Side effects of changing time scale

[Agent Smith]

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]

Back on topic

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]

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]

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]

Back on topic

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]

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]

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]

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

Also will you redo it for the patch or not?

[Carl]

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]

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....

[Foz]

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]

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


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]

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]

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

[_Tristan_]

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

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

[Carl]

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_]

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

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]

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]

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]

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.

[Quickening]

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.

The faction summary sheet gives you the year.

[Agent Smith]

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]

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]

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..

[Agent Smith]

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]

When I got the game (on the day of its first release, like all TW games ), 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!

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.

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... )
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! I would not be playing this game anymore if it weren't for its moddability. Thank you for that CA!

[Moah]

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]

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]

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]

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.