Turn Time & Aging

[IPoseTheQuestionYouReturnTheAnswer]

I honestly don't understand everyone's problem with the aging. Your generals get to stick around longer, and that's always a perk.

[Daveybaby]

I honestly don't understand everyone's problem with the aging. Your generals get to stick around longer, and that's always a perk.

I agree, this is almost certainly why it was done.

Dont forget that this is a GAME, not a simulation. Games need to be FUN, so the designers had to try to balance a number of incompatible things:

At 6 months per turn a game would take *forever* to get to the end
Castles etc would take AGES to build
Game would be probably be over before invention of gunpowder 99% of the time

At 2 years per turn castles etc are built at a reasonable playable rate
But generals, kings, assassins etc wouldnt last long enough to build up any decent stats. Players wont get to keep them long enough to build familiarity with them.
You would have to increase movement speeds (if you wanted 'realism') to a point where strategic movement of stacks becomes pointless, because you can reach anyone anywhere
You wont get clearly defined seasons any more. They could always do something like they did in MTW1, but that removes another strategic element IMO.

So what to do? CA clearly decided to have the best of both worlds - sensible movement speeds (in gameplay terms), kings etc alive for a decent amount of time, regular seasons, but with reasonably paced progress through the tech tree. You've got a contradiction there, but you will either have to live with it or mod it. Trouble is, you will also have to mod build times, income, pop growth, in order to keep the game balanced. I can see why the purists are moaning about realism, but IMO CA made the right decision for gameplay reasons.

FWIW, the year progression (and tech progression) feels a bit rapid to me. I would rather have a slower paced tech game, and take my time a bit. Once the patch comes out i will probably mod the game to 1 turn per year, double building build times, halve pop growth (or even cut it a bit more than that, cos it feels too fast right now), halve income, and halve the number of recruitment slots for each castle/city size. This still wont be realistic, but thats not why i would be doing it. I'm doing it for gameplay pacing.

[Biggus Diccus]

At 6 months per turn a game would take *forever* to get to the end
Castles etc would take AGES to build
Game would be probably be over before invention of gunpowder 99% of the time

At 2 years per turn castles etc are built at a reasonable playable rate
But generals, kings, assassins etc wouldnt last long enough to build up any decent stats.

Building times are by turns, not by years. A upgrade that takes 2 turns to build at timescale 2 still takes 2 turns to build at timescale 0.5.

All character aging is correct at timescale 0.5, and movement seems all fine to me. You actually get to keep your generals exactly the same number of turns as with timescale 2. Seasons are fine with timescale 0.5; 6 months summer and 6 months winter, just like in RTW.

The only trouble is that the historical events will take much longer to appear (invention of gunpowder, mongol invasion etc.), because they are triggered by year, not turns.

[Darkmoor_Dragon]

Building times are by turns, not by years. A upgrade that takes 2 turns to build at timescale 2 still takes 2 turns to build at timescale 0.5.

All character aging is correct at timescale 0.5, and movement seems all fine to me. You actually get to keep your generals exactly the same number of turns as with timescale 2. Seasons are fine with timescale 0.5; 6 months summer and 6 months winter, just like in RTW.

The only trouble is that the historical events will take much longer to appear (invention of gunpowder, mongol invasion etc.), because they are triggered by year, not turns.

Do we know the actual trigger dates yet btw?

I'm playing at 0.5 as its spot on so far (1136)... just trying to anticipate the arrival of gunpowder and other elements (although for me the current tech rate is fine so far)

[Ulug Beg]

I only started playing a campaign last night and noticed the odd passage of time and weather. Why bother showing the year anywhere if it is not going to relate to the age of your character, and vice versa. With STW you had the 4 seasons but that is probably impractical when covering 500 years of history - and they tended not to campaign in Winter anyway. However, I think RTW got it right with two turns/seasons per year. It felt right and looked right.

CA does seem to be torn between trying to satisfying the historical accuracy lobby and those that want to experience everything and conquer the world without growing old in real time. If you want to play with different technologies then the original MTW eras allowed you to do that.

Is it really that difficult to design the game with 2 modes - ‘historical’ mode which is, well, historical for a start, and ‘arcade’ mode where the relationship between age and time is irrelevant, arches never run out of arrows, and fully armoured soldiers can run the length of a battlefield and up a hill without pausing for breath. It does seem that they have got all they need to do either game but can’t decide which one it should be. A little button giving us the option would be perfect.

[Bob the Insane]

CA does seem to be torn between trying to satisfying the historical accuracy lobby and those that want to experience everything and conquer the world without growing old in real time.

Well the ease with which it can be modded makes me thin they are doing good job. I restarted my England game with the 0.5 setting and I am having a great time. The rate of movement on the map feels better this way

And I am sure it will not be long before some Era mods come out with different start dates and Europe setup for the more advanced tech...

As for timing, I feel it has so far worked better on the 0.5 setting... For me the Frist Crusade (won by the English.. ) occured in a relatively accurate 1102... That is 44 turns into the game for me... 44 turns at timescale 2.0 would have been 88 years, the crusade would have occured in 1168...

I guess if the above does not matter to you then you should leave the settings as they are...

If it does bother you then you are a member of the second group who should really alter the setting...

All I can say is that with the 0.5 setting (and leaving the build times as default) so far everything seems to be working fine...

[Lord Condormanius]

Well the ease with which it can be modded makes me thin they are doing good job. I restarted my England game with the 0.5 setting and I am having a great time. The rate of movement on the map feels better this way

And I am sure it will not be long before some Era mods come out with different start dates and Europe setup for the more advanced tech...

