Side effects of changing time scale [Archive]

Philippe

03-02-2007, 20:58

I hate multi-year turns. There was a great board game about Charlemagne once and I couldn't play it because I couldn't wrap my mind around the concept while looking at a map that cried out for less than grand strategic thinking. And I had a similar problem with a Peloponesian War game, which was really a shame because it was designed to play solitaire and the dynamics were conceptually brilliant.

But I digress.

There's a line in one of the text files somewhere that reads the equivalent of something like one turn = 2 years. I gather if that gets changed to one turn = 0.5 years time will seem to flow at a vanilla RTW pace.

Leaving aside the issue of exactly where that line is that needs changing, and not worrying about any other files that might need to be modified to accommodate that particular change, I have a few concerns about vanilla RTW time ported to M2TW.

Will it interfere with any basic game mechanics, and will it throw timed historical events badly out of sync with actual chronology?

What effect will it have on the rate of successful schtupping? I've already been amused several times to see Princesses give birth on the same turn that they married. Does this mean they had one in the oven when they stood at the altar, or does it mean that they got married towards the beginning of a vanilla two year period, which left them with more than enough time to mess around in the marriage bed and get in the family way (legitimately). If you speed time up to one turn = six months, will they still spawn the morning after their weddings, or will they have the decency to wait a turn or two?

[Historical note: although people haven't really changed much over the last ten thousand years, the chastity of Princesses was a closely guarded commodity in the Middle Ages -- at least until they were married. Having said that, of the dozens of weddings that I've been to my favorite was a few years ago when the bride was attended by two of her offspring by the groom, one of them old enough to stand. But she was only a modern princess].

Another concern that I have is with what may be described as timed events. If you make one turn = one year, will the Mongols invade when they should, will the Black Death strike in the mid-fourteenth century, will Columbus discover the Philippines (or whatever it was he thought he reached) at the end of the fifteenth? To have this kind of event occurring four times earlier than it should would be a bit disconcerting.

And finally, won't the rate of building construction and economic activity be four times as fast as in the vanilla game? I have enough trouble with sixteenth century fortifications and ahistorical plate armor on generals as it is, but the idea of putting the twelfth century renaissance on steroids is a bit frightening.

Any informed thoughts on this would be appreciated before I start worrying about messing with the internal mechanics of the game.

Quillan

03-02-2007, 21:37

It will have one intended effect and one unintentional effect. The intended effect is that it will do nothing for the aging of characters. It's hardcoded in the game that the various family members only age 1 year for every 2 turns (regardless of the timescale). This was so that at the default scale you didn't have family members dropping like flies; a diplomat would die before he could walk halfway across the world. They age properly at the 2 turns per year scale, but incorrectly at any other setting. The unintentional effect has to do with the endgame. All events are based on the number of years since the campaign start, so those will happen correctly. However, if you change from the default scale, you tend to win so early you won't experience anything late. In 3 long campaigns, I've won every one of them between 1300 and 1350 AD, and have never experienced the Black Death, never seen the Timurids, never made it to the New World, etc. That's what will happen.

Bob the Insane

03-02-2007, 21:48

I may be corrected but I believe you do not need to worry about such things... Historical events are tied to a date I believe and as such do not occur early.

The are some niggles though with population growth as it grows but a percentage every turn thus your city of 10,000 will grow to the a certain size in 100 turns whether 200 years have passed or 50...

The build speed is suddenly much higher which matters more for the more advanced buildings such as a cathedral which takes say 12 turns... In default that is a reasonable 24 years, but in the 0.5 timescale a mere 6...

But simply increasing build times by 4x has effects, now a simple church take 4 turns and the Pope only gives you 5 turns in his build a church mission... And I noted a distinct lack of priests in the AI factions when I had made that change is a test game of the 0.5 timescale mod I was playing around with...

In the test games I also found that CA had showed good judgement in balancing the game for 225 turns as it still takes around that time to win even if not being too aggressive... Which in the 0.5 timescale only get you to just shy of 1200...

The good point where the slow tech development gave you much more time to play with the different variety of troop before better ones came along...

Another unforseen issue, the HRE's early troop are inferior to various Italian ones and the HRE normal getting beaten into submission every time if the AI is controlling it...

I often thought a good idea would be to combine the 0.5 timescale with a era's style game, say starting in 1203 for a High medieval game...

Goofball

03-02-2007, 22:46

Like you Philippe, I found myself almost, well, offended by the idea that I should just turn a blind eye to my characters ageing in such a whacked-out manner. I switched to the 0.50 timescale some time ago and haven't looked back. I have found no problems with balance. The only drawback (as already mentioned by Quillan) is that you will usually win the game before experiencing the Timurids, the black death, the New World, or even the Mongols. To remedy this, I downloaded a handy little tool called the MedManager, which allows you to modify the date (and other things) of saved games. Now I am able to go in whenever I want, and "time warp" my campaign ahead in time in order to hit specific historic events.

1. Go to the D/L section, Files button on the top bar.
2. D/L MedManager.
3. Read the instructions.
4. Install it.
5. Launch the program.
6. Open you save game using MedManager.
7. Modify the date etc... to your liking.
8. Launch M2:TW and continue your campaign.

Agent Smith

03-03-2007, 00:42

The events in the game, oddly enough, are coded to occur in regards to the year and not the turn number. So, changing the years per turn will actually not effect the year in which events occur, only how long it takes to get there.

That being said, a 0.5 years per turn scale would lead to a 900 turn campaign, taking 200 turns to move ahead a century. So, it may take about 280 turns for the Mongols to even invade if I remember correctly, which is about the length of a normal vanilla campaign!

For me, I don't mind, because I like taking things in a slow, realistic fashion, but that could bother others. You can always change the year when events are coded to occur to make them happen sooner if you'd like.

As for the princess/birth thing, there is nothing to worry about when you think about it. Each turn is a six month period, so any event in that turn could technically happen at any point during the turn. So, for the summer turn, perhapps the princess got married in the first month of the turn, and if she gives birth the next turn, she could technically give birth at the very end of winter. That is actually a year difference, and not just six months, so it works out in a very pious fashion :2thumbsup:

Philippe

03-03-2007, 01:33

If events are keyed to year dates rather than turns, then the main obstacle to using six-month turns is that it puts the 12th century renaissance on steroids.

I've only started playing the game, but I'm assuming that if you play the game at the nomal pace, by the time you get to the fifteenth century you'll have a little light artillery, a few handgunners, a heavy cavalry contingent decked out in heavy plate armor, a few infantry units decked out in similar fashion, and a variety of things that just wouldn't have appeared on a battlefield during the time of the Crusades. You would also have a bunch of social and architectural structures that you wouldn't find in an earlier period, like big post-gothic cathedrals and a network of guildhalls.

If you put the 12th century renaissance on steroids by playing at one quarter speed, you'll probably get all that and the infrastructure that goes with it well before the mongol invasion.

Now I realize that most people's idea of what the Middle Ages looked like is the cavalcade room of armor in New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. But it just ain't so. What you're looking at in that room is really the start of the sixteenth century, and the reason the non-jousting armor is so thick is that they needed something that, among other things, could protect them from primitive firearms. This gets back to my complaint about generals running around in early 16th century armor commanding troops dressed in 12th century-compatible equipment -- fine in the 16th but downright weird looking in the 12th.

[I'm not going to discuss architecture because there's not much that can be done about it. Except at the very end of the time-frame covered by the game, MTW and RTW had more correct walls -- though I haven't seen Byzantine or Middle Eastern fortifications yet].

To avoid fielding ahistorical armies in the 12th century (which is what I'm really talking about) without doing a major overhaul of game mechanics (consider that though the EB team is doing a truly epic and admirable job, they're only up to 0.81 and are probably years away from 2.0 -- tinkering with the guts of a game causes CTD's and other problems) I think what you have to do is slow down the rate that spare cash accumulates. One way to do that is to simply make the cost of everything except upkeep four times as expensive, though even that formula is probably too generous. And a side effect would be that the game would probably get weird on you because the AI would go bankrupt faster than you would. This could lead to a situation where you were the only faction with money, armored troops, and stone buildings, and everyone else would be living in dirt hovels (hey wait a minute, that's what the Middle Ages was actually like...).

I don't know how or where to do a global price increase, or even if it is advisable. But I'm reminded a bit of Asimov's Foundation Trilogy, where the most perfect sociological evolution model gets out of whack and stops reflecting reality after a few years. M2TW is just a game, but it is also a model, but a model that doesn't try to mimic history too closely. It's a pity that there is only one Grand Campaign, rather than three (or perhaps four) for different time periods the way it was done in MTW. I also miss the MTW alternate victory conditions. Conquest of Europe in the Middle Ages by anyone but the Mongols was unthinkable, if for no other reason than the factions didn't even have the resources to control what we would think of as their own countries, let alone anyone else's.

Agent Smith

03-03-2007, 02:11

Another option is to increase the time it takes to build buildings. You could techincally just, for instance, double the building times to compensate for the slower campaign rate. Which, actually, would make it more historical. It often times took a decade or more to build a castle historically anyway. I'm pretty sure the largest buildings take 6 turns to build, so this would make the highest level buildings take 12 turns, or 6 years, to build.

