50 years to build a warrior and other timescale issues

[Urban Ranger]

Of course, the more fundamental issue is there was no warrior unit. Just a group of people with weapons. The closest you get to a standardised unit are the Roman legions.

[DrSpike]

Well then the warrior represents those people with weapons...........it is only there to give you an explorer and a unit with an attack value. In Civ2 at least a settler has more defence, so the 'warrior' is not stronger than normal people.

But either way it really doesn't matter........it is desirable for gameplay that it be so, so it is.

[Dauphin]

Ever played a game where your first warrior unit searches your entire landmass, and then gets cut off by an expanding civ. All that is left to do is fortify or disband. I've had a fortified warrior perched at the top of a large polar mountain range from ~2000BC to ~2000AD. Now that is not realistic, but who cares?

[Maquiladora]

The 1 turn=50 years etc thing needs to be changed first if movement and production is going to be realistic. The whole game would need to be more detailed. Like taking pop from cities when you "drag" out an army of warriors on the same turn, then youd need more detailed city pops with moral maybe and arms supply etc etc.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by DrSpike
Well then the warrior represents those people with weapons...........it is only there to give you an explorer and a unit with an attack value.

Which was pretty much my point. A "unit" is just a mob with some weapons for the longest time. Without some sort of standards, saying that taking 50 years is too long is rather groundless.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Maquiladora
The 1 turn=50 years etc thing needs to be changed first if movement and production is going to be realistic. The whole game would need to be more detailed. Like taking pop from cities when you "drag" out an army of warriors on the same turn, then youd need more detailed city pops with moral maybe and arms supply etc etc.

I think this is correct. Brandon Von Every (Sp?) addressed this a couple of years back on Usenet. If you have realistic building and movement, you will have most wars over in one turn with current turns year equivalents. Even in modern times, with 1 turn = 1 year, ww1 is over in 4 turns, and ww2 in 5 turns. but to make the turns short enough to have both detailed wars, and realistic movement, you have to have so many turns that the game ceases to effectively be playable. (suppose we have i turn = 5 years in BC, and 1 turn - 1 year in AD, and one turn - one quarter of year in 20thc.

so to get from 4000BC to 2000AD we have 800+1900+400 turns, a total of 3100 turns. if each turn averages 10 minutes (!) thats 500 hours. someone playing 50 hours a week (!) would take ten weeks (!) to finish a game.

The only options are
1. Abandon detailed modeling of wars and unit movement, make war abstract, and focus on city and tech development - simciv, instead of civ.
2. Model a much shorter period - forget the 6000 year time span.
3. Go to something other than traditional TB - so you can fly through development ages and slow down when war breaks out - either speed variable RT, or some RT-TB combo (looks like this is RON solution)
4. Just accept that this aspect of the game is profoundly unrealistic.

[Panag]

hi ,

would a certain time frame like from 1939 - 1945 a turn a week , the rest a turn is one month fix this

have a nice day

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by panag
hi ,

would a certain time frame like from 1939 - 1945 a turn a week , the rest a turn is one month fix this

have a nice day

a turn a month for what period? a turn a month from 1800 to 2000 is 2400 turns. asume 10 minutes per turn thats 400 hours. Assume you play 40 hours per week (!!) thats 10 weeks to play one game. if you play a more reasonable 10 houre per week thats 40 weeks to play one game. So no, it doesnt fix it. And obviously not if you're still trying a 6000 year civ game.

[Panag]

Originally posted by lord of the mark


a turn a month for what period? a turn a month from 1800 to 2000 is 2400 turns. asume 10 minutes per turn thats 400 hours. Assume you play 40 hours per week (!!) thats 10 weeks to play one game. if you play a more reasonable 10 houre per week thats 40 weeks to play one game. So no, it doesnt fix it. And obviously not if you're still trying a 6000 year civ game.

hi ,

well in civ II there where scenario's like that , they started at time y and ended at turn x , .....

some scenarios even had a turn = year from y to x and somewhere in between or near the end a turn is a month from z to a , .....

should we be able to that also , ....

or should the shields ( production ) take in account the number of turns , .....

have a nice day

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by panag


hi ,

well in civ II there where scenario's like that , they started at time y and ended at turn x , .....

some scenarios even had a turn = year from y to x and somewhere in between or near the end a turn is a month from z to a , .....

should we be able to that also , ....

or should the shields ( production ) take in account the number of turns , .....

have a nice day

one - id say even most relatively short civ 2 scenarios had unrealistically slow movement,
Two - thats not "civ" anymore if you shorten the time frame radically.

[The diplomat]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
The only options are
1. Abandon detailed modeling of wars and unit movement, make war abstract, and focus on city and tech development - simciv, instead of civ.
2. Model a much shorter period - forget the 6000 year time span.
3. Go to something other than traditional TB - so you can fly through development ages and slow down when war breaks out - either speed variable RT, or some RT-TB combo (looks like this is RON solution)
4. Just accept that this aspect of the game is profoundly unrealistic.

Well, #3 is unacceptable for me. #2 could be done but it might remove the soul of the game. After all, civ has been about building an empire that stands the test of time. If the game only lasts from say 3000BC to 0 AD, then you would lose some of the epic feel of the game. Of course, you would also be able to concentrate on a particular age like the Ancient Age and make it more alive.

