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The diplomat
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Terre Haute, IN USA
Sep 1999
time: 23:23
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In civ a turn would represent like 10 years in the middle ages, and represent 1 year in the late game.
I was wondering, how will that work in CB? How long will a turn be?
The reason I bring this up, is because if a turn will represent less than a year, then you could probably add some cool stuff.
For example, if each turn represented a season. (ie 1 turn for fall, 1 turn for winter, 1 turn for spring, 1 turn for summer) then you could probably have different food production bonuses depending on the season.
You could also attribute different attrition rates for each turn depending on the season. For example, during winter turn, the attrition rate could go up, to represent the difficulty of long military marches in the cold winter weather. This could make war more interesting because it would actually make war more favorable or less favorable depending on what turn it is. A player might decide to wait for the summer turn to start a military campaign, and they might want to avoid a long protracted war because when the winter turn comes, their troops would take attrition damage.
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ravagon
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Australia
Sep 1999
time: 13:23
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I rather like having 1 turn = 1 (or maybe 1.5) months.
IMO it gives a better sense of immersion if a season is several phases long and also allows for better and more intricate planning.
For example, a single turn assault on an opponents food/field region during the summer harvest would want to hold/pillage the area for several turns to decimate stores - the defender likewise has a little time to try and recover/retake said zone and perhaps to begin making contingency plans for food shortages in the next year - Capturing somebody else's food stores or getting on better terms with a faction with a surplus perhaps?
I'm taking it as given that there would be seasonal effects in production/revenue on a turn-by-turn basis?
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pg
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europa universalis 2(i haven't played the first one) has days. it's great imo.
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tniem
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Hope College
Apr 2000
time: 00:23
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The thing to be careful with is if you wait to decide how long a turn is and you have already wired in growth, production, and loyality equations for each turn and it doesn't seem realistic. If for example you can have 10% growth per turn, this would not be possible if a turn is a month long. Likewise, if it takes twenty years to build a unit, that will seem absurd. The game being good is most important but having a bad time scale might hurt as people try to get into the game.
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Velociryx
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of Candle'Bre
Apr 1999
time: 05:23
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Very true. I really like all the possibilities that making month long, or even week long turns represents, but it opens up a whole 'nother can of worms that will have divergent crowds screaming for our heads.
This is something we've discussed at various times before, and we're still wrestling with the answer. Because we're still wrestling with the answer, a turn, for the time being, has no named time boundary....it simply is. The reason for this (and for the difficulty in nailing that particular issue down) lies in the fact that 4x games are pulled in two entirely separate directions.
Here's the example I've used before:
Candle'Bre is approximately 750miles long, east-to-west, and in places, as much as 350 miles high (north-to-south).
A group of troops can march say....20 miles a day if you push 'em pretty good.
So....if a turn is a week, then in one week's time, you get troops moving 140 miles (with cavalry moving even further). Using this scale then, in six week's time, troops can march from one end of CB to the other. That's realistic in terms of how fast troops can move, but it REALLY doesn't work on this map, because it means that Infantry could prolly go through 2-3 territories a turn, and cav could easily make 4. On a map with only 60 provinces, that's no good, as it makes any sort of defense nearly impossible.
So....let's say we solve that problem by settling on a turn = 2 weeks. That brings the troop movement into the "zone" we've got it in right now. Cool. But....
Later on, when we start doing stuff like variable build times for provincial improvements, the system breaks down. The Sagrada Familia is a cathedral in Europe. Took 80 years to build. If 1 turn = 2 weeks, that means that to build a cathedral, it would take 1,680 turns.
Nobody would ever build anything, cos the game would be over before anything finished building.
Now, granted, that *particular* cathedral is pretty fancy-schmancy, so let's say that in reality it would only take 10 years to build an "average" cathedral. Okay, but that's still 210 turns of building. Too much.
So, let's make a turn = 1 month. Now, a cathedral takes 105 turns to bulid. Still too much. Let's say then, that thanks to magical assistance, we can build said cathedral in a year. Better. Cathedral = 12 turns. Liveable. It's one of the more expensive improvements anyway, so it *should* take a while.
But now look what we've done....the warmonger grognards will say....WHAT?! You mean in a month's time, my infantry can only cross into one piddling province! That's not realistic!
And they'd be right.
So...therein lies the conflict.
We balance things so that the troop movements are realistic, then we sacrifice believability on the builder end. We reverse it, and the warring aspect is no longer believeable.
A tough thing to balance indeed, but if anybody's got any ideas on it, I'm all ears! 
