Timelines, Dates and Eras

ls612 · Mar 7, 2012

@Praetyre:
Doing a little more research on the whole "making tech progression in line with history" idea, I saw several different saves from SO that had him reaching the Transhuman Era on around turn 900, on Epic Gamespeed. Epic has an <iResearchPercent> of 150 in the files, so I figure, adjusting for having more time to build stuff and such, that a suitable modifier for Eternity for research would be 1500. For Snail I would multiply that number by 0.6, for a value of 900. What say you on this matter?

stolenrays · Mar 7, 2012

AIAndy said:
I think I need to rewrite the calendar code so there are some questions to you about which behavior you would prefer.

What should be used for days in a month and in a year:

Bank Year: Constant 30 days a month, 360 days in a year. Easiest version, but there is a 29th and 30th February.

No leap years: Always 365 days per year but months have different number of days (so can't track all increments on a day base)

Calendar with all leap year rules

What should be done around the BC/AD switch: Year 0 or no year 0?

So you adding to the sdk for

Code:

CALENDAR_DAYS

? How far along are you? I had already started on doing that and even

Code:

CALENDAR_HOURS

Praetyre · Mar 7, 2012

ls612 said:
@Praetyre:
Doing a little more research on the whole "making tech progression in line with history" idea, I saw several different saves from SO that had him reaching the Transhuman Era on around turn 900, on Epic Gamespeed. Epic has an <iResearchPercent> of 150 in the files, so I figure, adjusting for having more time to build stuff and such, that a suitable modifier for Eternity for research would be 1500. For Snail I would multiply that number by 0.6, for a value of 900. What say you on this matter?

That could make for a good start; I will note, though, that in my current tests with nothing but cosmetic date changes to Eternity, I reach the end of Prehistoric with all turns played by me and me in the lead by about turn 1000, so this trend may not extrapolate so neatly. Another big factor will be the disease system and realistic city populations, as well as my building and cultural proposals. Still, it never hurts to try...

AIAndy · Mar 8, 2012

stolenrays said:
So you adding to the sdk for

Code:

CALENDAR_DAYS

? How far along are you? I had already started on doing that and even

Code:

CALENDAR_HOURS

I have not actually added an additional calendar but instead rewritten the way the default calendar works so it can deal with day increments.

AIAndy · Mar 8, 2012

The new code is on the SVN now. iDayIncrement is the new tag and it can be used at the same time as iMonthIncrement so you can progress time by 1 month and 14 days or something similar.

ls612 · Mar 8, 2012

AIAndy said:
The new code is on the SVN now. iDayIncrement is the new tag and it can be used at the same time as iMonthIncrement so you can progress time by 1 month and 14 days or something similar.

Which calendar option did you end up using, ie. how many days are in C2C months/years?

Praetyre · Mar 8, 2012

So how does one go about using weekly turns in the game speed file? Do you simply replace the <iMonthIncrement> where appropriate or is there some further assembly required?

AIAndy · Mar 9, 2012

ls612 said:
Which calendar option did you end up using, ie. how many days are in C2C months/years?

365 days a year split up on the months like it is in reality in a non leap year.

@Praetyre: A week would be <iDayIncrement>7</iDayIncrement> with either no month tag or iMonthIncrement of 0.
1 month 2 weeks would be <iMonthIncrement>1</iMonthIncrement> and <iDayIncrement>14</iDayIncrement>.

strategyonly · Mar 9, 2012

AIAndy said:
365 days a year split up on the months like it is in reality in a non leap year.

@Praetyre: A week would be <iDayIncrement>7</iDayIncrement> with either no month tag or iMonthIncrement of 0.
1 month 2 weeks would be <iMonthIncrement>1</iMonthIncrement> and <iDayIncrement>14</iDayIncrement>.

ahaha now that makes alot of sense

Praetyre · Mar 9, 2012

So my game speed plan would thus consist of adding these lines between <GameTurnInfos> and </GameTurnInfos> in the game speed file?

Spoiler :

BlueTemplar · Mar 9, 2012

After this, we will need to set a baseline length in game and chronological terms for each era (preferably starting with Eternity speed and going downwards from there, due to the nature of this mod and the fact that starting with Normal would force us to go in two directions for our planning), and try to ensure that, on that speed, technological development and population growth (though much of this would necessitate the smoothing out of the agricultural and implementation of the plagues and diseases system DH and Hydro have discussed in the past) proceeds at a speed congruent with these parameters.

Your premise is flawed. You cannot ensure that the speed of technological progress will be exactly the same in all different games (and speeds). There are too many factors. For instance tech brokering increases the tech progression a LOT. The date as it is done in Civ4 currently is bound to diverge from the techs the more the game progresses.

What's worse, you're taking it completely ass-backwards and want to change parameters that are very important for gameplay like research and growth rates to cater to a completely cosmetic feature!

In my opinion, a roughly equal amount of turns should be allocated to all of the game's eras, irregardless of game speed and irregardless of the actual amount of time each era took up (else one might as well make the Prehistoric thousands of times longer than the Modern) historically.

A big part of my goals is to give equal gametime to each era, as in my own civ games I often felt somewhat disappointed by how quickly the, say, Classical era flew by in comparison to the Prehistoric.

These two sentences contradict themselves. You spend a LOT less time on a game turn in Prehistoric when you only have one city compared to Modern when you have, say, 50 of them...

