Time Increments

[Sava]

Alexander the Great conquered the known world in less than 40 years...
Armies of the thousands were assembled during World War II in less than a year...
An F-117A Stealth Fighter can be assembled in less than 5 weeks...

But in Civilization, it takes much longer to do such things. Conquering the world takes much longer than even 1000 years. One beef I have with the CIV games is the unrealistic passage of time. It shouldn't take 200 years to build a phalanx unit or a legion of swordsmen. I hope Sid fixes the problem with time passage in Civ3.

Feel free to post about this topic.

[Grumbold]

The timescale is the core of the Civ engine. Without years per turn the game would take months to play: one month turns = approx 72,000 turns!

I don't like the unrealistically slow build and combat, but if it wasn't slow then the railroad/capture capital syndrome would exist from the very beginning of the game. One tiny flaw in the AI (or your) defense and bang! Game over.

Eventually I would like to play a game where you really can nurture your civilisation through two or six thousand years of history on a slower timescale. EU shows one possible way of doing it and their next game may revolve around Rome and attempt nearly 1000 years of history. What you have to sacrifice to get the construction and combat modelled better is a judgement call, but something will undoubtedly go. I wouldn't want to play a game for a month before realising that I was living on an island and doomed to be outstripped by other empires even before we meet. At least in Civ it takes an hour or less to discover that.

[Pingu:]

this is one of those tricky things, the slow passage of time is essential for events that happen on teh scale of empires, which is what Civ is really about. This makes the movement and creation of units unrealistic...

The only thing I can think of is to have 2 time scales (stop me if this is how Europa Universalis does it, I've never played it...). Your Civ rumbles along happily, for a thousand years, inventing stuff and growing in population (this timescale speeds up as tech advances, and you get Agricultural and Industrial revolutions...). Military stuff doesn't happen much on this timescale, armies are posted, barracked and sentried and do patrols. There would be a lot of strategy in setting up your defenses...

Then as soon as you're attacked/attack, involved empires go to the fine timescale and you can put your production on a war footing, units move a square in a day, or a week or something (again tech dependant?). This goes on until a cease fire is agreed (when one civ runs out of resources built up in the peace period?). Then you go back to turns covering whole years or more... Damage is tehn doen to the Civ's cities and rescources depending on what happened in the war period.

You'd need a warning whenever a civ you know about goes into this fine time scale, as they might be amassing armies that you don't know about...

I think this is a great idea for realism, and solves the problem. I have absolutely no idea whether or not it would work, or if I'd actiually want to play a game that does this because it would make life really complicated. On balance I'm happy with thing the way they are.

Pingu:

[polymths]

At the risk of repeatig myself, the timescale is only meaningful for measuring relating to technological development. For any other purpose the timescale cannot be taken literally!

There is also no practical way to reconcile the difference between the timescale used for technological development and the timescale for unit movement UNLESS all movement of individual units were simply removed from the game but then this would be an entirely different game than Civ.

[polymths]

quote: Originally posted by Pingu: on 05-11-2001 10:33 AM this is one of those tricky things, the slow passage of time is essential for events that happen on teh scale of empires, which is what Civ is really about. This makes the movement and creation of units unrealistic... The only thing I can think of is to have 2 time scales (stop me if this is how Europa Universalis does it, I've never played it...). Your Civ rumbles along happily, for a thousand years, inventing stuff and growing in population (this timescale speeds up as tech advances, and you get Agricultural and Industrial revolutions...). Military stuff doesn't happen much on this timescale, armies are posted, barracked and sentried and do patrols. There would be a lot of strategy in setting up your defenses... Then as soon as you're attacked/attack, involved empires go to the fine timescale and you can put your production on a war footing, units move a square in a day, or a week or something (again tech dependant?). This goes on until a cease fire is agreed (when one civ runs out of resources built up in the peace period?). Then you go back to turns covering whole years or more... Damage is tehn doen to the Civ's cities and rescources depending on what happened in the war period. You'd need a warning whenever a civ you know about goes into this fine time scale, as they might be amassing armies that you don't know about... I think this is a great idea for realism, and solves the problem. I have absolutely no idea whether or not it would work, or if I'd actiually want to play a game that does this because it would make life really complicated. On balance I'm happy with thing the way they are. Pingu:

The problem with this scheme is that unless wars are infrequent or involve all the powers all the time, how can this work???

If CivA and CivB are at war but not any of the other civs the timescale would need to adjusted according to your scheme. But since there can only be one timescale for everyone, then CivC, CivD, etc would also go to the smaller timescale even though they are not at war at all.

In any case, the problem extends even for non-military movement. Does your boat carrying caravans or diplomats also require the "finer timescale"? If so then it would seem that you would need the same finer timescale all the time!

[Mathphysto]

Here's a proposal to introduce the idea of different levels of some techs, which requires changing the time increment. For example, one may discover Level 1 of a tech, and continue researching until discovering Level 5, the max. Having Level 1 Air Combat might give you the ability to build Sopwith Camels. Having Level 5 Air Combat might give F-22 Raptors. Also, higher levels might require more techs, or higher level techs. So Level 3 Air Combat (F-86 Sabre) would require Level 2 Rocket Engines. Level 1 Rocket Engines might give V-2 rockets, and Level 5 might give Saturn V rockets and enable the Apollo program to be "built"

Also, it wouldn't be necessary to discover Level 5 of something to research a related tech. Getting to, say, Level 1 of Air Combat and Level 5 of Naval Combat (Battleships) should allow you to research and build Level 1 Aircraft Carriers (Naval Aviation) (pre-WWII carriers).

And one should be able to appropriate funds to multiple research projects. So I could research Level 3 Quantum Physics, Level 2 Aircraft Carriers, and Level 1 Computers at the same time. The total science funding level may be determined as in traditional Civ. The funding levels would determine how much science goes to each research project.

This give greater technological continuity and flexibility. Also, it is much more realistic - it allows for a finer differentiation in power and progress. One problem is that there needs to be a new time increment. Only if I have many turns to build my new F-86 Sabres and use them before they become obsolete by my discovery of F-15s would I bother to build them. So we need a greater degree of temporal resolution in order to utilize this greater degree of technological resolution. Could this be fixed or avoided somehow? Or do we really mind playing a longer game if it allows the game to be more interesting?

Personally, I'm for giving the player all the options. The game should be capable of being long, with many civs, and more realistic. But if the player doesn't want it, the player may chose not to use it. Of course, whether or not this is economically sound is not easily answered - is it worth a team's time and the company's money to attract a few more consumers, and make others more satisfied with the product? Firaxis has apparently decided not. But it sure as hell would make for a much better game!!

[The Rusty Gamer]

I've been thinking along similar lines but my idea is more to have the timeline increment dynamically changing, perhaps lowered each time ANY civilization breaks though to a new age rather than changing at certain preset years. It would have to be any civ rather than just your own, otherwise different civs would be on different time increments would could really complicate the game. Another idea would possibly be a change in time increments depending on the government type but again there would be the aforementioned problem, they'd have to be some kind of workaround that.