Scalingtime question (I know not the first)

Hello,

I did a search fo this and found several threads on the topic but there seems to be many opinions in them that does not make a clear answer ..well..clear.

A - I understand where to change the timescale, and I did to a 0.5

B - I also found out that the Character aging is hard coded and thus independently of the timescale characters will always age 1 year per 2 turns. (correct if wrong please)

Questions now.

1 - Does timescale affect buildtimes at all? Meaning when I change the timescle to .5 will a building that required 4 turns to build still take 4 turns or is this affected by timescale?

1a - If yes which file governs that please?

2 - The Events happen in many many turns when plaing at 0.5, from what Iread the events are in terms of years not turns as to keep the accuracy with real history. Is there a file on the events which could be modified?


Thank you, appreciate any pointers here.

I found the answer to #2 in this thread

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=76357

Its in descr_events.txt

So we can modify the years it takes for certain events to trigger when we also modify the timescale.

For instance, if originally the game spans for 250 turns, since it is 2 years per turn, usig a timescale of 0.5 would make for a game play of 1000 turns.

But, the events being triggered by years instead of turns, will still happen at the appropriate historical date which can be 300 turns down the like for of of the first.

In my case I wanted to have the events run at a timescale of 1.0 while the turns run at 0.5, two seasons etc, but 300 turns can be long, and I am going to experiment with halving the years it takes for the events.

I understand that will offset them from their Historical Date, but on the other hand when we start a campaign we are not playing the real History we are playing an alternate History, no matter how historical the elementa making up the game are, as such dates can be alternate aswell..and fun is the main reason of playing this game, not rehearsing real history, but exploring the "what if" scenarion, even if it starts at a real historical setting, it diverges after we press the turn button for the first time :)

So only remain the question of building times..I supose I can just go back to 2.0 and start a campaign and see for myself.

I am asking however in the forum not only for myself but also for any future people that may come to this forum asking about these things I thought there may have been more than one area affected by changing the timescale in terms of gameplay, and having all information in 1 thread would be better than anyone trying to find bits and peaces here and there as I had to do.

:)

So I guess I'll be answering myself once again in a few :)

And the Reply for question #1

from two different discussions:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=73116

and

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=72322

Seems like the building times are not affected in any automatic way by the timescale change in descr_strat.txt

Meta-thoughts:

Its really interesting how over the years we started with 4 turns per year and now we are at 2 years per turn. I wonder what is next...

A 5 turn game?

Considering scale, I'd prefer a .25 timescale, but I think that's impossible.

I think .50 is perfectly reasonable, the biggest thing that'd need to change is population growth. If that could be cut by .75%/turn, I'm pretty sure most other things would fall into line. The idea of 20 turn build times is NOT attractive.

Yes I agree with you, population groth reduction, some adjustment of events that is all to make it nice with a different scalingtime :)

I usually even lower Building times, because the way they are made when they queue up it takes 20+ turns all together for a single settlement to evolve...its what I find long in the series...not the fact that it can last many turns, but rather the fact that it takes many turns before one can devellop settlements, be able to have something new in terms of units.

I like develloping faster, accessing some units of a specific era and creating more balanced and complete armies and then spend lots of time using them and fighting with em, learn lessons from each battle and adjust the next army. :)

In skimming the thread I didn't see all this stuff answered, so I'll post on the chance you need any of the info: if you're looking to modify the build times for buildings as was mentioned, they are located in export_descr_buildings.txt with some fairly obvious label preceding them. Units are in export_descr_units.txt with the build time being part of the "cost" line IIRC. The rest of the scalable things you're looking at are mostly in descr_settlement_mechanics.xml. Income and growth would both fall in that category. In general I've determined that the 3-letter acronyms mean the following:

SPF - settlement population factor
SOF - settlement order factor
SIF - settlement income factor

There's nothing about religion in there though. Not sure where that is, if it's anywhere. If you need help deciphering any particular things, let me know and I'll give it a shot.

Hope that helps.

Thank you Foz,

I touk a look at descr_settlement_mechanics.xml

would you know what "pip" would stand for?

As for religion, there is SOF_RELIGIOUS_UNREST and SOF_EXCOMMUNICATION.

So I am guessing that religion in reality does not play any direct role except affecting Public Order.

For instance if a province is at 100% a certain religion, there is no penalty to Public Order, and as tha percentage drops there starts to be Religeous Unrest which affects Public Order by the factor there.

So in the purpose of time scaling, I beleive, this does not have any big effects.

For instance, at a scale time of 0.5 you could be converting 5% (exemple) of a given population every 6 motnths, for a total of 10% per year.

And at a scale time of 1.0 you convert 5% per year.

A difference of 5% between the two, for me at least, does not warrant modifying these factors, as Religion affects are not direct.

The big question I am having here, is if when changing the value of timescale in descr_strat, that value affects the factors in the .xml files once processed.

We know that it does not affect values such as Building times in .txt files.