Game and Turn Length

[Richard Bruns]

We need to decide on and/or clarify an important issue: How long will the game last and how long will the turns be?

My work on the tech and ecology models has made me realize that varying turn lengths would be impractical or silly. Also, a decent demographics model would be very hard to implement of the turn lengths are varied.

The turns in the beginning will probably take less time, so early times will go by more quickly without making early game turns represent more time.

At first I thought that the game should start very early and proceed like civ 2, but I now realize this would be impractical. I think that starting in 1000 BC and having one year turns for the entire game would be good. The first organized governments began about that time in most places, so if we assume that the player represents the government this would be a good time to start.

What does everyone else think about this?

[axi]

Back in Febuary, I had made (almost) a whole model concerning these things. I will bump up this thread and, if you want, we can continue discussion over there, in order to have everything in one place.

[Lord God Jinnai]

I don't think so as far as starting time because of the balancing issue. The latest possible is 4000 BCE (which BTW is a lot lower than civ and civ2 starting date). The reason why is up until this time most cultures were relatively the same in almost all respects for balancing purposes, but after this many cultures gained a lot in technological, cultural and resource advancement while leaving others behind. I don't think we should do this, but if we go with 1000 BCE we will.
Another minor problem comes in the social model for the historical religions they want to add since many were founded before 1000 BCE.

[Richard Bruns]

I should have known that some of this info and discussion already existed but that I was unable to find it. I'll look at the Clash Scales thread.

[Lord God Jinnai]

I still think we need to base it around 4000 BCE for the standard setting. Why? Because its easier to make a balanced game unbalanced than it is to make an unbalanced game it balanced at the start. So if we have a year that the civs are easy to balance against, giving other civs advantages over others for whatever reason is easier than trying to balance out a more complex situation that takes place at 1000 BCE.

Besides i've talked with mark a lot over emails and on the forum about this and showed him why atleast for standard starting date, ie non-screnerios.

[F_Smith]

If it's okay, I think 'starting date' has to be treated as a scenario builder's decision.

I'm unsure how to handle turn-length, to be honest, and will code up whatever ya'll think best. I can tie it to the date, leave it fixed, or whatever.

For testing models in the object builder, I am assuming a turn is one year, until I hear differently. We can easily change that at a moments notice.

[Richard Bruns]

So, how long will the turns be in the game that starts in 4000 BC?

[Lord God Jinnai]

Right now the set data is at 20 year turns. Of course this is before we play it, but i don't want to get it too out of control...i think (with the exception of MPG) we can set it at 1 year per turn and slowly go down to 1 month, if the player is allowed to skip turns. Otherwise i think we should drop this option once we get a good working model simply because if the turns take a little time as mark wants them to, there's no reason for a player to skip them and risk the AI doing something they don't like, and micromanger freaks wouldn't do it anyway.

[Richard Bruns]

I have a question that is very important to the devevelopment of version three of the ecology model: Are we definitely planning to have turns that last less than one year?

If the game does have such turns, then the ecology model must account for seasonal variation in the weather. This will affect farm yields, military operations, natural disasters, and economic activities. These additions to the model would create a lot of complexity and take a lot of effort to implement, but they must be included if turns will last less than one year.

[Lord God Jinnai]

Eventually, yes. Eventually the plan is to go down to 1 month on standard games so scenerios should also be able to go that low also.