) time in years to travel those distances.

With this, a unit could travel 4 ancient era tiles in 160 years. in a later era, this would be 32 later era tiles in 160 years, or 4 later era tiles in 20 years. This would again be drastic and would require heavy balancing, but could fix, or at least lessen the severity of, the problem.