Side effects of changing time scale

[candelarius]

The fact of the matter is the game is BUGGED. I've been playing MTW2 since release date and the mongols still cant get past the stupid province they started with, the black plague has never happend, and who are the Timurids? Who cares about the events if they dont even work right? The dev's were obviously lazy and just didn't want to include an option they didnt care about. And since everything is either turn or year based it should've been that much easier for them to include the option of how the individual wants to play. So no, I disagree with you, this has nothing to do with a "band-wagon" or people wanting the game to be easier because its already easy.

The Mongols trashed the Byzantines, Turks, and the Holy Land in my last campaign, the black plague occurs in every game I've played, and the Timurids also appear in all my games. Before you start pointing the figure and calling the game "bugged" and accusing the devs of being "lazy", I suggest you get your facts straight, and play a few campaigns to verify if things are bugs or if you just missed them.

[Kobal2fr]

Don't know if it's been mentionned already (didn't read the whole post, once it started drifting into a "people who change the scale shouldn't" VS "people do what they dang well please" debate, I got bored quick ) but there's an elegant way to solve both building "times" and pop growth in one swoop : divide all provinces' agricultural values by the same factor you've divided the turns by.

Now, I can't remember which file to edit and which of the (uncommented) values it was you had to tweak but I could find it back, I know I've made a couple posts about this back in December when I was still active here... (haven't reinstalled/patched/unpacked M2TW yet, I'm still waiting for more feedback on 1.2, especially on the traits front which was my major beef with 1.1...)

Anyway, the point of it is :
- it makes a lot of provinces have a negative pop growth value early on (meaning you *have* to build farms and then wait if you intend to move past "dirt heap" tech level),
- Even when fully teched up, towns and castles grow very slowly, though good governors can help with this - slower gameplay
- you have a *lot* less cash flowing around meaning you can't build everything everywhere and have to make choices. That cathedral might still only take 6 years to build, but if you have to put it off for 20 years, the time it takes you to painfully scrape enough cash to do so, then it has a "realistic" time frame.

The only problem with that solution is that trade rates and mines are not affected (hard-coded on the 2yr/t values), which makes sea commerce somewhat overpowered (and merchants too, to a point). I'm sure one could play by house rules to mitigate this, as I did back then.

[Foz]

The only problem with that solution is that trade rates and mines are not affected (hard-coded on the 2yr/t values), which makes sea commerce somewhat overpowered (and merchants too, to a point). I'm sure one could play by house rules to mitigate this, as I did back then.

These are taken from descr_settlement_mechanics.xml:

      <factor name="SIF_FARMS">
         <pip_modifier value="0.75"/>
      </factor>
      <factor name="SIF_TAXES">
         <pip_modifier value="0.9"/>
         <castle_modifier value="0.9"/>
      </factor>
      <factor name="SIF_MINING">
         <pip_modifier value="1.0"/>
      </factor>
      <factor name="SIF_TRADE">
         <pip_modifier value="1.0"/>
         <castle_modifier value="0.5"/>
      </factor>
      <factor name="SIF_BUILDINGS">
         <pip_modifier value="1.0"/>
      </factor>
      <factor name="SIF_ADMIN">
         <pip_modifier value="1.0"/>
      </factor>
      <factor name="SIF_WAGES">
         <pip_modifier value="1.0"/>
      </factor>
      <factor name="SIF_UPKEEP">
         <pip_modifier value="1.0"/>
      </factor>
      <factor name="SIF_CORRUPTION">
         <pip_modifier value="1.0"/>
      </factor>
      <factor name="SIF_ENTERTAINMENT">
         <pip_modifier value="1.0"/>
      </factor>
      <factor name="SIF_DEVASTATION">
         <pip_modifier value="1.0"/>
      </factor>

SIF is for Settlement Income Factor from what I've puzzled out. Everything you could possibly want to control is in there. If you divide turns by 4, dividing every factor in here by 4 should make the game's economy operate at 1/4 the rate as well. In fact the rest of the file deals with Settlement Population Factors, Settlement Order Factors, and populations levels required for upgrading, so it does just about everything you could ever want w/ regard to settlement mechanics. A simpler way to modify growth is to just divide the growth modifiers in this file by the same amount as the turns, and you (just like with economy) will immediately bring growth factors into line with your timeframe - and not just farming growth, you can affect every single growth factor using this file. You should also lengthen build times accordingly though, if you're trying to keep time passing as before.

This is not without potential pitfalls, however. The game's system appears to have a certain set graininess in its calculations: it only displays growth in half percentages, for instance. This could mean 2 farm levels are required to get any benefit at all out of having them, since the first 1 would make 1/4th growth, not enough for a full half point to show up. I haven't confirmed that the unshown points are wasted, but they well may be since they do not show up in the pseudo-calculations the details scroll presents.

What to do about that if it's the case? I don't know. As I've said before there seems to be no way to make the game actually run correctly in all respects with any timeframe slower than the one it shipped with, and as a result I simply recommend against modifying it - you are decidedly screwing some game mechanic(s) up when you do. I simply can't see sense in making a cosmetic change and sacrificing gameplay to do so.

[Agent Smith]

Just as as side note, do NOT modify the castle modifier values. They are a separate value that is not representative of the base income. Rather, a 0.5 means a castle should have half the value of the SIF factor. If you redice the SIF by 4, then the castle modifier will take that base value and divide it in half for a castle. You'd make it even worse if you als reduced the castle modifier 4 fold.

I found this out reducing them all four fold and realizing that, even with the highest farm level, I could never get enough population to get to the Fortress stage (I assume it might be possible in more fertile areas, but I was playing a Russian campaign). Putting the castle modifiers back to normal fixed the issue.