-=Vel=-
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cyclotron7
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Drowning in Schnitzel
Jan 2001
time: 21:23
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No problem.
The primary concern, realism-wise, is armies, and not building things.
Why? Well, because of two things: One, the "law of gaming realism," and two, blatant cheating.
What law, you say? Well, that people attach realism to what they can associate with. Everybody knows how long people take to walk somewhere, and they know how fast a car or boat goes. Thus, 99% of the realism complaints you see on the forums are about unit speed and the fact that it takes a boat 50 years to circumnavigate the globe.
But consider improvements and wonders: In the ancient age, you can find examples of atrocious lack of realism in building a temple, say, that takes 1000 years to build. A simple factory takes 20 or 30 years. But you don't her complaints about them.
I like to be as realistic all the time as the next man, but when it comes down to it we are making a game and not a textbook. It comes down to this: what facet of realism can be compromised with the least lack of overall realism? Obviously, the way to do this is to keep unit movement very realistic, at the expense of building times.
Secondly, and one of my favorite activities, is cheating. CB is a magical world and I'll be damned if wizards who can create floods and throw fire can't lift big rocks. Of all applications of magic, construction may be the most mundane but it certainly is the most valuable to a society.
My recommendation is two weeks. For the scale we have, it is vital that troop movement be fairly represented. People playing the game don't know the milage of CB, so as long as the unit movement looks ballpark correct it works.
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tniem
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Hope College
Apr 2000
time: 00:23
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I am going to second cyclotron's thoughts. I think that movements should be the most practical. Building time can be justified by magic as he said or with some other abstraction. So I would recommend this angle.
But be careful as to how fast the population can grow. You do not want to have a turn be two weeks and see 5% pop. growth. That would be very impractical.
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The diplomat
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Terre Haute, IN USA
Sep 1999
time: 23:23
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quote:
Originally posted by Velociryx
We balance things so that the troop movements are realistic, then we sacrifice believability on the builder end. We reverse it, and the warring aspect is no longer believeable.
A tough thing to balance indeed, but if anybody's got any ideas on it, I'm all ears!
-=Vel=- |
I'd probably go with 1 turn = 1 month. I think it sounds like a decent compromise.
Furthermore, I happen to have a little idea that might help the war side of things.
Give each province a certain number of movement points based on its size. Large provinces would have more movement points than smaller provinces. This number would represent how many movement points it costs to travel through the province.
Now, armies would have a certain number of movement points that would be spent each time they travel through a province and engage in battle.
Say an army had 10 movement points, and small provinces have a movement cost of 3 and large province has a movement cost of about 8 for example. Then, an army could move through 3 small provinces and engage in 1 battle all in a single turn (3x3 + 1 = 10). But it could only move through 1 large province with 2 movements points left at the end of the turn.
Now here is the innovative part: Let players spend as many movement points as they want. if the army ends it's turn with movement points left, then it's combat effectiveness would increase (troops are well rested). However, if the army ends the turn with a negative number of movement points because they used more points than they had, then the army would suffer lower combat effectiveness and a probability of desertions. (this would represent the fact that you pushed your troops too hard)
This does 2 things for the game:
1)It makes warmongers happy because they can get around the 1 province per turn problem.
2) It adds more decision-making and strategy: do I push my troops hard and maybe conquer 2 or 3 provinces in a single turn, but suffer desertions and weaken troops, or do I go easy on my troops but lose momentum?
In terms of build times. Just approximate it! As long as the build time is reasonable, I don't think anyone will complain. After all, nobody is going to say:"Hey wait a minute! It took the equivalent of 4 years to build this cathedral, but in real life it would only have taken 3 years!"
Remember that there are many factors that would go in to how fast it would take to build something. How many workers? How many hours a day did they work? Did they have all the equipment and ressources? Did half of them fall sick in the middle of the project? Were there any major work accidents that slowed the project?
My point is that it is impossible to be 100% realistic in this area since the game could not possibly accurately predict all those factors.
Using your example of the cathedral. if the province had all the neccesary ressources and say 5000 workers, it could probably complete the cathedral in about 1 year, right? So, if a turn = 1 month, it would take a dozen turns give or take a few. That sounds fair.
I think the important thing is that the number of workers on the project should play a realistic part in build time. A province with 500 wokers is not going to complete that cathedral in the same amount of time as a province with 5000 workers! This would definitely encourage the player to improve provinces into nice, large and populous provinces.
Large provinces should be better than smaller provinces for some things like production and worse in other things like corruption.
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Velociryx
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of Candle'Bre
Apr 1999
time: 05:23
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A very innovative idea re: movement points and variability within provinces! That would solve a number of issues, and put us on the path toward microtiling (which is where we eventually want to wind up).