You could take it to the extreme and base the building time on years instead of turns. A six turn building would actually take 12 game years in vanilla time. So, you could always make it 24 turns to build at a 0.5 year per turn level to make it exactly equivalent to the vanilla time frame.

This would make high and late units become available at a more decent time. However, there are two main problems I see with that:

1.) AI would be even more inclined to just build massive militia armies and drain their income; and
2.) Your treasurey would be bursting at the seams from having income coming in and nothing to spend it on.

EDIT:

However, I bet it would make playing factions like Russia very difficult in the early going. They have poor militia troops, and you'd be forced to fight with them early on for quite some time. Might hurt a player's ability to just march in and take territory.

Rhedd

03-03-2007, 03:37

Agent Smith

03-03-2007, 03:51

There is one small thing that won't scale correctly. The appearance and availability of special ancillaries, like Hildegarde von Bingen, Roger Bacon, Joan of Arc, etc., are keyed to a certain range of TURNS, not years. If you care (which I do), changing the time scale will throw these out of whack.

Who knows why they didn't just key these to years, like everything else.

I did not know that. Thanks for the input!

I wonder if those can be modded as well.

Anywho, if anyone tries the increase build times in a game let me know how it turns out.

Foz

03-03-2007, 04:08

Yeah Philippe, you're largely correct about infrastructure and tech level going far ahead of the actual date if you're playing with 6 month turns. There's one BIG noteworthy exception though: you'll still be unable to access any gunpowder units for a LONG time, as all such units require the gunpowder historical event which will still be tied to the year. Where you normally have to work a bit to get the highest barracks level in a city so it will be ready to recruit gunpowder foot troops once it's invented, now you'll be sitting around for ages with the right buildings, but not the invention as the catalyst. Gunpowder and the various invasion events are things that I very much cherish in the game, so I suggest if you intend to play at a different time scale, that you compress the event timeline to be consistent with the slower passage of time so that you continue to experience events. The date the game displays will become entirely meaningless, but at least events will happen at their normal rate. You could of course further modify the build times and such to be consistently longer... but at that point, what is the reason for modifying the time scale at all?

My honest suggestion, though, is just to play the game at default time scale. Don't worry about what year it is - it hardly shows up in the game at all, and in fact I regularly have no idea what the year is in-game. I just watch the turn number go up. I don't even find myself thinking "hey that church takes 4 years to build" -- my brain just knows it's 2 turns, b/c nowhere I look says anything about the years, just turns. It's a turn-based strategy game - as long as you can wrap your brain around the idea of a turn, nothing else matters. The game info will even tell you how many turns you have left, so that's not even troubling. :smile:

pike master

03-03-2007, 07:42

some events are triggered on turn numbers and some on year numbers.

Budwise

03-03-2007, 07:54

I have also have been using the .5 timescale. So far, no bad effects have been noted. I have not reach Gunpower yet, nor have I seen the new world nor have I see an elephant army of the Timerods. But, I have another 800 or so turns left.

If you play this way, for fun, play for a deplomatic type of game. Don't attack unless attacked first, send diplomats out and ally with EVERYONE. Do random acts of kindness and work on your small empire until later before becoming a "Hitler" and develope Blitzcrik type of offensive.

jbguev

03-04-2007, 02:44

Increasing build times may cause population control problems at larger city levels. In addition to changing build times, you can also slow down the rate of growth of populations by modifying the descr_regions.txt file. Check out the SloMod somewhere in the forum.

BTW, MedManager ROCKS!

Werner

03-04-2007, 03:41

Well dont the two different types of game play (Normal and Long) have an effect on the number of years per turn?? Normal is 2 yrs and long is 1 yr/turn right? So take a long game and mod it to being 1/2 time scale and events wont be so out of whack as opposed to going from 2yrs/turn to 6months/turn. Just a thought.

If you mod it to 6months per turn will you still see summer/winter everyother turn on the map like? That would be one disadvantage I could think of...

Why the hell didnt they just make it an option in the game to choose the amount of months/years per turn?

Foz

03-04-2007, 05:28

Why the hell didnt they just make it an option in the game to choose the amount of months/years per turn?
Because obviously they do not intend it to be modified, and I suggest that it does not need to be, so this is a good design decision. The vast majority of game functions are turn-based, not year-based. The only things accomplished by changing the time-per-turn ratio are:

1. You change the number of turns in the campaign.
2. You compress or expand the historical event timeline.
3. You change the temporal meaning of a game turn.

Everything else I can think of is based on the turns, not the years: character ages, build times, movement, missions, AI scripts, income (all economics really), and probably a whole slew of others I'm not even remembering.

#1 seems to be the usual goal of everyone who decides to use a non-standard ratio. Could just be me, but I don't see the need to make the campaign longer. It doesn't take much effort to get rolling with multi-front expansion in this game, and once you do so it's amazing how quickly you pick up extra provinces. We've got what, 225 turns in a long campaign? And need to capture ~45 provinces, plus some special target province, usually. That amounts to a province every 5 turns, which is a totally easy thing to achieve in this game. If you can't tow that line then I imagine the devs would suggest that you should not win: you're not sufficiently trying to expand your empire/take over the world which is of course the point of total war. You can have plenty of fun playing without trying to win (I've screwed around plenty already myself without ever intending to win), but that doesn't mean you should bend the rules to make yourself win when you're not really making a concerted effort to accomplish the goal of the game.

#2 and #3 then are the primary focal points of this thread: i.e., the weird/bad things that will happen to your game when you do this. The timeline problems are more annoying probably: it's just not cool to play an entire campaign and never have the big events happen. I would suggest at the very least that players who complete campaigns without ever seeing the mongol invasion or various other early key events have unnecessarily switched to a slower time mod than they ought to be using. If you often win before 450 turns are over, you should try doubling the amount of time each turn accounts for (try 1:1 turn to year), since you'll still have enough to win but will experience events more reasonably. If you can win before even a quarter of the turns are up at 6-month-per-turn speed, then you more rightly belong at the default 2-year-per-turn setting, since you've shown you can win in the default 225 turns.

So while I'm all for players who need more time stretching the campaign out the necessary amount, I have a strong suspicion that most players doing so are simply being lazy or unnecessarily jumping onto the bandwagon, neither of which are things I intend to applaud or encourage.

Rhedd

03-04-2007, 05:53

I did not know that. Thanks for the input!

I wonder if those can be modded as well.

The times that special ancillaries CAN be modded, but it's not fun to do. I know, I did it. ^_^

You just go through the last half of the export_descr_ancillaries.txt file and multiply all of the "I_TurnNumber" < or > values by the appropriate amount for you campaign. (x2 for a 1 year/turn campaign, for instance.)

It's not hard, but there are a bunch of numbers to edit.

Irishman3

03-04-2007, 05:54

So while I'm all for players who need more time stretching the campaign out the necessary amount, I have a strong suspicion that most players doing so are simply being lazy or unnecessarily jumping onto the bandwagon, neither of which are things I intend to applaud or encourage.

I'd bet your wrong there. My hunch is it is more likely because they had 2 turns per year in their RTW games, and since family members age at that rate it seems more natural to play at it. Kind of a high-horse response actually Foz. I mean most people also seem to complain about how easy the game is, so why would most want to stretch the turns out to make it even easier?

Personally I believe it should be an option and that choosing so would alter build times, income and the like to adjust for a 1 year per or .5 year per turn ratio. Its really nothing to use variables for stuff like this, unless you program with total spaggeti code.

Werner

03-04-2007, 06:25

So while I'm all for players who need more time stretching the campaign out the necessary amount, I have a strong suspicion that most players doing so are simply being lazy or unnecessarily jumping onto the bandwagon, neither of which are things I intend to applaud or encourage.

The fact of the matter is the game is BUGGED. I've been playing MTW2 since release date and the mongols still cant get past the stupid province they started with, the black plague has never happend, and who are the Timurids? Who cares about the events if they dont even work right? The dev's were obviously lazy and just didn't want to include an option they didnt care about. And since everything is either turn or year based it should've been that much easier for them to include the option of how the individual wants to play. So no, I disagree with you, this has nothing to do with a "band-wagon" or people wanting the game to be easier because its already easy.

sbroadbent

03-04-2007, 09:12

I was contemplating posting to this thread, but I just have to say that there are as many ways to play this game, as there are people who play the game. It seems there are some who just want to blitz through the game in the shortest amount of time possible, only to get "Victory" and then move on to the next game. There are others who want to take their time, to have more opportunity to manipulate events in the game, and just enjoy a slower pace of expansion.

I got probably halfway through my English campaign (probably 125 turns), and began to look at the "victory" conditions, and realized that at the rate I was going that I'd run out of turns. I didn't like being rushed artificially to meet some goal that was decided by someone else. The game might be "total war", but even in war there are times of peace and growth. When an ally of 260 years (ie 130 turns) attacks you, well, rally the troops and have no mercy!

During my English campaign I got to the gun powder event and was like "what, already? I haven't even had much time to play around with swords and bows", so I ignored gunpowder. Due to the catholic AI factions wanting to be aggressive with me, I had to put off some more extensive plans to crusade to the holy land. So much to do, so little time to do it all in. The next biggest problem is travel time. It can take forever to send troops or agents to another location.

