A Monthly Schedule for Civ3

[Cyclotron]

I'm not a big fan of realism (you may know this already ), but the fact that wars in Civ2 always took several decades, often centuries, really irked me. Whatever happened to blitzkrieg... let alone the "seven days war"!

Also, people have been complaining about how there needs to be more time between ages... I have to agree. More time means more of an opportunity to use your units, instead of rushing to the next tech first. It makes it so frigates can really be the "king of the seas" for more than a single year before ironclads start steaming out of port.

It seems to me that the best solution for these two problems is to put Civilization3 on a monthly time scale. Remember the World War 2 scenario in Civ2? I invite you to dig it out and play it. It is on a month based scedule. If it wasn't, let's see... WW2 would take about 80 years!!!

This also adresses the idea of more turns... you now have 12 times the time to use each of your units. If this is too much, we should consider a quarterly system. This would quadruple our time (just right, if you ask me). Firaxis could also use season based artwork with this if its not too much trouble... you can really start your offensive in the spring of '39, or whenever. If you really want to get into the seasons thing you could even have them affect units, etc... but for now let's just stick with the artwork and let me make my point that Civ3 should be on a monthly (or quarterly) basis.

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- Cyclotron7, "that supplementary resource fanatic"

[Henrik]

Doesn't the time scale change as the game progresses?
I agree that more time is needed though. Entire eras (like the 17th century) is overlooked (the musketeer is a defensive unit in civ 2, they wherent used for defence untill the 1750's in reallity while musketeers where used during the 16th and 17th century as well (they where used as attack infantry)) by Civ 2 and the eras that is actually in there pass by so fast that you hardly notice them (the napoleonic one for example).

[SerapisIV]

In my games, any mid-game wars are just a delaying tactic until post-industrial units, though sometimes I'll get antsy and send off some dragoons and artillery. The balancing in SMAC was much better, so much in fact that I rarely got to the end, by mid-game I was able to build my civilization as I wanted and still wage war. Mid-game units were important but this was made posible by the ability to upgrade units, this was a huge step forward in terms of gameplay (though I heard for all its faults CTP had decent pacing too as units were able to be used longer)

[airdrik]

The problem with monthly/quarterly turns is that those who like to play the ultra-scientific civ end up to AC in 1000 BC because they accumulate so much science a turn that they can get a tech every 5-6 turns. You can add more techs, or make it so that techs are harder to research, but then you have all the more techs to juggle through before you reach a certain tech.

An idea that was suggested in an earlier topic was to be able to manually change the pace of time, but that has it's consequences attached in the forms of unit movements and accumulation of tax money/beakers.

Another solution would be to cut out on some of the units so that previous units will be able to be used with greater extent. Of course this leads to new units being a ton more powerful than their predicessors (ie. civ 1 where you went from musketeers: 2/3/1 to riflemen: 3/5/1, and from knights: 4/2/2 to armors: 10/5/3)

[Cyclotron]

Henrik,
Time does progress slower as time goes on, although it never goes slower than one year. The Middle ages were especially cheated because they are already short, and they had 2 years per turn I believe. During the Stone age I think turns should be gradated, since not as much happens, and fewer inventions are developed per unit time.

airdrik,
I think beta testing would be the final judge of that. That's true that people would research much faster if it used the same tech paradigm as Civ2, but I propose the tech paradigm be higher (slower research) to balance the fact of more turns. In other words, you would have slower research but more turns to research, hence a longer age.

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- Cyclotron7, "that supplementary resource fanatic"

[Gramphos]

I like the ability to play a long game, but you should be able to select a quick game (less turns) if you want to play the game faster for some reason.

[Wazell]

Exactly. Quick game should be an option, but normal game takes longer. In stone age turns can be ten years, fine. However atleast after 1AD there shouldn't be more than 2 years/turn and then in middle ages 1 year makes 1 turn. Obviously shorter turns are also needed, but there's one problem: when it's spring in northern hemisphere, it's autumn in the south. This can be avoided naturally by using months, like this: January, April, July, October and then to the next year. This makes full game to last some 2000 turns, but with less micromanagement and more automated functions it won't be too bad.

[Father Beast]

There was a thread over in civ2 general a while back concerning that the ancient days went by too fast.

