The Timescale Issue. Anyone got a Definate answer?

I really, really didn't want to start a new topic to ask this but I just keep getting different answers all the time.

What I want to do is this. I want to set the timescale to 0.05 so that characters age properly. But I don't want it to throw anything else out. I want events to happen exactly when they would normally in terms of the year (obviously they would take longer to happen with a turn representing six months).

So, would having the timescale set to 0.05 mess ANYTHING up?

Please, please only answer if you are 100% certain.

Don't worry, events are set to happen at certain dates after the game start, so changing the turns/year does not affect what year events happen on.

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Originally Posted by Lusted

Don't worry, events are set to happen at certain dates after the game start, so changing the turns/year does not affect what year events happen on.

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Excellent. Thank you Lusted. I really don't like modding my games in the first place and I would have been p***ed if it also meant that some things weren't right. To be honest, Im a little annoyed and surprised that CA went with the "characters aging disproportionately to the passing of time" thing. Thankfully, I can now enjoy a campaign knowing that my characters do not live to Biblical ages, and that events happen as they should.

Cheers!

~:cheers:

ALthough do be warned, I changed my timescale to 1.00 and now the Mongols never showed up, and it looks like the Timurids aren't going to come either. This doesn't seem like it's the norm, in fact I guess I'm the only one with the problem. I'm not sure if it's related to the time scale, but I didn't change anything else, so I'm not sure what it could be. Just a warning.

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Originally Posted by IPoseTheQuestionYouReturnTheAnswer

ALthough do be warned, I changed my timescale to 1.00 and now the Mongols never showed up, and it looks like the Timurids aren't going to come either. This doesn't seem like it's the norm, in fact I guess I'm the only one with the problem. I'm not sure if it's related to the time scale, but I didn't change anything else, so I'm not sure what it could be. Just a warning.

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I feared a post like this :sweatdrop:

This is what I mean about getting different answers.

Again, I wouldn't let my experience hold you back. It might be some sort of in game issue that caused the Mongols to never show up in my campaign, but nobody seems to know what went wrong. I blame it on the time scale, it's the only game-affecting option I changed, but it could be anything. I just like blaming the first disparity because it makes me feel better about myself.

Gunpowder was discovered and such, so it didn't throw off all my world events. Now I'm just waiting to see if the New World is going to be broken too, but it's only 1310 so I still have to wait a century.

On a side note, does anyone know if important events happen after you've won the campaign? For example, I currently hold 44 provinces. If I conquer one more, I reach 45 and meet my campaign objective, winning the game. If I do this, will all the game events, like the world is round, stop happening?

In my first game at 0.5 all seemed to work fine pretty much... I had almost won by 200 turns (not being all that agressive either) which is only 100 years on 1180...

I can see why they thought 225 was a balanced campaign length...

he only issue really was the relatively fast population growth (most of my settlemetns are of the huge variety by 1180..).

I am working on a little mod where I increase the build times for buildings by x4 (units are unchanged) and divided farming out put of regions also by a factor of four. I am on my first play though to see how it all goes...

DO NOT TURN THE TIMESCALE TO 0.05!!!!

that would equal 20 turns to one year!

if you want 6 months to a year turn the timescale from the original "2" (as in 2 years to a turn) to 0.5 (as in half a year per turn).

Doing this changes NOTHING else in the game, except how many turn you get. A building that takes 4 turns to complete in the normal game (i.e. 8 years) still takes 4 turns to complete in a 6 month a turn campaign (i.e. 2 years). If you want to buildings to still have their same build time, you will have to mod all the build times to be 4x longer then they normally are.

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Originally Posted by Hashashiyyin

DO NOT TURN THE TIMESCALE TO 0.05!!!!

that would equal 20 turns to one year!

if you want 6 months to a year turn the timescale from the original "2" (as in 2 years to a turn) to 0.5 (as in half a year per turn).

Doing this changes NOTHING else in the game, except how many turn you get. A building that takes 4 turns to complete in the normal game (i.e. 8 years) still takes 4 turns to complete in a 6 month a turn campaign (i.e. 2 years). If you want to buildings to still have their same build time, you will have to mod all the build times to be 4x longer then they normally are.

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Okay thanks. That is good to hear. Yeah I meant 0.5 :laugh4:

Building times are fine. A Small Chapel still takes 1 turn which is what I want. Six months is a perfectly reasonable time for such a construction and it makes the movement across the campaign map better as well in my opinion.

thing with the .5 scale is that making buildings/armies doesnt scale to it. everything else is the same which is good/bad however you view it. for me id want the buildings/armies to scale to the .5 scale. makes sense for me.

oh and you get twice the cash per year instead of once =P

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Originally Posted by ŞaoŞin

thing with the .5 scale is that making buildings/armies doesnt scale to it. everything else is the same which is good/bad however you view it. for me id want the buildings/armies to scale to the .5 scale. makes sense for me.

oh and you get twice the cash per year instead of once =P

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So... it totally imbalances the game basically.