I've been contemplating doing a marathon campaign of 1800 turns (4 turns per year), more to have the time to enjoy the campaign, draw out some wars that I might otherwise try to end quickly because I need to rush to get the Victory conditions in time. I am pretty sure that presuming that I stay interested in the above mentioned marathon campaign, that I will experience not only gun powder, but the Mongols, Timurids and the New World long before I "win" the game.

Werner, in my English campaign, the Mongols had not only taken out the egyptians, but had developed into a super power by pushing into Anatolia and pushing the Byzantines into Greece. They also forced the Turks into becoming their Vassal. The Timurids emerged and had they had more time they probably would've caused the decline of the Mongols as they started eating up Mongol territory. Since I was playing a completly vanilla unpatched game, it clearly must be the 1.1 patch that keeps the Mongols from doing anything in your game :laugh4:

jbguev, in my English campaign, London hit about 50K population before it's growth levelled out and then started on a decline. In addition, squalor doesn't have as huge an effect as in RTW, so I had no particular problems with population. The problem you would get into is that unrest can certainly effect a city during it's middle stages if it takes too much time to build happy buildings, but once a city has hit it's growth limit you should have had enough time to build enough happy buildings to keep the population in line.

I've only started playing the game, but I'm assuming that if you play the game at the nomal pace, by the time you get to the fifteenth century you'll have a little light artillery, a few handgunners, a heavy cavalry contingent decked out in heavy plate armor, a few infantry units decked out in similar fashion, and a variety of things that just wouldn't have appeared on a battlefield during the time of the Crusades. You would also have a bunch of social and architectural structures that you wouldn't find in an earlier period, like big post-gothic cathedrals and a network of guildhalls.

I found this definately amusing, more to the fact that one of my offline interests is in the Harn Fantasy Roleplay setting. Here's a setting which is based (I believe) on 10th-12th century Britain, has a republic coming from Ceasar's Rome, Renaissance level tech in some parts, Vikings from the early 9th century, and ships hitting somewhere around 15-16th century. Throw in some magic, and nope, there's no gunpowder either (gunpowder rarely exists in fantasy RPG settings). With that all said, I suppose I am completly unphased by the fact that there might be technology from one era appearing much earlier than it should. It's a game, enjoy it.

My point being is that Total War games are not meant to be historical recreations of the time and place it takes place in. They are more "what if's" and alternate histories where anything can potentially happen.

To wrap this up, no I am not lazy if I want my campaign to go 900 turns (or even 1800 turns). No, having the "extra" time won't make the campaign "easier". In MTW I never started in an era other than Early because I wanted to have the most amount of time playing my faction as I could, and starting in High or Late would cut down on the amount of time I could play before I'd have to start all over again with a new (or the same faction). I want a game that will give me many hours of game play, not one that I can rush through and then get bored waiting for the next great game to come along. After all, M2's expansion won't be out for what, 7-8 months?

Rilder

03-04-2007, 22:58

Werner, in my English campaign, the Mongols had not only taken out the egyptians, but had developed into a super power by pushing into Anatolia and pushing the Byzantines into Greece. They also forced the Turks into becoming their Vassal. The Timurids emerged and had they had more time they probably would've caused the decline of the Mongols as they started eating up Mongol territory. Since I was playing a completly vanilla unpatched game, it clearly must be the 1.1 patch that keeps the Mongols from doing anything in your game :laugh4:

and were well on there way to heading into Italia, they had even defeated the turmids according

Nope it wasn't the patch, at the end of my Portugle campaign (1.1) Mongols had taken greece to toggle_fow.

Agent Smith

03-05-2007, 00:35

Does anyone think quadrupling the build times for a 2 turns/year game would drastically effect the AI? I want to try it, but it make takes 100's of turns to see the effects, if any. I just wanted to see if someone else has already tried it.

Foz

03-05-2007, 02:35

I'd bet your wrong there. My hunch is it is more likely because they had 2 turns per year in their RTW games
Yeah you're probably right on that. Sad that people would get locked into an idea just because it was that way in the previous game, though.

Kind of a high-horse response actually Foz. I mean most people also seem to complain about how easy the game is, so why would most want to stretch the turns out to make it even easier?
It sure was. I must've been having a bad day.

Personally I believe it should be an option and that choosing so would alter build times, income and the like to adjust for a 1 year per or .5 year per turn ratio. Its really nothing to use variables for stuff like this, unless you program with total spaggeti code.
Sure it could be done, but why should it be a feature? I don't hear people complain that football games should be able to have extra quarters, or baseball should be 15 innings instead of 9. Games have rules people, and those rules are not meant to be changed. They are what give meaning to the game, define the game. If you mess with those rules very much, soon a win becomes meaningless, because you've changed things enough that your win isn't the same as anyone else's win.

Changing the amount of time a turn takes does change how the game plays, and so I agree with the developers on this one: it belongs in the world of modding, and decidedly not as a potentially confusing feature of the vanilla game.

Whacker

03-05-2007, 02:50

I'd bet your wrong there. My hunch is it is more likely because they had 2 turns per year in their RTW games, and since family members age at that rate it seems more natural to play at it. Kind of a high-horse response actually Foz. I mean most people also seem to complain about how easy the game is, so why would most want to stretch the turns out to make it even easier?

Personally I believe it should be an option and that choosing so would alter build times, income and the like to adjust for a 1 year per or .5 year per turn ratio. Its really nothing to use variables for stuff like this, unless you program with total spaggeti code.

Or perhaps some of us just prefer to take our sweet time. :fishing:

Whacker

03-05-2007, 02:53

Agent Smith

03-05-2007, 03:57

Just so everyone knows, once I either finish or get bored with my current campaign, I'll make a modified building file with all of the build times for buildings quadrupled to make a 0.5 game sync with the standard vanilla time. That should help make sure you don't make citadels by the mid 1100's...

sbroadbent

03-05-2007, 04:57

Sure it could be done, but why should it be a feature? I don't hear people complain that football games should be able to have extra quarters, or baseball should be 15 innings instead of 9. Games have rules people, and those rules are not meant to be changed.

That's a flawed analogy because in real baseball there are 9 innings so it's expected that there will be... 9 innings. Most people who would play a baseball game would not be looking to change the number of innings. If you play a baseball game, you do expect the same number of innings as in the real sport. Same as in Hockey, football, etc. Medieval 2 doesn't necessarily have those same comparisons. CA could've made the time flow at 1 turn per year, or used the RTW time flow. Essentially there is nothing other than the developers decision that the default time flow was 2 years per turn.

Interestingly enough, in most sports games that I know of where there is a timer involved players can change the rate time flows. In the 2K hockey you can have 5 minute periods! Talk about "changing" the "rules" of the "game". Of course, who would spend an hour playing out a game of hockey on their PS2 or Xbox?

My opinion is that M2TW has a total of 450 years. You start at 1080 and go until 1530. Whether you mod the game to 4 years per turn, or all the way to 4 turns per year, you still play 450 years of history. I'm not playing 225 turns, I'm playing 450 years of history. If I want to change the speed that the game flows from 225 turns to 1800 turns, that's basically the same as a gamer playing NHL 2K7 at 5 minute periods. It just happens that they will get quickly through their game, while I'll spend much more time playing my game.

They are what give meaning to the game, define the game. If you mess with those rules very much, soon a win becomes meaningless, because you've changed things enough that your win isn't the same as anyone else's win.

If the rules were not meant to be changed, the number of turns would be hard coded. Clearly it was not, and was intended to be changed, and fairly easy as it were. CA makes the game easy to be modded compared to many other games out there, so that each player can play according to their own "rules", rather than the rules that the devs decided before hand.

Foz

03-05-2007, 07:39

That's a flawed analogy because in real baseball there are 9 innings so it's expected that there will be... 9 innings. Most people who would play a baseball game would not be looking to change the number of innings. If you play a baseball game, you do expect the same number of innings as in the real sport. Same as in Hockey, football, etc. Medieval 2 doesn't necessarily have those same comparisons. CA could've made the time flow at 1 turn per year, or used the RTW time flow. Essentially there is nothing other than the developers decision that the default time flow was 2 years per turn.
Ahh, but it does have those same comparisons, which you just proved for me. Did you read what you wrote? What you described about M2TW is exactly what was done by the person who laid out the rules for the first baseball game: he picked an otherwise arbitrary length for the game, which was then the rule for the game. There's no sublime reason for a baseball game to be 9 innings - it simply is, which should be good enough for M2TW as well.

As for the rest of your comments, they all stem from this perceived difference between baseball and M2TW, which is really naught but shadow. They are both games, with rules - rules that you play by, rules that determine whether you win or lose, rules made by men. Your comments do not account for that most basic truth, and therefore are largely irrelevant to what I said.

If the rules were not meant to be changed, the number of turns would be hard coded. Clearly it was not, and was intended to be changed, and fairly easy as it were. CA makes the game easy to be modded compared to many other games out there, so that each player can play according to their own "rules", rather than the rules that the devs decided before hand.

Hah! That's laughable. If the number of turns were MEANT to be changed, it would be an option in the game, and not require editing of a file that the game reads to get its settings. CA makes the game easy to modify so that MODS can be released: you know, those vastly different games that just happen to run off the base M2TW engine? Not so players like you and I can change 2 settings. Don't suggest that ease of modding indicates CA intended each player to have control over a given setting: it doesn't. It only indicates that they know modders may need to control that setting for the purposes of their mods. Settings intended to be controlled by players are, of course, in the options menus provided with the game, and require no such editing of any game files.