If the game switched to a province based map instead of a tile based map, some of the timescale problems could be resolved. This solution has the benefit that it would avoid the problems from options 1, 2, 3 and 4.

A province map would mean that it would no longer take tens of turns just to reach an enemy city. Wars would be fought on a much shorter timescale, since you could conquer 1 province representing an entire region in 1 or 2 turns.

A province map would also mean more realistic times for unit movements. If an infantry has 1 movement, it would move 1 province a turn instead of 1 tile a turn. Ships could cross oceans in a few turns instead of tens of turns.

So, provinces would fix some of the issues.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by The diplomat


Well, #3 is unacceptable for me. #2 could be done but it might remove the soul of the game. After all, civ has been about building an empire that stands the test of time. If the game only lasts from say 3000BC to 0 AD, then you would lose some of the epic feel of the game. Of course, you would also be able to concentrate on a particular age like the Ancient Age and make it more alive.

If the game switched to a province based map instead of a tile based map, some of the timescale problems could be resolved. This solution has the benefit that it would avoid the problems from options 1, 2, 3 and 4.

A province map would mean that it would no longer take tens of turns just to reach an enemy city. Wars would be fought on a much shorter timescale, since you could conquer 1 province representing an entire region in 1 or 2 turns.

A province map would also mean more realistic times for unit movements. If an infantry has 1 movement, it would move 1 province a turn instead of 1 tile a turn. Ships could cross oceans in a few turns instead of tens of turns.

So, provinces would fix some of the issues.

I dont see how this helps - its the equivalent of simply giving units more movement points.

Lets take an example - a roman legion on foot, on road could march at something like 20 miles a day (?) so they could get from Rome to any frontier in less than a year for sure. So if you have one year turns your realistic legion must have enough movement points to get to any frontier in a turn - whether thats 50 hexes, or 3 provinces really doesnt matter. but if my legion can zoom to any frontier in one turn - then i dont get any speed benefit from cavalry, i dont have to keep units on the frontier since i can move reserves in in one turn, I can easily march around any obstacle, etc. All the details of military strategy are lost. And if we are staying sequential turn based we have in greater problems - whovever moves first in war can concentrate all their forces and destroy any units of mine they want in the first turn. basically for a war to make any sense the standard time for a militatry campaign to make any sense must be considerably longer than one turn. In ancient Rome that means a turn must be apprecially shorter than one year. Say 1 month. But that means the period from 300 BC to 400 AD takes 8400 turns. At 5 minutes a turn (!) thats 700 hours - at 35 hours a week it takes 20 weeks to play a complete game - and we're just doing the Roman era NOT the full 6000 year sweep of civ.

[lord of the mark]

so if 3 is unnacceptable, and 2 removes the soul of the game - you're left with 1 and 4.

1. Go to a more abstract system - but this does not mean simply replaced hexs with Imp or EU size provinces - it means eliminating the modeling of combat altogether - war becomes completely abstract - i declare war, we each decide how much resources to devote, and we role the dice. No more moving of units.
4. Accept the innaccuracy

I would be interested in 1, but i doubt it would be a big seller, or would be considered the successor of Civ.

4 is what Firaxis did with Civ 3 - that is most likely what all successor "civs" will do. IMHO this is becoming increasingly played out - but i could be wrong.

I think the future lies with 2 and 3 Games like RON that do number 3 (IIUC) or games like EU or Shogun that do both 2 and 3 (limit the historical scope AND give up on pure TB)

[lord of the mark]

to sum up - you cannot have detailed warfare (not even at the province level) realistic movement, and a 6000 year time frame in turn based framework and have a small enough number of turns to be playable. Not remotely.

The only way to solve this problem is to have time fly by when youre at peace, and slow down on those occasions you are at war. Since when wars occur is unpredictable, this cannot be resolved simply by having turns equal shorter periods later in the game. There are only two solutions - make your own turns - IE RT with variable speed and full pausability. The EU solution. Or seperate the Warfare component from the development component. The Shogun TW solution. I suppose you could make the warfare component TB instead of RT, if you really hate RT. The development component would remain TB in either case.

The other solution is a shorter time period. But as I think our discussion should make clear, this is not a matter of going to 3000 years in place of 6000 years. We still have the same problems at a 700 year scale (roman empire) or a 400 year scale (EU) or even a 200 year scale.

I think you want turns that are at most 1 month equivalents. and you want a game that is more than 50 hours of play time. at 6 minutes a turn thats 500 turns. at one month per turn thats less than 50 years, So i dont think that you could model any period longer than 50 years. And at one month turns thats still reasonablly abstract combat. and 50 hours is a lot of time to play through one game.

[Panag]

Originally posted by lord of the mark



one - id say even most relatively short civ 2 scenarios had unrealistically slow movement,
Two - thats not "civ" anymore if you shorten the time frame radically.

hi ,

nope , there are some good scenarios that prove otherwise on one , .....

what you mean with drastically , lets say you have a gulfwar scen , ..... it should not last 100 turns or so , .....

have a nice day