1 turn = 1 day » Forum Post by 7EA

I think it's not that important ... unless there's a story generator from the most important events in the game.

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Alstein

Join Date 07/2004

+55

I agree with both of you, I'd prefer turns, but it's not that important.

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Galciv2 suffers from the same problem where one turn is one week. This basically means you can go from an early spacefaring civilization to the ultimate technology and Ascension in only a few years; but since this is Sci-fi it's somewhat more acceptable (who really knows how future technology progresses). Population growth is also quite an issue in Galciv2 for the same reason (billions of people popping up in mere months).
Galciv1 was better in this aspect with one turn being one month.

Just a note on that. The population in GalCiv2 isn't how many people there actually are on the planet. It's the number of taxpaying citizens.

So just because you jump from 1 billion to 2 billions in just a few weeks, doesn't mean that there's actually 1 billion more people on the planet. Just 1 billion more that choose to pay taxes.

[...]
Furthermore, a game of Civilization IV lasts from 500-1500 turns depending on what settings you choose. It can be even shorter if you win before the time runs out.
If we apply this to the '1 turn = 1 day' system, then a full game will last from 1,37 years (500 days) to 4,11 years (1500 days). Not very epic if you ask me. How do you build an empire (from scratch) in only 4 years?
Of course, a game of Elemental might last tens of thousands of turns and a Stone Wall may take 700 turns to build. However, I don't think that will be the case.

If we on the other hand use the '1 turn = 1 month', then a full game would last from approximately 42 years to 125 years. That has a much more epic feel to it.[...]

If you've played the Civilization games, you also notice that the time of a turn scales. At first, a turn represents a much lower amount of time compared to late game.

I haven't checked it in Civ4, but I'm positive that's the way it worked in Civ3.

Edit: And who's to say how long a day lasts, anyway?

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Honestly the whole time scale doesn't really matter a whole lot to me. As long as I can grow my empire within a reasonable amount of (playing) time I'll be happy

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You know, I was just thinking about that too. Though, I was thinking about it in terms of marathan game vs. short deathmatch and how much time scales would be different.

Sure, it seems strange to imagine building an army and taking over a neighboring town only in a matter of days, but at the same time what bigger scale do you want?

Master of Magic's 1 month thing had its flaws too. A unit can only move the distance of 1 city in a month (since a city took up a tile) that means a city is somehow benifiting from terrain 2 months worth of walking away. Its reasonable to assume that an army can travel about the distance accross a large city in a day (maybe a little bit longer if on a good road), and a city can benifit from hunting grounds or a rock quarry that is about 2 days travel from town. 2 Months though? How is my city taking any sort of benift from it there. Also, howcome I have deticated 2 thousand workers to buiding me a granary, but it still is taking them over a year? That doesn't make sense. The ommish get barns up in like a matter of days (1 day by stereotype, I'm not sure how accurate that is though), so why are my townsfolk so lazy they need over 12 months to pull it off? Its a single freakin' building! I mean a parthanon or wizard's tower might need some work, but usually by the time you are building those you've got some 10 thousand working on it.

Also, why can't my dudes fight more than one battle in a month. You know, run in > shoot some arrows > retreat > make more arrows (doesn't require mmuch in the way of resources) > go back in. Maybe each movement on the battle field represents a day and the scale is much grander than I originally imagined with each unit representing an entire army ?

Maybe a week is a common ground? The point I'm trying to make is just that thinking of the time scale is going to mess something up no matter what it is. I like the way Master of Magic does it, because you kinda have to hunt for the timeframe. That way you arn't thinking about the fact that in a certain time frame you get XXX, because everything is measured in turns. In HoMM I never really found myself saying "why do I get 1 angel EVERY week? How can there be an explosion of a particular race this particular other week?"

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how about letting the player decide what kind of scale he/she wants(within reasonable variation, say 1 day, 10 days, 1 week, 10 weeks, 1 month) and then adjust the game accordingly. It could be a setting of some sort, it could also help open the game up a little more and make the player feel like he/she is not forced to play a game lasting ten thousand years, or even 10 thousand days, but can choose what kind of scale he/she wants, and still not feel overwhelmed(e.g. having a text box for entering specific integers for the scale would be too time consuming to code, AND would definately overwhelm the player)

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I don't like the idea of time per turn being anything besides 1 day... If you are playing a small map where you can expect to cross the entire thing in a couple of weeks or a month than that is cool. The larger maps will obviously take way longer to traverse and thus reinforce armies and what-not. It shouldn't take one year for my army to get some reinforcements. I'm sure the number of spells you can cast is limited each turn... and if my mage can only cast a few spells every week, I'm gonna be both pissed and annoyed.

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I can see why only a few two or three day ritual spells can get cast in a week.

MOM did this well, as you had the option of increasing your 'throughput' or other options. You had to choose between a few good spells, one or two GREAT spells, or a horde of 'minor tweak' spells.

At the risk of being dense, if the tactical game is daily turns and the production is measured in weeks, then militarizing early and often becomes mandatory. Just to point out the obvious.

But I'm happy with 'turns'. Mrr... chilling thought - monthly diplomacy and planning phases, weekly production, daily unit movement, and hourly tactical combat turns. I forget the strategy game that worked that way, but it was a HORROR to deal with it using pencil and paper tech. Honestly, this borders on too MUCH micro-management for me.

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From the early screenshots of the game they are using days as the turn unit in the game.

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Guys and girls.... does it really matter? I mean, it's a fantasy game. What difference can it possibly do that a wall is erected in 2 days instead of two monts. For all we know it can take 3 weeks 2 days 5 hours.