Suraknar

03-05-2007, 11:44

Because obviously they do not intend it to be modified, and I suggest that it does not need to be, so this is a good design decision. The vast majority of game functions are turn-based, not year-based. The only things accomplished by changing the time-per-turn ratio are:

1. You change the number of turns in the campaign.
2. You compress or expand the historical event timeline.
3. You change the temporal meaning of a game turn.

Everything else I can think of is based on the turns, not the years: character ages, build times, movement, missions, AI scripts, income (all economics really), and probably a whole slew of others I'm not even remembering.

#1 seems to be the usual goal of everyone who decides to use a non-standard ratio. Could just be me, but I don't see the need to make the campaign longer. It doesn't take much effort to get rolling with multi-front expansion in this game, and once you do so it's amazing how quickly you pick up extra provinces. We've got what, 225 turns in a long campaign? And need to capture ~45 provinces, plus some special target province, usually. That amounts to a province every 5 turns, which is a totally easy thing to achieve in this game. If you can't tow that line then I imagine the devs would suggest that you should not win: you're not sufficiently trying to expand your empire/take over the world which is of course the point of total war. You can have plenty of fun playing without trying to win (I've screwed around plenty already myself without ever intending to win), but that doesn't mean you should bend the rules to make yourself win when you're not really making a concerted effort to accomplish the goal of the game.

#2 and #3 then are the primary focal points of this thread: i.e., the weird/bad things that will happen to your game when you do this. The timeline problems are more annoying probably: it's just not cool to play an entire campaign and never have the big events happen. I would suggest at the very least that players who complete campaigns without ever seeing the mongol invasion or various other early key events have unnecessarily switched to a slower time mod than they ought to be using. If you often win before 450 turns are over, you should try doubling the amount of time each turn accounts for (try 1:1 turn to year), since you'll still have enough to win but will experience events more reasonably. If you can win before even a quarter of the turns are up at 6-month-per-turn speed, then you more rightly belong at the default 2-year-per-turn setting, since you've shown you can win in the default 225 turns.

So while I'm all for players who need more time stretching the campaign out the necessary amount, I have a strong suspicion that most players doing so are simply being lazy or unnecessarily jumping onto the bandwagon, neither of which are things I intend to applaud or encourage.

Well..225 turns maybe enough if your sole goal is to win...

Now, i understand different people play for different reasons and with different ways.

yet on my part I like very long campaigns, where one can take their time fully devellop settlements units armies, try different things explore the world, experiemnt with possible scenarios..

At times I will run many diplomatic years of peace its time where I devellop my own settlements and I dont need to expand, when I expand I want to do it one at a time, not multifront expansive...which is all about winning but nothing about enjoying.

When I first saw 2 years per turn...simply unnaceptable...I emediatelly ran in these forums to see what has been said about it. Now, I am an oldy here, started with 4 turns per year with Shogun TW...these were the days :P

I know, as years pass audiences are also changing for the most part, I have a hunch that player feedback in general, may have commented that RTW was slow paced and people wanted a faster paced game, and I think CA decided to give the people that which they were asking for. I am fine with that :P

As long as, some of us can also make the necessary changes to shape the gameplay to our cup of tea. And thank CA we can, this has become a longstanding tradition with this series, the modding capabilities of it, stands side by side with the gameplay aspect this series offers in terms of my decision to buy this game. If it were not moddable...I am not sure I would buy em all as I have done since Shogun.

Beating the game is not the only interest here, the journey is more important than the destination for me. And when the jurney gets packed up in a nicelly wraped box of 2 years per turn for a total of 225 years to beat the game, it a box I am not interested ackuiring...usually these boxes end up in the garbage after use :)

Not with this series, its replayablity value due to its modability is a treasure in itself.

And so I play at the 0.50 scale, I have to admit however that the events will take long before they come...I think there is a file however that lists all teh events and one can modify the years it takes to trigger them, in my case a .5 turn ratio with a 1.0 event rate would fit just fine, so maybe I can simply half the number of years that these events take to happen. I am not sure it is possible, and besides a question for the Modding form not this one.

As for the fact that it may affect the actuall date, a someone else said, it not that important, there is not reason to obsess about Historical correctness when we play agame that actually is dealing with alternate reality all together. For insatnce, I play Byzantium, I have to get both Jerusalem and Rome, both of which did not happen in real History..so I really dont care if a certain event happens several years erlyer than the real dat of our known history, because as soon as I embark on that "Alternate" history which is the events of the Campaign, it does not matter any longer if an event such as the mongols invading is true to the real history, yet, it is true for that alternate history and that is what really counts. :)

We are rewritting History as we go when we play a campaign, why not rewrite dates of events too then?

_Tristan_

03-05-2007, 11:59

The main discrepancy I see in the 2-year turn is the character aging.

Correct me if i'm wrong, but at the start of my french campaign, my two sons were one or two year olds and reached their useful age only thirty years later (15 turns).

Seems strange...

Is there any way to make sure they age correctly ?

Skyline Pete

03-05-2007, 14:18

From my understanding family members/agents age at the end of every winter turn. So running at .5 will be fine but running at 1 might cause problems.

I have modded my game enough to run at .5 and am currently (when I get free time *sigh*) testing it. I've not adjusted building times or cash income at all, purely altered population growth levels and the caps required to upgrade cities/castles in the hope that it will stop citadels/very large cities from appearing too early. Unit speed has also been left untouched as I feel it is reasonable that an army can only march so far in 6 months.

I'm still testing it out so we'll so how I go.

The whole reason for my modding the game was that I wanted to run at a 6 month set, plus it just looked weird only having winter every 4 years.

Agent Smith

03-05-2007, 14:23

CA makes the game easy to modify so that MODS can be released: you know, those vastly different games that just happen to run off the base M2TW engine? Not so players like you and I can change 2 settings. Don't suggest that ease of modding indicates CA intended each player to have control over a given setting: it doesn't. It only indicates that they know modders may need to control that setting for the purposes of their mods. Settings intended to be controlled by players are, of course, in the options menus provided with the game, and require no such editing of any game files.

That's rubbish.

The reason for making a game easy to mod is simply so players can get the most out of their game. To suggest that they only did it for those hard-core people that can make their own 3d units and basically make a whole new game is just silly.

Also, the reason these weren't options in game is also simple. If they turned everything into options, the game would never be released because they'd be too busy making things options and balancing the game for each. CA makes the game, makes the ideal settings, and then gives people easy access to the files so they can play with them whenever they want.

This is exactly what happened with Civ IV. Players simply wanted to be able to fiddle with the things in the game. It's for fun, not such a serious "game creation/modding" reason. From making all new factions to simply changing a banner or two because you don't like how they look, these are all reasons for making the files easily accessible.

I fail to see how wanting to make a campaign longer is cheating, which is basically what you are accusing everyone of doing who makes the campaign last longer. It's no more cheating than adding your own unit to the game.

Agent Smith

03-05-2007, 15:23

Back on topic :beam:

I have modded my game enough to run at .5 and am currently (when I get free time *sigh*) testing it. I've not adjusted building times or cash income at all, purely altered population growth levels and the caps required to upgrade cities/castles in the hope that it will stop citadels/very large cities from appearing too early. Unit speed has also been left untouched as I feel it is reasonable that an army can only march so far in 6 months.

I'm still testing it out so we'll so how I go.

The whole reason for my modding the game was that I wanted to run at a 6 month set, plus it just looked weird only having winter every 4 years.

I never thought about population growth. Altering build times without altering population growth could lead to very bad things, namely huge amounts of squalor with long waiting periods to get law buildings.

What file did you mod to change population growth rate?

Anyway, here is a list of things I think should be modded to make a 0.5 years/turn game really run well in a long term pace:

1.) Change all building times to 4x their original length.
2.) Cut population growth by 1/4.
3.) Cut unit upkeep by 1/4.
4.) Cut city/castle income by 1/4.

With those changes implemented, it should make the game the same as the vanilla game, but simply longer. Also, this will make sure that players don't have 1500 era armies when the Mongols invade. It will also force a player to fight with low level troops early and, because their is less income per turn, taking losses will mean a whole lot more because the cost of retraining will remain the same.

I agree that 6 months to train a unit makes sense. I also think that the actual unit/building costs shouldn't need to be changed. The buildings should cost the same, and the increased length of time needed to build them should offset the longer campaign time. If dirt roads takes 2 years (1 turn) to build and 400 florins, it should still cost 400 florins, but just take longer (4 turns) in a slower campaign.

Also, I was thinking about the fact that making the campaign slower paced actually makes agents more useful. In my vanilla campaigns, assassins, and often times priests and spies, were virtually useless. Why assassinate a king or family member when you can jsut roll in with your army and take him out? Why bother sending priests in when you can just roll in with your army, take the city, and build some churches? Extended time will greatly improve agent warfare because you can't jsut build an uber army right away, nor can you march in and build a church in one turn.