I disagree with the notion that there will be no complaints whatsoever re: build times tho....there will be. I can't count the number of threads I've seen ragging on Civ3 because in the early game it can take upwards of a thousand years to build a simple library or somesuch. We'll get that too, I am certain.
I'm equally certain we'll hear from the warmongering crowd that "well, if magic plays a role in construction times, then why can't it play an equal role in combat?!" We'll get that, but even when we do, I can't say that I find those compelling enough arguments to not give this idea some serious consideration simply because of what all it brings into the game in added play value.
And Cyclo is correct, even if/when there are complaints about build times, they will be nowhere near as high in number as they would be if we made troop movement unrealistic. So in terms of making the MOST people happy while preserving the greater part of the system, then fudging on the build times seems the way to go. The lesser of the two evils, in any case.
So....I'm gonna write something up off the top of my head, based on the comments here, and let's see where it leads us:
Alpha One - Conjectural turn-timeframe system
Conjectural turn length: 1 Turn = 1 month
3 turns in a season
12 turns in a year
***
Areas of immediate impact:
I. Troop Movement
Troops will be given movement points, depending on their classification. Infantry-based troops will get 12 movement points to spend each turn.
Mounted troops will get 24 points each turn.
Siege Engines will get 10 points each turn.
Since Candle'Bre's troops do not travel individually, the movement points for the army will be equal to the movement points of the slowest unit IN a given army, but movement points will be tracked on a per-unit basis, such that players can opt to "switch out" slow moving troops, leaving them behind, and continue to move their faster troops.
Every action costs movement points. Moving through a province costs X points, where X is some range between 4 and 24 points to move through. Movement cost must be paid in full to move through a given province. If a unit (or units) runs out of movement points, then the computer must "remember" how many movement points those units have already "paid" to move through the province, such that they will only have to pay the remainder of the cost to move through that province on the following turn.
Attacking - It costs 4 points to launch an attack. This may set up situations where opposing armies end their turn in the same province, but lack the points remaining to actually initiate an attack.
Getting extra points - troops may be issued a "forced march" order, with each forced march order reducing their A/D values by -1, while generating an additional 4 points of movement (we may, or may not want to build in a rule that says if two opposing armies wind up in the same province but the aggressor lacks the points to initiate an attack, then he MUST issue a forced march order and resolve the attack that turn...or, we may just wanna leave them sitting there).
Not using all your movement points - troops that do not use the full measure of their movement points are better rested than troops required to spend the full measure of their points. Thus, these troops gain an advantage in combat. For every 2 unspent movement points an army has remaining, the player will have the option to have all troops IN that army gain one (1) additional HP in battle. This HP gain is temporary (the current battle only), and if damage is taken, these "extra" hp's are always the first ones lost (note: obviously, this will not work with the game in its current form, as units have no Hp's yet, but I'm thinking more along the lines of including this when we begin to work on more advanced builds of the game's features). The player will also have the option NOT to spend these leftover points in this manner, and make additional moves after the battle has been concluded.
Multiple attacks: some units, blessed with an abundance of movement points would theoretically be able to launch multiple attacks per turn, either wholly on the merit of their mp's or by making well-considered use of forced marches to set up an additional attack. This may prove unbalancing, given our smallish map size, and will have to be tested very carefully. If it proves unbalancing, then we can simply make a rule that an army may only issue one attack order per turn, but may use any remaining mp's for additional provincial moves of a non-combat nature.
Growth rate: When we factor in national and provincial growth rates, we will need to annualize these totals, and then divide by twelve, such that each turn, players see 1/12 of their total growth rates.
Build times: Build times (a thing which I'll need to rework in the advanced version's economic model) will be based on units of production.
Each build will have a set build time, based on some "normal" or "standardized" number of work crews that would normally be assigned to it. Decreasing the number of work crews from the baseline will increase total build time. Adding additional work crews will occupy an increasing percentage of the provincial population with the task at hand, but will (to a point....we'll need to factor in the concept of diminishing returns here), increase the overall build time of the improvement in question.
An example:
Let's say that 1 "work crew" = 20 build points.
A library is "normally" fitted out to be built with 150g (or whatever it winds up being) and 2 work crews, with a construction time under these conditions of 8 turns (8 months to build a library, from start to finish). From this, we can conclude that the library will cost a total of 320 build points.
Additional work crews may be hired at a rate of 10g each, and these will generate (x-2) construction points, where x is the total number of the build points that the crew assigned immediately before this latest one generated.
