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MattPilot
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Tulsa, OK
Dec 2003
time: 05:18
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I was just watching the latest video and i got an idea. Soren (?) talked about speeding the game up as an option (i think there are 3 settings, right?), to finish games quicker.
Well, how about being able to adjust the gamespeed during the game itself? What if there is this special age period you like and would like to spend a few more turns in that age?
Press a few buttons and slow the game down. The result would be that workers work slower, you get less hammers (shields) per turn, less of everything. Science points accumulate slower & so does culture and everything else. All you get by slowing down the game is more turns to move units around - say to wage war. All players would be equally affected by this, of course.
So if you were to slow the game down enough, you could play 10 turns that would accumulate the same science/hammer/money etc... points as 1 turn during normal speed would do. the bonus is you got 10 turns to move units around instead of 1. This lets you drag out your favorite ages.
Now what if you really hate an age or time period, and/or are currently are not at war with anyone. You could speed up the game. So if you speed the game up fast enough, you could complete 1 turn and get the same benefits as 5 or 10 turns.
How would this work from a practical standpoint? Well, you could have gamespeed in terms of %. 100% being normal gamespeed. Slow or increase the game speed by 1/2 increaments. The gamespeed % would be included in the code as a modifier for all other aspects of the game. So if we slow the game to have 3 turns instead of 1, we would be playing at 33% (2 turns is 50% and 4 turns is 25%, 10 turns is 10%). This 33% gamespeed would then tell the game to only give you 33% of the hammers/money/science you would normally get per turn.
I guess the main reason to slow down the game is to wage war and the main reason to speed up a game is if you are at peace and have nothing to do.
What do you all think of this idea?
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sophist
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If differing time rates are well-balanced in the game, it doesn't seem like switching rates during a game would necessarily unbalance it. I'm sure there are ways the player could game it so that it happened at maximum advantage to the player as opposed to the AI, but that seems like a long way to go for relatively little benefit, and it's relatively easily solved by only allowing this to happen, say, every 20th turn or something.
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sophist
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Yeah, lots of things don't have to be balanced if you don't do them. Being able to do this would make it easier to find balance bugs, though.
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MattPilot
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Tulsa, OK
Dec 2003
time: 05:18
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I was more thinking along the lines of hitting either the + or - key on the numpad.
Maybe only have 1 or 2 preset levels of speeds. Instead of going from year to year, it goes from month to month, and until that year is finished, you can't go back to the normal speed setting. This way, nothing would be lost do to rounding.
This feature would really only be useful in wars. Would you like to play WW2 in 6 turns, or in 72 turns (6years * 12 months).
The main purpose would be to have a war with the technologies available at the time of the war. Nothing i hate more than starting a war and having my 'newest' units that just reached the front line be obsolete by the time they get there.
Also, since production would also be slowed down, the player/enemy would have to rely more on DRAFTING soldiers from the population than building units, since it would take more turns to build the same unit, than it would in a normal gamespeed.
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sophist
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I don't think anyone intends the AI to have this capability. It would make sense to eliminate this from multiplayer games.
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sophist
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The game speed would be adjusted globally, but only the human player controls it.
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Vince278
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I imagine the time scale can only be changed in a mod. (going from 20 year turns to 5 year turns, etc.)
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Bogdanovist
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Different options for game speed, extending on the rudimentary accelerated production option in Civ3 (and later versions of Civ2 from memory) would be good, some like it slow, some like it fast so it increase the chances of pleasing everybody, but changing the speed mid-game makes no sense at all.
Yes there are problems such as your army beecoming obselete in transit to the front etc but changing the speed clearly unbalances the game and becomes a tactical chaoice. If you've got more troops than the AI, slow down production to maintain your advantage, if you've got less, speed production up to make the fractional difference less in a shorter number of turns. This is a one of the more ludicrous suggestions I've heard for Civ4 so far!
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sophist
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I'm guessing there's more to it than simply accelerating production. Also, that issue can be mostly avoided by allowing speed changes only at 20 turn multiples. Or calling it a cheat and not counting the score.
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Lancer
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Oregon Coast, USA! or Bohol, Philippines!
Apr 1999
time: 05:18
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Wouldn't changing the amount of years per turn accomplish this?
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sophist
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That just lengthens the game, which doesn't accomplish anything if you don't increase tech cost, reduce production, etc.
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Jerh9e1k5
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quote:
Originally posted by Solver
And when you slow your time in a war just that, production slows down. Yet your units can march through enemy lands just as fast, only now they can conquer half the enemy empire before he can produce a single unit even due to slower production. |
This is definately the main problem with the idea. The only way I can think of to solve this would be to make the number of turns it would take your units to get to the enemy longer (basically make the number of tiles between the cities larger, which would make the map much larger). Say you are researching and producing 20% slower, make the map 20% larger.
What do you guys think?
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sophist
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quote:
Originally posted by Jerh9e1k5
Say you are researching and producing 20% slower, make the map 20% larger.
What do you guys think? |
That doesn't make sense. How do you do 1.2 tiles? You can expand 5 tiles into 6, but what happens if those 5 tiles are all different types; what terrain is the new one? What happens when you speed up again and the 6 tiles turn into 5? What if you've put irrigation on it?
Find an LCD computer monitor and run it at 1.2x its native resolution to see the problem.
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lebensraum
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don't be silly.
of course if you expand the map, you have to adjust all the terrain improvements. i don't see a problem with that.
why do you think we have computers in the first place? they're supposed to take care of all that stuff automatically.
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sophist
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You're missing the point. Of course the game engine will adjust it for you, but it has to do so according to some sensible, intuitive rules. Expanding the map like that doesn't work.
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10-07-2005 04:08
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