Foz

03-05-2007, 17:00

You're simply wrong here, Smith. Modding has never been a function of keeping individual players happy. The primary reason any company includes the ability to mod their game is in the hopes that people will release vast amounts of mods that will get other players on board and thus sell more copies of their game. It also serves to significantly lengthen the lifespan of the game by keeping things fresh from new mod-injected content, again motivated by the hope that this causes more sales and gains the game/series more acclaim (which causes more sales next installment). I'm not saying companies specifically do not intend players to mod the game, I'm simply saying it's not the reason the ability to mod the game is there.

I fail to see how wanting to make a campaign longer is cheating, which is basically what you are accusing everyone of doing who makes the campaign last longer. It's no more cheating than adding your own unit to the game.
Precisely right - they both are, because they fundamentally change how the game plays. More on this below - "cheating" is NOT what I'm getting at.

I agree that 6 months to train a unit makes sense. I also think that the actual unit/building costs shouldn't need to be changed. The buildings should cost the same, and the increased length of time needed to build them should offset the longer campaign time. If dirt roads takes 2 years (1 turn) to build and 400 florins, it should still cost 400 florins, but just take longer (4 turns) in a slower campaign.

Also, I was thinking about the fact that making the campaign slower paced actually makes agents more useful. In my vanilla campaigns, assassins, and often times priests and spies, were virtually useless. Why assassinate a king or family member when you can jsut roll in with your army and take him out? Why bother sending priests in when you can just roll in with your army, take the city, and build some churches? Extended time will greatly improve agent warfare because you can't jsut build an uber army right away, nor can you march in and build a church in one turn.
It's ideas like this that are exactly why I have commented as I have, Smith. You've actually endorsed making most things operate at the same per-year rate, but allowing units to be recruited 4 times faster than usual, and for everything in game to move 4 times further than usual in a given amount of time (not to mention that religious conversion which no one mentioned will happen at a per-year rate 4 times faster than it used to). I don't care at all what you do to your game honestly - I have no personal stake in that. What I do have, though, is a concern about people using a mod like this and then contributing to discussions on this forum. Any one of those 3 changes I just mentioned is enough to make any discussions about gameplay with users of this mod entirely worthless. My comments have not been motivated by some overdeveloped sense of what is cheating, but rather by the fact that doing this to the game fundamentally changes it, and people should at least know that if they consistently play the game with this modification, they pretty much can't comment in the regular gameplay threads because they aren't playing the same game anymore.

In order to possibly avoid that, you'd have to at least add:

5) 1/4 movement speed for all units/agents
6) 1/4 recruit speed for agents/units
7) 1/4 religious conversion rates

So I guess the pertinent point is, do you want this to change the gameplay, or to try to stay as parallel to it as possible? If the case turns out to be the former, I'd request you move your discussion to the modding threads since as I said it would not be sufficiently close to the base game to be discussed alongside it.

Agent Smith

03-05-2007, 17:29

You're simply wrong here, Smith. Modding has never been a function of keeping individual players happy.

Am I? You are seemingly agreeing with me.

The primary reason any company includes the ability to mod their game is in the hopes that people will release vast amounts of mods that will get other players on board and thus sell more copies of their game.

And why weren't those other players "on board" to start with? It's because they weren't happy with the finished product. I agree modding gets other people on board, but it is for the reason I stated. Allowing people to tweak their game allows for a more customizable experience and happy gamers. And happy gamers = more copies sold = more money for CA.

It also serves to significantly lengthen the lifespan of the game by keeping things fresh from new mod-injected content, again motivated by the hope that this causes more sales and gains the game/series more acclaim (which causes more sales next installment).

And why is the lifespan increased? Because gamers can tweak the game to make it more enjoyable and add new content if they didn't like it in the first place. That increases longevity because players are happier with the way their personal game is working.

I don't know, perhaps we should just agree to disagree, but modding has always been a function of making individual players happy. The more people you satisfy, the more games you sell. And you can make a greater number of individuals happy by allowing easy access to game files so they can change things up every now and then.

Precisely right - they both are, because they fundamentally change how the game plays. More on this below - "cheating" is NOT what I'm getting at.

Ok, that's a clearer way of putting it.

It's ideas like this that are exactly why I have commented as I have, Smith. You've actually endorsed making most things operate at the same per-year rate, but allowing units to be recruited 4 times faster than usual, and for everything in game to move 4 times further than usual in a given amount of time (not to mention that religious conversion which no one mentioned will happen at a per-year rate 4 times faster than it used to).

Geez oh Pete, they are just suggestions! There seems to be some like minded people here that want to extend the game, and I was suggesting some things that could be done to do that. These same people discussing it could easily modify the movement rates, conversion rates, etc. if they wanted to, I was just suggesting that they stay the same.

I don't care at all what you do to your game honestly - I have no personal stake in that. What I do have, though, is a concern about people using a mod like this and then contributing to discussions on this forum. Any one of those 3 changes I just mentioned is enough to make any discussions about gameplay with users of this mod entirely worthless. My comments have not been motivated by some overdeveloped sense of what is cheating, but rather by the fact that doing this to the game fundamentally changes it, and people should at least know that if they consistently play the game with this modification, they pretty much can't comment in the regular gameplay threads because they aren't playing the same game anymore.

So some of us can't comment on gameplay if we use a mod?

Look, there will always be some players who aren't as "advanced" in game mechanics departments as others, but I think the people that understand how the game works are usually best qualified to comment on how the game is played. The modders on these forums probably use their own mods constantly, and I'd trust some of their advice on the game more than others. Not to mention that modding something like the turns/year has nothing to do at all with the vast majority of other aspects to the game, like, say, the entire battle system.

I've played the game plenty using vanilla, so I'm no less qualified to discuss gameplay than anyone else here. And, actually, when people use a mod I usually see them preface a comment by saying that they are using a modded game. I don't see any problem with that.

I don't see why there has to be such a purist attitude about generally discussing the game.

So I guess the pertinent point is, do you want this to change the gameplay, or to try to stay as parallel to it as possible? If the case turns out to be the former, I'd request you move your discussion to the modding threads since as I said it would not be sufficiently close to the base game to be discussed alongside it.

If it really irks you that much I wouldn't mind the thread being moved. It's no big deal to me. The general concept of slowing the pace down, though, seems to be of more "general interest" to me since it is in line with RTW, which many of us are used to. But, to each his own.

No hard feelings. I don't want to start a fight or anything.

Bob the Insane

03-05-2007, 18:04

Back on topic :beam:

What file did you mod to change population growth rate?

descr_regions.txt

\data\world\maps\base

Example entry:

Inverness_Province
Inverness
scotland
English_Rebels
20 25 225
atlantic, explorers_guild
5
4
religions { catholic 90 orthodox 0 islam 0 pagan 5 heretic 5 }

Where the 4 second from the bottom is the argicultural output, I simple reduced by a faction of four...

One nice unintentional effect was that in a lot of provinces they noo longer grew at Very High tax rates unless you had a really good governer which lead ot interesting choices..

Agent Smith

03-05-2007, 18:43

descr_regions.txt

\data\world\maps\base

Example entry:

Inverness_Province
Inverness
scotland
English_Rebels
20 25 225
atlantic, explorers_guild
5
4
religions { catholic 90 orthodox 0 islam 0 pagan 5 heretic 5 }

Where the 4 second from the bottom is the argicultural output, I simple reduced by a faction of four...

One nice unintentional effect was that in a lot of provinces they noo longer grew at Very High tax rates unless you had a really good governer which lead ot interesting choices..

Thanks! I think I have all of the pieces to try and make a few modifications.

On a side note, one of the reasons I wanted to keep the movement/recruitment rate the way it is without reducing it by a factor of four is because it at least seems more "historically accurate." I know that term gets thrown around a lot, so sorry for using it again.

I was trying to find some good examples of medieval battles that would represent what I mean, and I think a good example may be found in the battle of Bannockburn. The Scots laid siege at Sterling around the beginning of lent (early March) and Edward raised his army at Berwick-upon-Tweed. Edward was able to gather his army and get 15 miles short of Stirling at Falkirk by June 22nd. That is between three and a half and four month's time. However, the actual traveling portion took very little from Berwick to Falkirk. The English force left Berwick on June 17th, so they basically reached their objective in 5 days time. The distance wasn't too great, but one can see actual marching times were not too long. It seems that actually gathering an army took the vast majority of the time.

Anyway, that's just one example. If anyone has any other medieval battles to share for perspective on the issue, let me know!

Carl

03-05-2007, 19:11

Just to throw My own oar in here.

First I'df like to point out that data gathered from people who have modified their game to 0.5 years a turn is no diffrent than data gathered from those who have chosen to play beyond 1530. It's also no diffrent than data gathered inside a normal 2 turns per year game anyway. What matter is what happens on a turn by turn basis, NOT a year by year basis, HEll, by defualt you don't even know what year it actually IS. Most of the things that are discussed are about how many turns it takes to do somthing. For example I went on about how many turns it takes to get Merchants established in vanillia, now TB I played exactly 1 hour of 2 years a turn before going to 0.5. But changing the number of years changes nothing I was talking about. Characters age at 0.5 years per turn regardless of how many years the turn counts as.

A few other important considerations:

1. A poll a while back showed a very large percentage of the responders did not use the defualt time scale, that implies a fairly big part of the online community in fact is giving results at somthing other than the defualt timescale.

