CA clarifies turns

[Duke John]

Posted on .COM by prasthereaper

Reading through these forums, it seems there's a number of issues with the whole turn limit thing and there seems to be a tendency amongst some of the more vocal members to start making a lot of assumptions. Given that we are limited in what we can tell you at any given point, I guess that's only natural. The issues I have identified from reading through all these posts seem to be:

1) Game length - too few turns to suit certain play styles
2) Role-Playing - how do characters age?
3) UI - not showing the year
4) Eras - lack of multiple starting positions

Just spoke to Bob, our lead designer, for further clarity and taking each in turn:

1) The game is currently paced to be a 225 turn game, and is optimally played at that length.All this information is still being kept in .txt files.
2) Characters still age 1 year every 2 turns, so you will be a ble to roleplay them as you did in Rome. This issue is actually one of the reasons for dissociating years and turns. We wanted to cover a large period of history and streamline the gameplay whilst still allowing players to get some kind of attachment to their characters.
3) While some may argue it eliminates immersion, as wikiman mentioned previously, it's surprising how little you realise the change once you actually play it.
4) Each era is effectively a completely new campaign that needs to be individually setup, tested and balanced. Having multiple eras would inevitably delay release of the game.

So 500 years played in 225 turns while characters still age 1 year per 2 turns. That means that you will get 112 years of character development if you played the game optimally. However it appears that if you play less optimal (by roleplaying, not rushing or doing silly things) you could play more than 225 turns.

I agree with point 3. If the game shows events anchoring the turn into history then it will give me enough immersion and I won't realise it. But I think that the people who roleplay their characters or pay much attention to them will notice how the entire middle ages can be played with just 5 characters or so and that might kill the game for them.
And I am glad that they won't bother with multiple eras. I rather have the game released sooner than they spending time on something that could easily be done by modders.

[screwtype]

Dammit you beat me to the punch Duke John. I was just going to start a thread here with the same title!

Yeah, it appears that avoiding turn dating is just a very kludgy way of getting around the uncomfortable fact that characters "live" four times longer than they should in this game. I suspected I was kidding myself to think this was ever going to be anything more than an awkward kludge, LOL.

[Duke John]

From a modder's perspective I think this provides more opportunities to do some interesting things. The aging system of R:TW seems to be untouched. The only thing changed is the exact year is no longer shown. And for that loss we (hopefully) gain more possibilities in showing events, which is far more valuable for immersion than "1350 AD".

[screwtype]

Yeah, look this is obviously a problem that arose because they wanted to confine the game to 225 turns in order to appeal to the mass market. I don't think it's of much consequence provided they give modders the usual tools to tinker with stuff like dates, events, number of turns etc. And there is no reason judging by pras' post to believe they won't be.

[Quietus]

Reading through these forums, it seems there's a number of issues with the whole turn limit thing and there seems to be a tendency amongst some of the more vocal members to start making a lot of assumptions. Given that we are limited in what we can tell you at any given point, I guess that's only natural. The issues I have identified from reading through all these posts seem to be:

1) Game length - too few turns to suit certain play styles
2) Role-Playing - how do characters age?
3) UI - not showing the year
4) Eras - lack of multiple starting positions

Just spoke to Bob, our lead designer, for further clarity and taking each in turn:

1) The game is currently paced to be a 225 turn game, and is optimally played at that length.All this information is still being kept in .txt files.
2) Characters still age 1 year every 2 turns, so you will be a ble to roleplay them as you did in Rome. This issue is actually one of the reasons for dissociating years and turns. We wanted to cover a large period of history and streamline the gameplay whilst still allowing players to get some kind of attachment to their characters.
3) While some may argue it eliminates immersion, as wikiman mentioned previously, it's surprising how little you realise the change once you actually play it.
4) Each era is effectively a completely new campaign that needs to be individually setup, tested and balanced. Having multiple eras would inevitably delay release of the game.

Wait a sec.

Character age = (1 year/2 turns)(1 turn/2 campaign years)

Character age = 1 year/4 campaign years.

Characters age 1 year for every 4 campaign years?

Hence a 50 year old character is 200 years old...? Maybe we're missing something.

The implementation of 1 turn per 2 years has to be explained further.

[Duke John]

No, you understood it right. It is the opinion of CA developers that while playing the game you will not notice this. Impossible when looking at the bare facts, or when you get too worked up over this making it impossible to forget it while playing.

It is a game and mechanics have to be introduced to make it interesting to play. And some may not appeal to everyone. I think it is a bit silly for people to say that they won't buy this game for not being able to see what year it is, while army organization and battlefield tactics are nowhere near resembling history.

[TB666]

Well atleast it seems to be moddable.

[Puzz3D]

No, you understood it right. It is the opinion of CA developers that while playing the game you will not notice this.

You might not notice it if you are stupid.

[Voigtkampf]

Personally, I liked one year/one turn of Medieval, but I am willing to give it the benefit of the doubt that the game will work well this way, as CA claims, and that players will not notice much change…

But, the comment

All this information is still being kept in .txt files.

is what I am still glad to hear the most. I wish MTW2 to be moddable to its greatest possible extent, and few tiny details is something we can change ourselves if we do not like them.