Turn based events (building, training, income, expenditure, missions) will go at the turn based rate while historical events (inventions, invasions, innovations, news) will occur at the dates set for them in the decr_events file.

Contrary to a poster's reply above, I even got the mongols to show up under 1.0 timescale before modding the game, so they should show up just fine.

If you get bored of ending turns endlessly and never getting to gunpowder age / mongol invasion /new world, do check out my sig ;)

while it wont break events it will break the named ancillaries - all named ancillaries have a check that makes sure they appear during the right years - this si done with a If turn is > 20 and less than < 50 kinda thing - because under time scale 0.5 you will have 4 times as many turns meaning you will be getting named ancillaries from the early renaissance 4 times too early :help:

to fix this you need to open the ancillaries_desc.txt and multiply the named guys turn restrictions by 4

it aint game breaking but it sure is annoying

Ive altered the timescale myself to 0.5 and the only thing ive noticed is you get the blackdeath at the odd random settelment before you get the main event for the black death coming into the game (were you get it at loads of settelments). I cant remember if thats normal though from the other campaigns ive played, theres another more annoying one though which might be normal or time scale related. Since 1280 (i only noticed then) the venetians have been able to make a ship from the 16th century a galliouse (thats what it says on the unitcard). Its very annoying i cant go onto the sea because all i can build is gunholks. Again i dont know if this is actually a time scale issue or the venetians would actually get access to this ship anyway. As in my campaign now the worlds equally split between me and the venetians so things like that are way more noticeable.

I've just played through a full campaign on 1.00.

All the events happened as they should (Mongols, Timurids, Black Death, World is round etc), bang on time. Events still happened after I had taken 45 provinces and continued past the "end" of the game.

It still felt a bit too long, but then I found the vanilla timescale ridiculously short. Even if you're not playing like a complete turtle, you still want to be able to pause for breath every now and then. Taking 45 Provinces as Denmark in 225 turns means roughly every 5 turns you need to conquer somewhere, and that pace of expansion really means a lot gets stifled and missed out in the rush to churn out more and more troops.

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Originally Posted by zulukiller

Ive altered the timescale myself to 0.5 and the only thing ive noticed is you get the blackdeath at the odd random settelment before you get the main event for the black death coming into the game (were you get it at loads of settelments). I cant remember if thats normal though from the other campaigns ive played

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Yes, thats normal. Plague can happen in any city at any time, the black death is a scripted event occuring at a predetermined time and affecting all cities.

As for the ships thing, thats just an interesting side effect, in that youre delaying the discovery of gunpowder till 4 times as many turns, and you arent getting a similar delay on the rest of your tech progression. This sort of thing is inevitable, so you will just have to live with the odd side effect - unless you want to mod the game to be totally consistent and reduce movement speeds, income, pop growth, and build rates (for buildings, and units) by a factor of 4.

I will say that i think anyone who loses sleep over whether their characters are ageing at the correct rate needs to step back a little and get a sense of perspective. Its a GAME, not a historical simulation.

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Originally Posted by Daveybaby

I will say that i think anyone who loses sleep over whether their characters are ageing at the correct rate needs to step back a little and get a sense of perspective. Its a GAME, not a historical simulation.

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It's immersion breaking. It's like swordmen taking blue plastic swords out to fight or something.
Also it makes a nonsence of any blogs you try to write since your characters are nearly 200 years old.

Let's not get into another argument about the "unorthodox" passage of time in M2TW. It's a big deal to some; not a problem to others. Arguing about such differences in taste is pointless.

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Originally Posted by Quickening

So... it totally imbalances the game basically.

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Not really, you have more cash available but so do the AI factions. The AI factions use this to build even more troops (as it can't build up the provinces any faster than iit already does) so you have to as well and thus the excess cash gets burned up with the nice side effect that there larger armies wondering around.

Altering the build time for buildings is optional (as is all modding of course) and I am still trying to work out the over all effect of that. But one thing that really helps setting the timescale to 0.5 is lowering the farming output of provinces (as in Wonderlands SloMod) because, as I said before, the only thing that really gets out of hand is the population growth. The changes to squalor means that you can still control your huge cities with reasonable garrisons and keeping an eye on religion. But you end up spending a lot of time and effort upgrading the settlements rather than constructing buildings within the settlements...