2. It takes a fairly LONG time, (in my V1.14 beta which has big AI improvments it's still a good 100-150 turns for most factions, I never played defualt long enough to see how long that took), for the AI to get upto speed, playing with more turns actually gives the AI a chance if you take your time.

3. Some people actually like to be at peace with all their neighbours for prolonged periods of time, i see no reason they should be unable to win just because they don't want to be fighting on 3 fronts all a once. Total War DOES NOT mean littrial total War, it just means your primary means of acomplishing your objective is war. If diplomacy didn't mean anything it wouldn't be in.

I myself modified it orgionally to make the years and charater ages match up. However furthar modding for my V1.14 beta to cut down blitzing speeds as well as other littile tweaks means it's fairly likliy now that I could never finish a slow campaign in 225 turns, I'd expect the 30 turns blitzer to struggle to manage under 150 turns now.

Not everyone changes the timescale to get an advantage, they often change it because of other in game changes or because they want a diffrent style of gamplay, or as in my case just to make the game make sense.

chickenhawk

03-05-2007, 19:47

Carl, I am eagerly awaiting your 1.14, how is it coming?

Also will you redo it for the patch or not?

Carl

03-05-2007, 20:11

It'll get re-donne for the patch, mostly i'm doing some trait tweaking ATM, then i'll update some stuff for the patch and take it from their. About 2 weeks if they hold off till the end of the wek on the patch and I should be ready to send it for testing. I just need some damm testers. Will have to advertise in the modding section...

gardibolt

03-05-2007, 23:33

I wonder what the intersection is between people who complain that the game is too easy, and people who are playing at .5 and thus never get the Mongols, Timurids or Aztecs? I think I need a Venn Diagram....:dizzy2:

Foz

03-06-2007, 00:03

I don't know, perhaps we should just agree to disagree
Probably.

So some of us can't comment on gameplay if we use a mod?
That depends of course on what your mod does - how it changes the gameplay. In so far as it changes the game, then no, you should not discuss those aspects of the game in general discussion threads where people are assumed to be playing vanilla, or at least close enough to vanilla not to affect whatever discussion is at hand. You can of course discuss other unchanged things, but even that is gray area since some people have not played vanilla sufficiently to even KNOW how it is different from the mod(s) they are using (note Carl, who played only about an hour of the game before changing to 6 month turns. I'm sure he's not alone). This lack of knowing the difference leads to people posting things without adequately prefacing them as mod-related b/c they don't realize it's due to their mod(s), and also to quite jumbled up threads due to talking about 2 or more versions of the game at the same time, which are both things you can already see cropping up with the shield fix, pike/polearm fix, and various other mods that have gained some popularity. I fairly regularly see people having to go back and explain that their comments were based on "mod x" that they are using. Prefacing comments with what personal modifications you're using is one possibility, but surely anyone can see that if that becomes widespread enough, soon it will be impossible to tell whether anything anyone says actually applies to the version of the game that you are playing. It actually already is difficult to tell to a large extent: I get the feeling that nearly everyone on here uses mods of some sort, and if that is the case then FAR too few comments are being prefaced as mod-related, and we're already on a sinking ship where we're likely hearing advice that may not necessarily hold true to the base game.

I don't see why there has to be such a purist attitude about generally discussing the game.
Because, as I said, you must be discussing the same game as someone else in order for your comments to be relevant to that person. If you personalize your game enough, then nothing you say is relevant to anyone because their game operates differently in every respect.

No hard feelings. I don't want to start a fight or anything.
Likewise. I may seem harsh sometimes, but don't confuse it as personal: I intend only to attack ideas, not people.

1. A poll a while back showed a very large percentage of the responders did not use the defualt time scale, that implies a fairly big part of the online community in fact is giving results at somthing other than the defualt timescale.
Such self-motivated response polls are not scientific and should be assumed to be inaccurate. People who see such polls typically are far more motivated to vote if they feel strongly on the matter. It seems unlikely that many people would feel strongly that the default time scale was best, where obviously many feel strongly that non-standard ones are best, so we can reasonably assume that the poll in question is skewed in favor of the non-standard time setting, and presents an inflated estimate of people using non-standard time scales.

Not everyone changes the timescale to get an advantage, they often change it because of other in game changes or because they want a diffrent style of gamplay, or as in my case just to make the game make sense.
Honestly it doesn't much matter why anyone has done this, only that it has been done. Even if we assume the people using this change are not trying to get an advantage, the fact remains that they do get one, and it changes the gameplay in some way, intended or not. Having a longer campaign affects the strategies you use on the campaign map because you know you have all the time in the world. Having 4 times as many turns pass before the mongols turn up likewise changes the campaign substantially for many factions that would otherwise have to divert significant resources to relatively early army build-up to combat that threat. I freely admit that the game mechanics remain largely unchanged, but the strategy decidedly does not. Thus far everyone has tried to trivialize the difference that a 6-month-per-turn game has from the standard 2-year-per-turn sort, but the differences simply are not trivial. That everyone keeps trying to say they're trivial just lends more credence to the idea that people are not sufficiently paying attention to how their mods are affecting their game, and thus are likely making some potentially misleading comments in general discussion threads as a result.

Quickening

03-06-2007, 02:08

Honestly it doesn't much matter why anyone has done this, only that it has been done. Even if we assume the people using this change are not trying to get an advantage, the fact remains that they do get one, and it changes the gameplay in some way, intended or not. Having a longer campaign affects the strategies you use on the campaign map because you know you have all the time in the world. Having 4 times as many turns pass before the mongols turn up likewise changes the campaign substantially for many factions that would otherwise have to divert significant resources to relatively early army build-up to combat that threat. I freely admit that the game mechanics remain largely unchanged, but the strategy decidedly does not. Thus far everyone has tried to trivialize the difference that a 6-month-per-turn game has from the standard 2-year-per-turn sort, but the differences simply are not trivial. That everyone keeps trying to say they're trivial just lends more credence to the idea that people are not sufficiently paying attention to how their mods are affecting their game, and thus are likely making some potentially misleading comments in general discussion threads as a result.

I just can't face playing the game with the default timescale which 1. Makes the characters aging look stupid and 2. doesnt make sense when you still have the Summer/Winter cycle as in RTW.
Those things are important to me and no matter how hard I try I can't get the fact out of my mind that when Im playing the vanilla game, my characters are living Biblical lifetimes. It's stupid. And that annoys me.
On the other hand I agree with you about people using mods making comments when they don't know otherwise. It annoys me no-end to read what I think is useful information only to find that they are using some mod. I never use mods, I hate them and Im only modding the game's timescale sometimes because I think the way CA designed the game is stupid for the reasons above. I know it's just a game but talk about immersion shattering.
However, I think it may have been you who said that the default timescale forced you to become a more efficient strategist and that kinda inspired me so sometimes I do revert back to the normal timescale.

For me this is one of those thing that really bugs me. I hate playing games with mods or in any way which was not intended by the developers. Even to the extent that I will not use mods that fix really annoying bugs like the shield one. And yet on the other hand CA made what I think is a ludicrous timescale desicion which gets to me so much that Im forced to mod the game to feel "right" playing it. Yet I don't because I know it wasn't intended to be played that way :shame:

EDITED TO ADD: Want to emphasise that I have nothing against mods or their makers, it's just that I personally feel uncomfortable playing the game in any other way but vanilla. Of course the real point of any game is to have fun so each to their own.

Skyline Pete

03-06-2007, 03:46

Smith, I actually didn't edit that particular file to slow growth but rather the SPF Farm factor in the settlements mechanics file to slow down how quickly settlements grow.

I'm still testing it but as Sicily I took Durazzo as a village and took about 4 or 5 turns before it reached my new min pop level limit to upgrade to a town. Seems right to me.

Unit and buildling cost/upkeep/movement is all default in my game as I prefer it that way. To me an army should be able to march half way across France in 6 months time. As for building time, well I'm still testing that out, but by not altering income it just means that generally you can't afford the building in the first place rather than it taking forever to build.

This makes building choices much more important as you can't afford to build everything in a settlement and must make settlements specialised (ie an archer producing place vs a swordsman producing place).

If you've got anymore questions feel free to grab me on MSN or send me a PM.

alex9337

03-06-2007, 23:37

_Tristan_

03-07-2007, 15:11

@carl : Would really like to try your 1.14 patch, need a tester ?

I'm on it...if you're OK

Carl

03-07-2007, 15:14

Sure, your about the 4th person to voulunteer. I'll start a thread advertising now, and you can drop your name in their for me if you will. I'll keep a list of voulnteers their then.

_Tristan_

03-07-2007, 15:29

I just can't face playing the game with the default timescale which 1. Makes the characters aging look stupid and 2. doesnt make sense when you still have the Summer/Winter cycle as in RTW.

Exactly the point I was trying to make earlier...

CA should have stayed on a 0.5 time scale, which never got any complaint in the preceding games (Am I wrong ?)

I'm generally opposed to modding a game in that it modifies what the developers intended as a game experience. Nevertheless, modding is sometimes the only solution to bugs or totally inept ideas that developers get sometimes :no:

I pay a vanilla game but finding more and more bugs and not agreeing with the way my characters and agents are aging I think I will be modding shortly...

To add on the subject of modding, I understand both point of view expressed here. True, a modded game is the the REAL game but most times you can't see a true difference in the gameplay. So I don't see why a modded-game player shouldn't give his opinion about some game mechanics even to non-modded-game players... To each his own...

