Synchronised Timeline

[Didz]

Has anyone else tried playing a campaign using a synchronised timeline of 1 Turn = 6 months.

I'm currently trying it out and it makes a hell of a difference if you prefer a more roleplay oriented game, rather than blitzing it.

Obviously, events take a lot longer to appear so you have time to fully develop your empire before the plague, gunpowder, mongols and timurids turn up. Might be a bit too easy for some players but I prefer it simply from my gameplay interests.

[Flavius Merobaudes]

I've once tried a campaign as Spain with 6 months/turn.
In the beginning, it seemed to be ok, but the longer I played the more it got boring.

I like to have some time to built up and turtle a bit, but I'd never reached the later ages and seen the Timurids or the new world. You need some development to spice things up a bit.

For me, I found 1 year/turn to be ideal. Still, it's odd, but I don't bother as much anymore as I did at first.

[TeutonicKnight]

I tried one year per turn, but it too was just too slow.

I'm currently going 1.5 per turn, but I'm thinking that's moving slow too. The only good thing is I'll be pretty much ready to exploit gunpowder once it becomes available. Kind of a just in time thing.

I think I might try going back to 2.0 and see if the original design was better. If I do though, I'm going to move the end date back to 1776 to give me a little more time to screw around in the new world. :)

[alpaca]

The problem is that the whole tech-tree is streamlined towards 225 turns. I barely even get to see gunpowder or America anyways, with a timescale of 2
As for character development it doesn't make much of a difference, does it?

[Joshwa]

The problem is that the whole tech-tree is streamlined towards 225 turns. I barely even get to see gunpowder or America anyways, with a timescale of 2
As for character development it doesn't make much of a difference, does it?

Yeah, dont they age one year per turn whatever? Be cool if you could change that. Anyone know?

[Bijo]

I did play using six months a turn, but grew tired of it. I then augmented it to one year a turn, and it was balanced enough (for my taste).

[Bob the Insane]

I really liked the idea and tried the timescale 0.5 for a while... I might yet go back to it again but you have to change more...

It is easy to alter the build times of stuctures to fit, at the simplest level you just multiple them by 4... (you have to remember to alter the build a church missions to give you sufficient time)

One key issue right of the bat is the rate of growth in your cities, without altering it somehow you will have huge cities everywhere by 1200 but with little infrastructure as much time is spent upgrading the cities...

But even when all of the above has been addressed you have to deal with the game now being 900+ turns long. And that is a long time to play... You will play for ages withour getting anywhere it will seem. And it is not like factions will particularly last longer.

Hmmm.... It still holds some fasination and I might visit the idea again...

[Didz]

The thing I've found most interesting so far is the fact that I am fast approaching full technical development and yet gunpowder hasn't been invented yet.

So, for the first time in my history of playing this game I might actually be able to fight with fully developed pre-gunpowder armies. In the accelerated version I rarely bother building some units like catapults and trebuchet simply because they become obsolete so fast. Also I'm getting to develp my cities to Huge before the plague strikes, so I'm anticipating some really nasty death tolls when it does.

Oh! and of course people have a natural life span now, so my family tree is going to grow far bigger than it would have time to do in an accelerated game.

[PapaNasty]

I quite enjoy playing with the 1 year=1 turn style, sure things take longer to happen but like Didz is saying, you get time to fully develop your empire more. 450 turns is long enough for me honestly so I don't think going as slow as 6 months to 1 turn would interest me in the long run.

Best of all, your characters don't live for more than 120 years yet only be at age 60, like they do with the Vanilla setting I like playing with the years put back in as well, rather than turns.

One thing that i don't like too much is how certain mods use the 1.5 year per turn system, or similar, but have boosted build time and costs way up. They are still great mods of course, and I really enjoy them, but my style of play doesn't leave much spare cash floating around and i've found the increased building costs to be a challenge , build times I can handle though

[alpaca]

Well I'm just saying the game should be rebalanced to accomodate for 2 turns per year.
I'll probably use either a timescale of 0.5 or 1.0 for Italia Invicta

[andrewt]

I think 2 is just fine for most factions. The only problem is eastern factions because Mongol Invasion at turn 60 is just too fast.

[Gorm]

The biggest problem with the standard 2 years per turn is the time it takes to travel by sea, especially when trying to reach the Americas. Shouldn't take more than 6 months to cross the Atlantic, but now it takes 10-12 years at least!

[Didz]

The biggest problem with the standard 2 years per turn is the time it takes to travel by sea, especially when trying to reach the Americas. Shouldn't take more than 6 months to cross the Atlantic, but now it takes 10-12 years at least!

Its pointless comparing the movement distances used in the game with the elapsed time of a turn, as they bare no relationship to each other. The movement allowed during a turn is about that which would be possible in a week of real time, so whether a game turn equals 2 years, 1 year or 6 months makes little difference to the realism.

The only thing that matters is whether movement distances relative to each other appear logical and as units loaded on ships arrive at their destination far faster that they would have done had they walked it seems to be pretty solid.

[Didz]

I've reached Turn 200 in my current synchronised game and apart from the worrying fact that the game just crashed on me with an unexpected error things are getting quite interesting.

I assume that like me the computer controlled factions must have more or less fully developed their cities by now because I am beginning to see some serious armies attacking my border fortresses. Venice in particular seem very fond of armies consisting of massed trebuchets and parvise crossbowmen.

The garrison of Sophia had to deal with two full stacks of these a couple of turns ago and I've been forced to keep a strong force of Horse Archers in each of my fortresses to act as a strike force to eliminate the trebuchet crews and stop them reducing my walls to rubble.

The bad news is that even with this sort of resource at its disposal the AI is still not capable of pulling off a victory, I think I should have gone for VH on the battle difficulty.

No sign of the Black Death yet, no gunpowder and no Mongol invasion but I am getting some really interesting battles and seiges.