As for timing, I feel it has so far worked better on the 0.5 setting... For me the Frist Crusade (won by the English.. ) occured in a relatively accurate 1102... That is 44 turns into the game for me... 44 turns at timescale 2.0 would have been 88 years, the crusade would have occured in 1168...

I guess if the above does not matter to you then you should leave the settings as they are...

If it does bother you then you are a member of the second group who should really alter the setting...

All I can say is that with the 0.5 setting (and leaving the build times as default) so far everything seems to be working fine...

I couldn't agree more. The game feels so much better. I also don't feel like I'm being rushed to get things done.

Also, I don't know how the income is generated in the game, but it seems to be according to time, rather than turns. Again, I don't know if this is actually the case, but I seem to have less money each turn, which has slowed down the pace...which is good for me.

After 15 turns in the 0.50 timescale (1087) I feel like I am not moving along as fast as I was after 15 turns at 2.00 (1110). I strongly recommend doing this if you enjoy a slower paced game. I also like the option of deleting the line that makes the tiem show as turns.

I am also rather proud of myself for finding the file and all that stuff that most of you consider elementary. This was my first attempt at modding anything. I was shocked at how simple it was.

[Sir Robin]

While I liked the four seasons per year of STW, I think the two seasons per year for RTW was best.

MTW having three eras, though they were one year per turn IIRC, felt right to me.

By going with three eras M2TW could have gotten away with two seasons per turn. However CA wanted to give players the medieval experience so they made compromises.

I seriously hope that the first patch will include tools that make modding M2TW easier. Beyond this I seriously hope that CA or one of the community's more skilled members, like V, will make it possible to modify and add new units.

Honestly, though many months away, community mods are probably our best bet along with another patch or two from CA.

[Bob the Insane]

I seriously hope that the first patch will include tools that make modding M2TW easier. Beyond this I seriously hope that CA or one of the community's more skilled members, like V, will make it possible to modify and add new units.

Honestly, though many months away, community mods are probably our best bet along with another patch or two from CA.

Well considering they are including an unpacker for the files I would say yes...

[Daveybaby]

Building times are by turns, not by years. A upgrade that takes 2 turns to build at timescale 2 still takes 2 turns to build at timescale 0.5.

Yeeeesssss.... that was my point. If you keep building times the same then youre going to have built everything by 1/4 of the way through the game (compared to normal). Thus to keep the tech tree progressing gradually throughout the game you will have to multiply build times by 4, divide pop growth by 4 etc.

Then you will have large castles taking 24 turns to build. Tedious in the extreme. Chances are you will have finished the game before you finish building the biggest castle. Not good.

As i said, there is no self consistent method which doesnt result in some aspect of the game being badly paced. Hence CAs decision to have the best of both worlds.

[Bob the Insane]

Yeeeesssss.... that was my point. If you keep building times the same then youre going to have built everything by 1/4 of the way through the game (compared to normal). Thus to keep the tech tree progressing gradually throughout the game you will have to multiply build times by 4, divide pop growth by 4 etc.

Then you will have large castles taking 24 turns to build. Tedious in the extreme. Chances are you will have finished the game before you finish building the biggest castle. Not good.

As i said, there is no self consistent method which doesnt result in some aspect of the game being badly paced. Hence CAs decision to have the best of both worlds.

This is a good point...

My campaign is progressing nice and I am in the winter of 1123... That is the 86th turn... If I was playing the default time scale I would be in 1252...

No factions have kicked the bucket yet and while the Polish, Spainish and Turkish are doing well there are no super powers...

Overall the pacing is working well but I have to admit that there are a lot of huge cities and citadels already... The only thing limiting the exapansion is money...

Populations are growing pretty fast which seems to encourage the trend to build the larger cities and castles with the tech building inside them lagging behind (again because of money I think)... I mean in theory I have another 800+ turns to play and I already have two cities with populations over 30000... But with a decent garrsion these are controlable... hmmm

Still undecided, but I do like the way the aging all adds up now...

It would be interesting to try a game with the build times at x4 to see how that worked.

[Lord Condormanius]

The only thing limiting the exapansion is money...

Populations are growing pretty fast which seems to encourage the trend to build the larger cities and castles with the tech building inside them lagging behind (again because of money I think)... I mean in theory I have another 800+ turns to play and I already have two cities with populations over 30000... But with a decent garrsion these are controlable... hmmm

Still undecided, but I do like the way the aging all adds up now...

It would be interesting to try a game with the build times at x4 to see how that worked.

Well...

I am 30 turns into my first campaign using the 0.50 timescale, playing as England. It is now winter 1094 and the first crusade to Jerusalem has just been called. Not bad timing, only a year early. Wm. the Conqueror has just died the previous summer at age 62, I think. The pacing of the game seems perfect right now. I have 2 fewer territories than I did after 20 turns on the 2.00 timescale.

I think it has to do with money. I seem to remember monet generating more per turn at the 2.00 timescale, which leads me to believe that the game generates florins by year rather than by turn.

So far I like it a lot better this way. We'll see how it turns out after another 500 or 600 turns.

A few more thoughts:

Is it possible to adjust the population limit (set it higher) that determines when your Cities/castles can be upgraded?

How about only increasing build times X2? If the game is flowing well enough, with the money factor, it may not be neccessary to adjust everything incrementally. That is, it may not be a staight math equation that works. Am I making any sense?