As a last note : Don't you think it strange to see a winter or a summer only every two years ? What got into them CA Dev' ?

gardibolt

03-07-2007, 18:35

It has a feeling of being designed by committee, doesn't it? My utterly uninformed guess is that there were two factions in CA: one wanted to have a long game that covered from 1066 to the conquest of the New World; while one wanted to have people get quickly from the start to the end so they could experience lots of different units. But the only way to do that with characters that didn't die in a few turns was what they did.

It's kind of strange, and I thought I would hate it, but I'm pretty used to just counting in turns now and not paying any attention to what "year" it is.

Philippe

03-07-2007, 19:54

I suspect that they changed the timescale to avoid having a 900+ turns campaign game. And (more importantly) to avoid having to do the research and testing to create two (possibly three) more smaller campaigns as they had done in MTW.

I really wish they hadn't opted for the hopelessly unimmersive region naming convention. Now that they have a little time to work on a patch, maybe they'll pull out an historical atlas and act accordingly. I hope this wasn't a nod to their focus group's comments that most of their audience's geographical knowledge is so poor nobody would notice. 'sFeet, I want to invade Lombardy and Flanders.

Foz

03-08-2007, 01:11

I really wish they hadn't opted for the hopelessly unimmersive region naming convention. Now that they have a little time to work on a patch, maybe they'll pull out an historical atlas and act accordingly. I hope this wasn't a nod to their focus group's comments that most of their audience's geographical knowledge is so poor nobody would notice. 'sFeet, I want to invade Lombardy and Flanders.
You could always take to renaming the places yourself and release it as a mod. IIRC it requires less work than you'd think just to change the names around for things, and it would probably be well received in the community.

It has a feeling of being designed by committee, doesn't it? My utterly uninformed guess is that there were two factions in CA: one wanted to have a long game that covered from 1066 to the conquest of the New World; while one wanted to have people get quickly from the start to the end so they could experience lots of different units. But the only way to do that with characters that didn't die in a few turns was what they did.

It's kind of strange, and I thought I would hate it, but I'm pretty used to just counting in turns now and not paying any attention to what "year" it is.
Me too. I don't even think I know how to find out what year it is in the game. The seasons come and go, the characters age along with the season cycles, which seems natural enough. The only way it would really bother me is if I sat here and constantly reminded myself that 2 years were going by every time I hit the turn button... which I simply see no reason to do. Outside of doing that, I have no way to know that anything is odd. :smile:

Quickening

03-08-2007, 01:33

You could always take to renaming the places yourself and release it as a mod. IIRC it requires less work than you'd think just to change the names around for things, and it would probably be well received in the community.

Me too. I don't even think I know how to find out what year it is in the game. The seasons come and go, the characters age along with the season cycles, which seems natural enough. The only way it would really bother me is if I sat here and constantly reminded myself that 2 years were going by every time I hit the turn button... which I simply see no reason to do. Outside of doing that, I have no way to know that anything is odd. :smile:

The faction summary sheet gives you the year.

Agent Smith

03-08-2007, 03:21

Just so everyone knows, I have uploaded a mod that attempts to make a 0.5 turns/year game as parallel to a vanilla game as possible while creating a new military/agent usage dynamic. I'll let everyone know when it gets posted and is available for download.

Foz

03-08-2007, 03:49

The faction summary sheet gives you the year.
Well that explains it then, I find little use for that particular sheet. I sometimes look at my regions or city/castle numbers, and turns left, but I guess I adjusted so fast to where they are on the sheet that I don't usually note the year. I guess it also helps that I don't really care what year it is, too. Even the things I do look at on there, I don't check frequently - I know well enough usually what situation I'm in, at least as it concerns those things. I probably pass through it on the way to diplomacy and pope tabs far more often than I actually look at the faction tab. The overall financial details is a more usual hangout of mine, but even that I go turns at a time without checking. I can certainly understand the compulsion to check those various items frequently though: it's easy to establish a habit of checking all the info available, even if you don't necessarily need it at any given time. I've certainly gotten that way with other games before, but for some reason it just didn't seem necessary in M2TW.

TevashSzat

03-08-2007, 03:57

Agent Smith

03-08-2007, 04:56

Agent smith, if you are truly intent on having a realistic game, then you must mod the unit speeds by making them about 5-6 times longer than the ones in the game. Even at .5 year turns, it would take you at least a couple of years to sail from Spain to Jerusalem which in reality would just take a few months. You would further have to alter the size of the New World since currently, the south eastern part of the US is about as big as Ireland and England which is not geographically correct. To tell you the truth, 2 year turns were used so that the game will actually be playable. Lets say you have 0.5 years, who would want to wait 400 turns just so they could get gunpowder and around 600 turns just so they can see America. You have to put everything within game perspective. If CA only put maybe 100 year worth of history in M2TW, you would be sure that people would start complaining about the lack of gunpowder and the New World and then start saying CA is just too lazy to write those things into the game..

I'm trying to make a 0.5 game as PARALLEL to vanilla as possible with a few tweaks. I never wanted to imply I was going to make an uber-realistic game. My only intent was to rectify the disparity in technology based upon the year in a 0.5 game.

For Pete's sake, if you don't want to play it that way then don't. There seems to be plenty of people here that want to play on a 0.5 timescale, but don't want it to be so unrealistic that you wind up with Gothic Knights by the mid 1100's. I just made this mod for myself and to maybe make a few people happy.

I understand why CA made it 2 years/turn. I just want to slow the pace down. I made the mod for myself, but I'm sharing it with others if they want to use it. Why is that so wrong?

If anyone can play four consecutive long campaigns, I'm sure they could play one extra long one. If you don't like it, don't use it.

FrauGloer

03-08-2007, 16:08

When I got the game (on the day of its first release, like all TW games :2thumbsup: ), the first thing I did was to go into descr_strat to unlock Scotland (Call me a cheater for doing it, but it's my game and if I don't want to play another faction just to be able to play them - screw the developers' intentions!).
Right underneath, I saw the show_date_as_turns line and was like 'WTF?!?' In a (semi-)historic game about the middle ages, I want to see which year I'm in, I don't care about 'turns'! Out with it! :smash:

Now. My first campaign, as Scotland, I played on default (2 turns/year). It went ok, but I like playing in a slow-paced way. I don't care about winning as soon as possible. I was appalled to see gunpowder discovered when I didn't even have high-tier conventional units (noble swordsmen, for example) yet.

This is what bugs me most about the standard turn ratio. Time just flies by and by the time you can field significant numbers of high-tier archers to actually use them, they are already outdated and ready to be replaced by gunpowder units. By the time I was ready to build trebuchets, bombards and cannons weren't far-off. Plus: once you can afford a nice crusade (incorporating actual soldiers) the Age of Crusades is almost over - blargh!

Another thing is that you are practically forced to play extremely expansively to be able to aquire the necessary number of held provinces (45-50). There is no time to let the AI become a challenge. As the HRE, for example, you'd never get to see high-tier danish units because they are usually wiped out way before they are developed enough to field them. Same goes for Scotland and England. The constant struggle between the two never happens because one (the player-controlled one) wipes out the other long before other units than militia and the like become available. On 2 turns/year, there is more time for the AI to develop and field more challenging armies than vanillas repetitive town-/spear-/crossbow-militia hordes.

Personally, I settled on a ratio of 1 turn/year. While this slows down the gameplay a lot when compared to vanilla, it doesn't take as long for historic events to happen as with 0.5. I halved population growth and increased upgrade tresholds to deal with too rapidly growing settlements. About 150 turns into my English campaign, I own only ~20 provinces, and I'm happy with it. No faction has been destroyed yet and all are fielding nice armies, not just vanilla's low-tier rabble. :2thumbsup:

To counter high-tier units becoming avalable too early, I added several triggers to space availability. E.g. Gothic Knights and the like cannot be built before a specific date; Arquebuisers, Musketeers, and high-tech artillery don't become available as soon as gunpowder appears, but require another event about a hundred years later. This way, you actually get to use the low-tier gunpowder units (handgunners, bombards) instead of just skipping ahead to arquebuisers and cannons/culverins.

All this may not reflect the developers' intentions on how to play the game, but so what? I couldn't care less about what purists like foz think about this. It's my game since it crossed the counter in exchange for my money, not the developers', and I can change it in any way I see fit.

To sum it up:
I believe that a ratio of 1 turn/year is the best compromise between vanilla and 'realistic' 2 turns/year. 450 turns is enough to win by playing a slow paced game, while not drawing it out too much (900 turns... :inquisitive: )
IMO, M2 vanilla is taking a step in the wrong direction. Epic medieval warfare doesn't mix with fast-paced blitzkrieg - thats what RTS games are for! :idea2: I would not be playing this game anymore if it weren't for its moddability. Thank you for that CA! :2thumbsup:

Moah

03-08-2007, 17:39

I have played campaigns with the vanilla timescale (1 turn = 2 years), modified (1 turn = 1 year) and also modified (1 turn = 6 months).

While the drawback does exist where I win before I see the Timurids, etc has been stated and is acknowledged, the modified option where my generals age at a rate = to the game turns (1 turn = 6 months) I find to be the most enjoyable option for me

At 2 turns/year I never see the Timurids or the New World. I have to keep playing past victory to see the Mongols if I'm any faction other than Russia or the Turks. Not to mention being unbeatable by the time I get gunpowder.

