28-03-2002 23:38									#1
	A changing game turn length Support Apolyton or Terrorists Win

In the "From CIV3 to Clash" thread I said:

quote: Warfare and Economy In Civ, wars last hundreds or thousands of years. That's absurd. In part the failure comes from ignoring you need men to fight wars, which are subtracted from your productive population. As far as I know, Clash will take that into consideration, so it'll be in fact impossible to be in war for such long periods w/o seriously destroying your productive capacities. But even with this, I think the relation between economy and war can't be in Clash like it is in Civ. In Civ there's a factory-like production of units. When in war, you put all or most of your cities to build units and send them to the front, all in a continuous fashion. You actually create a constant flow of units. That wasn't the case IRL. Not at least prior to the 20th century. That incorrect treatment of units production is the one that creates the endless wars when the two adversaries have similar production rates. Certainly this is very related to the length of the game turn and the conflict between the "civil turn" and the "military turn". If the game turn lasts 25 years, then it's quite realistic that your cities produce units as a flow, even if you're not in the industrial era. What isn't realistic is troops from either side being unable to defeat the other side within the first 25 years. The discussion about the military turn vs. the civil turn was long. What was concluded was that we can't have a realistic game without playing with very short game turns (like a month). That'd make the game too long. On the other side, we can have a shorter game, reasonable in terms of real time, but as long as some bizarre effects are accepted. I don't want to bring back to life that discussion and I beg you all not to do it because if you do Mark's gonna kill me. All I want to say is the player should be able to control the "bizarre level" (or the realism level). What I propose is to adjust units' movement points according to the length of the game turn, so units move more as the time involved is longer. Of course, with some limit to avoid too much bizarreness in mobility. And at the same time, allow the player to change the length of the game turn whenever he wants. With this, people who care a lot about realism, like me, can set the turn length to something like a few months when at war and enjoy a realistic war in terms of the relation between production and movement, while at the same time players with other priorities can sacrifice realism at will. And you can switch back and forth whenever you want, choosing when you want high realism and when it isn't of much importance. (I proposed something very similar a long time ago, but to my knowledge there was never a decision about it)

LDiCesare replied:

quote: We have to maintain troops. A good idea exists in MOO3, which could be useful: TRoops are either active (you can move them) and cost a lot to maintain, or passive (you don't even see them) but cost little to maintain. That can be a good way to tell people it's a good idea to have short wars rather than be at war at all times. This could be better discussed in the military threads I think.

I think LDiCesare's idea is very good to reduce the extension of wars, but in this thread I invite you all to concentrate on the length of the game turn in general, not constrained to war stuff only.

Mark said:

quote: I think FE we can leave the player in control of the time scale as you suggest, so you can have "realistic" wars. But they'd have to be infrequent, or you'd never be able to finish the game!

I believe once you give the control to the player, he can freely choose how long his game is gonna be. If he wants to play just one very long game, so be it. Other players will choose differently.

In the military thread LDiCesare added:

quote: Rodrigo suggests we could change the timescale in order to adjust to small wars. This means tweaking the non-military models by a scale factor. Thus, we should have a parameter used a bit everywhere which is turn-length. However, I see a glitch with this proposal: If AI1 and AI2 want to wage a war, can they switch the turn length down to 1 month for the player? If the player changes the turn length, how does it affect far-away peaceful AIs? Worse, how does it affect other players in multi-player? It is not that I don't like the idea, I believe it is hardly applicable in multi player, and may be difficult for the AI to handle.

and Mark said:

quote: On the turn-length thing... I think it could work with the following prohibitions: It works for Single-player only, and only the player is in charge of the change. I *think* it can be made to work under those circumstances. We will need rules for how to handle varying time scales as we go from antiquity (long turns for everything but military) to modern (short turns). So this is the matter of putting in a switch under player control. If it doesn't work, then we can get rid of it, but it seems to me it should work fine. Since some players like Rodrigo may really value the option, and it should be very little work, it seems to me we should provisionally support it, and only ban it if it turns into a quagmire.

I think LDiCesare is right when he says is hard to implement for multiplayer. In that case the best is maybe to let players decide together if they want to change the turn length. If no agreement, game continues with its current scheme.

But I believe, even if we don't implement the "change time scale button", that all models should consider explicitly the length of turns. That'd give us a lot of freedom to determine the way the time scale automaticaly changes along the game and freedom to define scenarios with whatever time scale we want, w/o worrying about the relation between game progress and time. It would make models and the game consistent and very solid regarding time. And gives players a lot more flexibility. FE, I'm the type of player who doesn't enjoy much the 20th century. I get bored playing one year at a time. If the game is able to consistently change the time scale to, say 5 years for each turn, then I'd be happier.

What others think?

	28-03-2002 23:57									#2
	Put an end to popups!