So....if you want your library in 8 turns, you pay your 150g, assign your two work crews, and you're off and running.
If you want to increase the build time, then you assign additional work crews.
The third crew assigned would cost you an additional 10g, and generate you 18 extra build points per turn.
The fourth crew would cost 10g, and generate an extra 16 build points per turn, and so on.
When the accumulated build points = the build points that the library costs to complete (320), the building is finished. Any excess production is simply lost, and is not carried over onto any future building projects (cost overruns, or somesuch)...the main point is that you wanted it faster, and you got it faster, the extra "cost" in lost build points is simply a side effect of hurrying and having so many cooks in the kitchen, as it were.
Provinces are limited in the number of work crews they can have, based on population. For every 1000 citizens in a given province, you get one work crew point (or something....this will have to be tweaked and closely considered, obviously....we can arrange it to be something close to this though, by making sure that the rest of the population is busy farming, or doing other stuff, and thus, is not available for consideration as additional work crews....we could also allow players to micromanage this, such that they could, if they wanted/needed additional work crews in the short term, pull people off of farms, or out of libraries etc., and force them onto work crews, which would prolly carry some kind of happiness hit....to say nothing of lost food production). This means that a large, populous province can either work on several things simultaneously, or concentrate their efforts to build one thing at a time, but build it very quickly. Smaller provinces will not have this luxury.
Food production: Would, naturally, be highest during the harvesting season, but depending on tech level, we could build in a crop rotation scheme, such that players who focused on infrastructure techs may be able to set up an additional harvest of crops. We will also need granaries, to store the sudden excess in food, so that the provinces don't starve in the leaner months.
All this, of course, makes it possible to do more with floods, freezes, droughts, and the like, to impact both overall food production on a per-province basis, but also to serve as combat modifiers in certain provinces (we'll need to design a weather matrix for Candle'Bre, to approximate seasonal changes in the climate, and their effect on troop movement, hp, morale, and food production).
And...prolly boatloads of stuff I've forgotten....but I must say, I'm taken with the idea@!
-=Vel=-
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ravagon
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Australia
Sep 1999
time: 13:23
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Excellent. Some hard numbers to play with. 
Ok, for starters, with a total map area of just over 250 000 sq km (Sorry, miles  ) and a rough average population density of 10 per (at most I'd guess for a pre-industrial society) you'll have a total pop in the very low millions range. Split this over your 5 factions + neutrals (I'm not including Nillrogs ) and you have a pop base in the low to mid hundred thousands. I doubt this is enough to sustain a construction on the scale of a cathedral (or at least what might be termed a cathedral today) - ergo cathedrals and other infrastructure, economic, military, whatever, at the same "level" are correspondingly smaller, ie: build times measured in a few years at most (hence *10-12 in months for build times in turns) rather than in decades.
Re: Rush-building, I rather like the Moo system in which you assign extra resources but only up to the point of doubling your standard production rate - ie: No cathedrals in a couple of months - no matter how many people you put on the project.
The military movement aspect I think works rather well. ie: about 20 miles in a day sounds good - (although I tend to think this might be pushing it just a little) - ergo units can cross several provinces in a turn.
The exception being that they're out of supply or somesuch if going through enemy territory and that they can't actually control a province unless they spend a whole turn in occupation perhaps?
In this turn they'd be engaged in deploying various sub-units in pursuit of routed enemy formations, hunting down dissenters and to individual pop-centers to assert control and install new military occupation governers - otherwise no revenue or supply can be drawn from such a province.
The magic aspect to construction may be a slightly different consideration - for example - the ability to create a wall of stone (or a deep trench?) to impede an oncoming enemy cavalry formation does not necessarily translate well into the greater degree of finesse required for building something like a temple or somesuch - to last several decades or more.
"Er, my liege, that granery the court wizard rebuilt two days ago has collapsed again, for the third time this week actually, and the additional houses he built yesterday, er well perhaps the less said the better... Might I suggest we try for a slightly more permanent approach this time? One that doesn't involve digging our people out of collapsed buildings? I would have taken this to the Magister directly but, well, after what happened to the last advisor with regards to that little aquaduct affair ... "
[Edit: typos  ]
Last edited by ravagon on 25-11-2002 at 09:13
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tniem
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Hope College
Apr 2000
time: 00:23
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I am liking the ideas you guys have.
I have a couple questions, are the different provinces the only places you can move (i.e. these are the tiles that your troops can move through) and once you get there you are there with no moving within each province? How many provinces are there?
Sorry about these questions being repeats for you, I am just trying to get a sense of how you guys are up to.
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11-11-2002 19:40
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