A good answer was someones custom editing of the rules.txt. set the time to 1 year, and the tech paradigm to 1 (that's right, 1!), and the ancient days would flow slowly by. with that tech paradigm, even with high science it would take a hundred turns or more to get advances.

The point is, civ2 is a configurable game, and us hardcore civers who want to play for thousands of turns don't neccesarily speak for the masses which Sid hopes the game will be accessible to.

A good solution would be for normal to be the 500 turns of a game as presently constituted (more or less), and the option for a "hardcore" civer who plays out history for thousands of turns.

[Fintilgin]

I wouldn't mind seeing the option to have longer games, but I suspect they'll be roughly the same as Civ2/SMAC games. Here's a quote from Sid Meier in the CGW article:

"`The original CIVILIZATION had hovercrafts and maps that were twice as big,' Meier enthusiastically responds when pressed to explain his emphaisis on playtesting. `But the more we played it, the more we realized that it's better to overcompress the gameplay than to undercompress it. We learned to keep the mid-game short so that the player is constantly juggling decisions. CIV is long, but it could be a lot longer."

Joe

[jglidewell]

quote: Originally posted by Fintilgin on 04-12-2001 11:42 AM I wouldn't mind seeing the option to have longer games, but I suspect they'll be roughly the same as Civ2/SMAC games. Here's a quote from Sid Meier in the CGW article: "`The original CIVILIZATION had hovercrafts and maps that were twice as big,' Meier enthusiastically responds when pressed to explain his emphaisis on playtesting. `But the more we played it, the more we realized that it's better to overcompress the gameplay than to undercompress it. We learned to keep the mid-game short so that the player is constantly juggling decisions. CIV is long, but it could be a lot longer." Joe

I agree with this. The relationships between rate of pop growth, rate of city establishment, rate of unit construction is not linear so that the adjustments for rate would be differrent for each categorry. I don't think it would be impoossible but just difficult. Where I believe play testing did prove out whats fun in the game. I too would like to dwell in certain time periods and I hope that they are able to lenghten them.

[Cyclotron]

I like how Civ2 graduated turns throughout the ages, and I think that should be kept. I just think there should at least be an option to make it on a monthly or quarterly basis. The tech paradigm could rise if you put in more turns this way... It's probably wishful thinking, but I wish you could give a normal game more turns without playing in the easiest difficulty level!

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- Cyclotron7, "that supplementary resource fanatic"

[King Richard]

I have been bothered some time over the fact that I don't have time to build certain units and improvements (frigate, power plant etc.) before they are obsolete. In general research moves too fast! I can't build half of the units and buildings/wonders before something new comes along. I think that there should be an option if you want to play as usual or with one year turns. This could be made possible by a hole bunch of new technologies which doesn't give you any units/buildings (like: atomic theory, chemistry etc.). You could also spread the units/buildings (you will never receive more than one new unit/building/wonder with each tech). Now you'll have to spend hundreds of years to build a colloseum!

[Akron]

How about quadrupling the number of turns but:

Making it so that research is only collected every 4 turns

Production for wonders and city improvements are only added every 4 turns

1/4 of the total production (for the 4 turns) is added every turn for unit production and unit production costs are decreased by maybe half (to allow for more units, though rush buy costs will be much higher than for improvements)

1/4 of the total gold production (for the 4 turns) is collected every turn.

As for food, I really hope that there is a more advanced population growth system than one simply relying on food production.

I hope this makes a little sense, probably doesn't. The biggest problem with quadrupling the number of turns is that it makes the game that much longer and micromanagement intensive. By doing some of these things, I think it may help reduce this. Though I really would like to have more time to use a certain unit, it may make the game take too long. The game is quite long as it is anyway. Probably, the best thing to do is slowing down research dramatically. There's something wrong when you are going to alpha centauri before the 19th century.

Just my [worthless] two cents.

[Father Beast]

quote: Originally posted by King Richard on 04-12-2001 07:49 PM I have been bothered some time over the fact that I don't have time to build certain units and improvements (frigate, power plant etc.) before they are obsolete. In general research moves too fast! I can't build half of the units and buildings/wonders before something new comes along.

I had that problem when playing on the lower difficulty levels. hardly had time to build something before the next tech made something else more important.
Once I got to prince, that problem was mostly gone. except when OCCing
[This message has been edited by Father Beast (edited April 13, 2001).]