IMHO the date should NOT be linked to any arbitrary amount of turns, but rather to the techs : once a tech is researched (and maybe if a wonder is built) by a civilization (anywhere in the world), the date advances to correspond to the historical date of that tech.
No more problems with the atom bomb in the 1600s, and your energy can be spent on a more useful venture like for instance tweaking the growth / research costs so that the castles don't go obsolete too fast.

AIAndy · Mar 9, 2012

@Praetyre: There is a </iMonthIncrement> where the end tag for the day increment should be </iDayIncrement>

ls612 · Mar 9, 2012

Important:

I have added my new system, overhauling the Gamespeed for Eternity and Snail. The Eternity Speed now has 14550 turns, a slight increase, but it's research rates have been increased to keep tech in line with this, more or less. Snail now has 7225 turns, 1/2 of Eternity, a decent decrease in turns. All of their numbers for scaling have been adjusted down accordingly.

Any and all balance feedback is requested and valued, as this is still a test, and I will probably make a better version before V22.

Thanks very much to Praetyre for the initial work an support on this, and to AIAndy for making it possible in the DLL.

AIAndy · Mar 10, 2012

ls612 said:
Important:

I have added my new system, overhauling the Gamespeed for Eternity and Snail. The Eternity Speed now has 14550 turns, a slight increase, but it's research rates have been increased to keep tech in line with this, more or less. Snail now has 7225 turns, 1/2 of Eternity, a decent decrease in turns. All of their numbers for scaling have been adjusted down accordingly.

Any and all balance feedback is requested and valued, as this is still a test, and I will probably make a better version before V22.

Thanks very much to Praetyre for the initial work an support on this, and to AIAndy for making it possible in the DLL.

What about going to -200000 or -50000 as start date right away?

stolenrays · Mar 19, 2012

Could you please tell me which files I should download to merge with my mod so that I can use dayincrements?

BlueGenie · Mar 19, 2012

Quick feedback on the new Eternity Speed: I did a test start on the largest map size (which increases research times too) and Deity Diff (also increase in research times) and you probably need to tweak unit building up a notch, just one, maybe buildings building one notch too, and research needs to be lowered a few %.

Reasoning:
I spent most of the first 500 turns building units which I then promptly disbanded for cash since that gave more income than building Lesser Wealth.
I could do that because I had built all the buildings I had available rather fast compared to the speed of researching, or lack thereof.
500 turns in, yes I know it's Eternity, and I've only just managed to get Herbalism, Tracking, Oral Tradition and Shelter Building (and all techs needed to get those, of course).
I did go for the options for more research as soon as I could, and myths of course. Only luck with animals could have gotten me there faster. *grin*

Cheers

Edit: Forgot to mention that Golden Ages probably should be increased slightly too, maybe about 25% more than current timing.
Reason is that if everything takes that much longer to get to then Golden Ages are equally less effective.

Cheers

AIAndy · Mar 19, 2012

stolenrays said:
Could you please tell me which files I should download to merge with my mod so that I can use dayincrements?

I fear I did not mark it properly so merging is probably not that easy.
Best is to download the entire source part of the SVN so you can use Visual Studio to search for references in the project.
Start from the new files CvDate.h and CvDate.cpp and search for references to the classes and methods in there.

stolenrays · Mar 19, 2012

AIAndy said:
I fear I did not mark it properly so merging is probably not that easy.
Best is to download the entire source part of the SVN so you can use Visual Studio to search for references in the project.
Start from the new files CvDate.h and CvDate.cpp and search for references to the classes and methods in there.

Thanks for the information. What I'm trying to do is make a mod and have it use turns by the day. I figure I can just use your mods for the day and change the worldbuilder file to the year/turn(day) I want to start from?

AIAndy · Mar 19, 2012

stolenrays said:
Thanks for the information. What I'm trying to do is make a mod and have it use turns by the day. I figure I can just use your mods for the day and change the worldbuilder file to the year/turn(day) I want to start from?

I have not looked into the worldbuilder file reading so there is a chance that there is still some bug there.
I mainly changed the way the default calendar works so days can progress between turns, not only months or years, according to the gamespeed info XML.

ls612 · Mar 19, 2012

BlueGenie said:
Quick feedback on the new Eternity Speed: I did a test start on the largest map size (which increases research times too) and Deity Diff (also increase in research times) and you probably need to tweak unit building up a notch, just one, maybe buildings building one notch too, and research needs to be lowered a few %.

Reasoning:
I spent most of the first 500 turns building units which I then promptly disbanded for cash since that gave more income than building Lesser Wealth.
I could do that because I had built all the buildings I had available rather fast compared to the speed of researching, or lack thereof.
500 turns in, yes I know it's Eternity, and I've only just managed to get Herbalism, Tracking, Oral Tradition and Shelter Building (and all techs needed to get those, of course).
I did go for the options for more research as soon as I could, and myths of course. Only luck with animals could have gotten me there faster. *grin*

Cheers

Edit: Forgot to mention that Golden Ages probably should be increased slightly too, maybe about 25% more than current timing.
Reason is that if everything takes that much longer to get to then Golden Ages are equally less effective.

Cheers

Thanks for the feedback. I agree with all those statements, as I forgot to mess with them in the first place

. I'll probably be committing a new gamespeedinfos file at the end of the freeze with all the fixes I'm planning.

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