For multi-player i'd haveto say no changing at all after the game begins. The reason is that player A and B (out of ABC) are having a small war and want to slow down the time-frame for a short period to help with their war. C doesn't mind because they say it'll be fairly short so C goes along. This war howver, isn't short and continues with no end adding more and more AI countries. While C over yonder far away from the action is now forced to sit idly by doing very little and can't ask to have the turns increaded successfully because A and B are having too much fun.

For single-player games, i can think this is okay, but we'd haveto do a lot of rescaling on the models.

	29-03-2002 02:38									#3
	Increase Your PM Length

I believe quite strongly that issues relating to multi-player games should be addressed when we write a multi-player game.

Trying to take account of every possible (and impossible) extension to the game that might happen some time in the next 20 years or so will only have the effect of stopping development in its tracks.

On the other hand, the great asset that Clash has is the ability to try out things that nobody else has tried (polygons, anyone?). This, in turn, will put us in the forefront of game innovation. And that is where I want to be.

I have always hated the game turn/military turn system, but could not think of any alternative except to allow the scenario to set, particularly, the military game turn length.

The concept of allowing the player to set the turn lengths is like a breath of fresh air. Most of the infrastructure for immediate implementation of the concept are already in place (a big plus with me).

I am much in favour of adding this to the increasingly immanent Demo 7 (I just created my first settler unit - then the program crashed - oh well...).

On the other hand, there are other issues to be resolved - can the AI set the game turn length when they want to have a war?

Cheers

	29-03-2002 05:29									#4
	Support Apolyton or Terrorists Win

quote: Originally posted by Gary Thomas I have always hated the game turn/military turn system, but could not think of any alternative except to allow the scenario to set, particularly, the military game turn length. The concept of allowing the player to set the turn lengths is like a breath of fresh air. Most of the infrastructure for immediate implementation of the concept are already in place (a big plus with me).

Hmmm, what exactly are you envisioning. What I was talking about was changing the length of the "civilian turn" while leaving the military turn about the same. For one thing I think military turns longer than a month will get to the point where you couldn't possibly issue orders that could handle all the contingencies. That is why we picked a month in the first place. Mil. turns being shorter than a month is I guess doable.

quote: I am much in favour of adding this to the increasingly immanent Demo 7 (I just created my first settler unit - then the program crashed - oh well...).

Well, econ isn't up to varying turn length at this point. Its on my list, but it isn't there yet. I guess I'll wait 'till I hear exactly what you want to vary in the near future before I say more.

quote: On the other hand, there are other issues to be resolved - can the AI set the game turn length when they want to have a war?

When the AI pays for the game, then it can set turn lengths .

	29-03-2002 06:21									#5
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization III: Complete

quote: Hmmm, what exactly are you envisioning.

I expressed myself badly. What I really had in mind was a variable numbe rof military turns per economic turn. This could be added in a few minutes.

Economics turns would not be affected.

Cheers

	29-03-2002 07:00									#6
	Increase Your PM Length

quote: Originally posted by Gary Thomas What I really had in mind was a variable numbe rof military turns per economic turn. This could be added in a few minutes.

Ah, yep trivial to do. And much less imbalancing than what I *thought* you wanted. However, not without issues. As currently coded the military dudes will run out of supplies after the first run-through I think. Though that'd be easy to fix. There might be other issues, though I can't think of any at the moment.

Glad you can try out something you really like on the cheap Just don't confuse our poor players too much, I've already got 'em on the edge with the econ model

	29-03-2002 07:18									#7
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization: The Boardgame

quote: As currently coded the military dudes will run out of supplies after the first run-through I think.

When I play it, all my troops are always out of supplies. I thought that that was the way it was supposed to be...

Cheers

	29-03-2002 18:10									#8
	Increase the size of your Attachments

quote: When I play it, all my troops are always out of supplies. I thought that that was the way it was supposed to be...

I got that too, but it isn't supposed to work that way. Must be a D7 bug.

I think that variable turn length requires integrating turnlength variable in all the models, and in particular the non-military AI models: Diplomacy shouldn't be affected by the change of pace.

	29-03-2002 18:20									#9
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

I fixed the military supplies bug with the code I sent to you guys on Mar 23. Please check again because military supplies should work now. The only place you should consistently see out-of-supply now, is if you build units like a madman for many turns and get to the point were the civs economic base is unable to support them. That's a feature, not a bug

	30-03-2002 02:58									#10
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization: The Boardgame

And, of course when you have a settler unit and no squares.

Cheers

	30-03-2002 03:14									#11
	Support Apolyton, pre-order Civilization IV

That Would cause problems.

But there is a fix available. Just load up the supplies enough for X number of turns of wandering when the scenario fires up. You can see how its done in the old Attila scenario for the Huns, who had no squares either.