The game is too easy to win in basic timescale. At 2 turns a year it would be impossible not to win before anything above happens - if you're trying to win.

I know people on these baords are saying "well don't attack, stay put, turtle etc) but that just means handicapping yourself and playing "badly" (i.e. not to win). If you wait too long and are beaten you haven't really lost you've just handicapped yourself too much.

Having said that I have just started a campaign as the Turks and am trying not to blitz, but it's just sooo hard! What level do I stay at? 4 cities? 10? Asia Minor? Middle East? Balkans? Do you never attack an enemy city? Attack one city per invasion? Also what do you do each turn? Deliberately nothing except build? Is it not dull?

Not saying anyone is wrong to play like that, just hard for me given my personal style. My fingers just itch when I have a full stack doing nothing except sitting in my border city for defense...I have never imposed limits before, so I don't know what to set...

In case anyone cares I have decided to stick at Constantinople until the Mongols (so wait for them before my european invasion can start). i may allow myself raids - i.e. wipe out Byzantines in greece, sack, strip and abandon. I am allowing myself the Middle East - I will stop at Egypt. Whether I can do it or my natural instincts will win out I don't know...

gardibolt

03-08-2007, 19:53

I wonder how the VH difficulty would play out if the AI were given a timeline about 30 turns ahead of the player---the AI gets gunpowder faster, etc. Not realistic of course, but it would help keep the AI more competitive. Maybe even when a new campaign begins have the AI take 30 turns instantly so that it can develop and all those tasty rebel territories that the player gets fat on are no longer so easy to get.

Philippe

03-08-2007, 22:28

You could always take to renaming the places yourself and release it as a mod. IIRC it requires less work than you'd think just to change the names around for things

I had sworn to myself that I wouldn't do any modding unless I seriously like the game. I got badly burned on Combat Mission by working on mods and mod related projects for several years and not actually playing the game.

In any case, I think it might be wiser to wait until after the next patch on the off chance that they decide to fix this.

Having said that, I unpacked the game (because I was wondering how to go about shrinking the flags) and took a look at some of the description files.

Modding something like this seems fairly easy at first glance, but first glances can be deceptive.

There are a lot of game functions, victory conditions, and scripts that seem to key off of region names. So I'm initially reluctant to start making name changes to the description file until I'm sure what other files will need to be modified to correspond to it. [It looked like three or four at first blush]. Apart from that that particular aspect of modding this game doesn't look any more difficult than modding Europa Universalis II.

By the way, does anyone know what it is you need to open and modify a CAS file? And if I were to start messing around with the text files, I'm assuming that I could make stable changes in Notepad, without having to worry about them crashing the program or coming undone once the game is fired up.

I may be about to install M2TW for a couple of weeks until the patch comes out, but before I do I may re-write the names of some of the towns from within the game to see if that changes the region names. A very useful function carried over from BI, where many of the place-names were in ungrammatical latin.

Agent Smith

03-09-2007, 00:02

Update:

I'm about 30 turns into playtesting my mod, and so far it has been the MOST INTENSE first 30 turns I have played.

In all instances playing vanilla, using my standard blitz strategy for the Russians, I can have close to all of the Steppes by 30 turns and usually only fend off one small Polish invasion force.

WHAT A DIFFERENCE.

I have fended off almsot three full stacks of Polish troops within the first 30 turns. One of them was a huge siege assault by the Polish on my troops in Kiev, and the only reason I won was because I got as many mercenaries earlier as I could. I have found it hard to resupply my troops, because the extra length in build time means that, as of now, Novgorod and Smolensk are my only provinces that can train troops (a standard Town Guard in my mod, because of the x4 build time in my mod, take 8 turns to build, not to mention time turning castles into towns and building wooden palisades before that).

The result on the AI is seemingly profound. With the increase in build time, the AI has seemingly invested a ton of its starting money into making early, low tech armies of militias, peasants, and early castle cavalry. I honestly would have lost if I didn't get those mercs early.

Now that turn 30 has rolled around and I have am investing in infrastructure, my starting total florins has nearly run out. I'm assuming the AI will slow down, too. But still, I have never had an opening 30 turns like that before.

candelarius

05-07-2007, 07:20

The fact of the matter is the game is BUGGED. I've been playing MTW2 since release date and the mongols still cant get past the stupid province they started with, the black plague has never happend, and who are the Timurids? Who cares about the events if they dont even work right? The dev's were obviously lazy and just didn't want to include an option they didnt care about. And since everything is either turn or year based it should've been that much easier for them to include the option of how the individual wants to play. So no, I disagree with you, this has nothing to do with a "band-wagon" or people wanting the game to be easier because its already easy.

The Mongols trashed the Byzantines, Turks, and the Holy Land in my last campaign, the black plague occurs in every game I've played, and the Timurids also appear in all my games. Before you start pointing the figure and calling the game "bugged" and accusing the devs of being "lazy", I suggest you get your facts straight, and play a few campaigns to verify if things are bugs or if you just missed them. :whip:

Kobal2fr

05-09-2007, 18:55

Don't know if it's been mentionned already (didn't read the whole post, once it started drifting into a "people who change the scale shouldn't" VS "people do what they dang well please" debate, I got bored quick :sweatdrop: ) but there's an elegant way to solve both building "times" and pop growth in one swoop : divide all provinces' agricultural values by the same factor you've divided the turns by.

Now, I can't remember which file to edit and which of the (uncommented) values it was you had to tweak but I could find it back, I know I've made a couple posts about this back in December when I was still active here... (haven't reinstalled/patched/unpacked M2TW yet, I'm still waiting for more feedback on 1.2, especially on the traits front which was my major beef with 1.1...)

Anyway, the point of it is :
- it makes a lot of provinces have a negative pop growth value early on (meaning you *have* to build farms and then wait if you intend to move past "dirt heap" tech level),
- Even when fully teched up, towns and castles grow very slowly, though good governors can help with this - slower gameplay
- you have a *lot* less cash flowing around meaning you can't build everything everywhere and have to make choices. That cathedral might still only take 6 years to build, but if you have to put it off for 20 years, the time it takes you to painfully scrape enough cash to do so, then it has a "realistic" time frame.

The only problem with that solution is that trade rates and mines are not affected (hard-coded on the 2yr/t values), which makes sea commerce somewhat overpowered (and merchants too, to a point). I'm sure one could play by house rules to mitigate this, as I did back then.

Foz

05-09-2007, 22:38

The only problem with that solution is that trade rates and mines are not affected (hard-coded on the 2yr/t values), which makes sea commerce somewhat overpowered (and merchants too, to a point). I'm sure one could play by house rules to mitigate this, as I did back then.

These are taken from descr_settlement_mechanics.xml:

<factor name="SIF_FARMS">
<pip_modifier value="0.75"/>
</factor>
<factor name="SIF_TAXES">
<pip_modifier value="0.9"/>
<castle_modifier value="0.9"/>
</factor>
<factor name="SIF_MINING">
<pip_modifier value="1.0"/>
</factor>
<factor name="SIF_TRADE">
<pip_modifier value="1.0"/>
<castle_modifier value="0.5"/>
</factor>
<factor name="SIF_BUILDINGS">
<pip_modifier value="1.0"/>
</factor>
<factor name="SIF_ADMIN">
<pip_modifier value="1.0"/>
</factor>
<factor name="SIF_WAGES">
<pip_modifier value="1.0"/>
</factor>
<factor name="SIF_UPKEEP">
<pip_modifier value="1.0"/>
</factor>
<factor name="SIF_CORRUPTION">
<pip_modifier value="1.0"/>
</factor>
<factor name="SIF_ENTERTAINMENT">
<pip_modifier value="1.0"/>
</factor>
<factor name="SIF_DEVASTATION">
<pip_modifier value="1.0"/>
</factor>

SIF is for Settlement Income Factor from what I've puzzled out. Everything you could possibly want to control is in there. If you divide turns by 4, dividing every factor in here by 4 should make the game's economy operate at 1/4 the rate as well. In fact the rest of the file deals with Settlement Population Factors, Settlement Order Factors, and populations levels required for upgrading, so it does just about everything you could ever want w/ regard to settlement mechanics. A simpler way to modify growth is to just divide the growth modifiers in this file by the same amount as the turns, and you (just like with economy) will immediately bring growth factors into line with your timeframe - and not just farming growth, you can affect every single growth factor using this file. You should also lengthen build times accordingly though, if you're trying to keep time passing as before.

This is not without potential pitfalls, however. The game's system appears to have a certain set graininess in its calculations: it only displays growth in half percentages, for instance. This could mean 2 farm levels are required to get any benefit at all out of having them, since the first 1 would make 1/4th growth, not enough for a full half point to show up. I haven't confirmed that the unshown points are wasted, but they well may be since they do not show up in the pseudo-calculations the details scroll presents.

What to do about that if it's the case? I don't know. As I've said before there seems to be no way to make the game actually run correctly in all respects with any timeframe slower than the one it shipped with, and as a result I simply recommend against modifying it - you are decidedly screwing some game mechanic(s) up when you do. I simply can't see sense in making a cosmetic change and sacrificing gameplay to do so.