We have to put a measure but it means nothing really if everybody abides by the same scale. if a wall takes 2 days for everybody who cares? Just my opinion.

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Philocthetes

Join Date 10/2003

+153

Quoting Solam,

reply 10

Guys and girls.... does it really matter? I mean, it's a fantasy game. What difference can it possibly do that a wall is erected in 2 days instead of two monts. For all we know it can take 3 weeks 2 days 5 hours.

We have to put a measure but it means nothing really if everybody abides by the same scale. if a wall takes 2 days for everybody who cares? Just my opinion.

I'm sure that many other players agree with Solam here, but IMO a game like Elemental is more likely to attract folks who disagree than was a game like GC2. Here, I suspect that having a game that works like a good story will be more important to more players. That leaves me leaning to the idea of a very generic way of describing turns/time, *unless* the devs can devise a meshed time management scheme that can whip the problems described above about mixing sub-plots that involve things as different as a quick brawl in the woods and building a major temple. My guess is that at least for its first incarnation, Elemental will be better off calling a turn a turn.

p.s. To Luckmann re GC2 pop growth & turns/timescale: that argument only works plausibly for homeworlds. All new colonies get the same pop-growth math from 'week' 1, but (especially with extreme environments) there's no 'recruitable' population in the hills.

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It is simply a matter of where to set the Abstraction level. One well trained soldier should take about 1 generation, or approx. 25 years to create based on some level of reality.

How does that get represented in game terms? Are all people simply produced like clones? or is some level of reality to be sought. It seems that if any semblance of "real-time", other than "Battle" is to be introduced, simple things such as unit ages and or build times for know objects, have to be ignored totally, and as such the whole idea of 1 turn ='s (???) will have to basically abandoned as is usually the case in the 4X genre.

Otherwise, the whole "disconnection from reality" or "suspension of disbelief" suffers.

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I'm sure that many other players agree with Solam here, but IMO a game like Elemental is more likely to attract folks who disagree than was a game like GC2. Here, I suspect that having a game that works like a good story will be more important to more players. That leaves me leaning to the idea of a very generic way of describing turns/time, *unless* the devs can devise a meshed time management scheme that can whip the problems described above about mixing sub-plots that involve things as different as a quick brawl in the woods and building a major temple. My guess is that at least for its first incarnation, Elemental will be better off calling a turn a turn.

I agree it would stop the speculation on how much time passes.

I for one still cannot understand the need to quantify the passage of time in this kind of game. The inhabitants of this world might be 10 times more powerful than we are and 20 times faster than us. They may have 500 hours in thier day. They may be henhanced in some way. For the game mechanics we need to press TURN. A TURN will never be adaquate for any or all actions of this game.

If they put the days then we will never get anything done because building a cathedrale will take 10 years to build which would be 3650 turns. Who wants to press TURN that many times.

If they put 1 month, then our units should be able to move what 10 leagues a day which would mean 300 leagues every turn, then that would be ludicrous.

I think it just cannot be done. And it should not even be a problem. Like Swicord says a turn is just a turn. lets not try and see if the game is logical it won't be, it cannot be.

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Quoting GW Swicord,

reply 11

I'm sure that many other players agree with Solam here, but IMO a game like Elemental is more likely to attract folks who disagree than was a game like GC2. Here, I suspect that having a game that works like a good story will be more important to more players. That leaves me leaning to the idea of a very generic way of describing turns/time, *unless* the devs can devise a meshed time management scheme that can whip the problems described above about mixing sub-plots that involve things as different as a quick brawl in the woods and building a major temple. My guess is that at least for its first incarnation, Elemental will be better off calling a turn a turn.

I'm not sure if I agree. That same people that will be annoyed by the fact that it only takes 2 days to build a wall will be annoyed by just calling a turn a turn, too.

Let's say it takes:

2 turns to build a wall
3 turns for my scout to cross the average-sized forest to my left
1 turn to for population to increase by 1%

That means that over 2/100 people (2/50 women) will give birth in the time it takes to build the wall (maybe not so unrealistic), and 3/100 people (3/50 women) will give birth in the time it takes my scout to... cross a forest? 6% of all the women in my nation give birth in the time it takes my scout to cross a forest?! I can put up 3 walls in the time it takes my scout to cross the forest and return?

My point is, anyone who is going to be annoyed or complain that the chosen timescale makes no sense is going to complain no matter what stardock does. Civ IV's turn system worked pretty well (turns = more years later in the game), but nonetheless there were still inconsistencies. Early research went insanely fast, and moving units was completely out of whack - in the later part of the game a turn could be 5 years. Tanks had ~3 movement... That means a tank could cross roughly one city in 5 years without roads/railroads. Tanks can move a lot faster than that.

This is the biggest part of any 4X game that requires suspension of disbelief. The genre just wouldn't be fun if everything was on a realistic timeframe. The different aspects of 4X games that the player has direct control over happen at such disparate rates that they can't be meshed realistically and still be fun. It can take just a few days for a guy on horseback to travel 100 miles, and it took years to build city walls. The rates of those two activities differ by a factor of ~100, so to be realistic in this scenario a turn would have to be ~3 days, and it would take 100 turns to build your wall. I would get so bored waiting for the stupid wall to finish that I'd quit the game and never take it out again.

So whether they call it a day or a turn is irrelevant in my opinion, because whatever they call it the same complaints will still be relevant no matter what. I actually prefer day vs. turn. If it takes me x days to do something, it makes me feel like I'm part of a world. If it takes me x turns to do something, it makes me feel like I'm playing a computer game.

/rant...

Edit: seems like John Hughes and Solam got to a lot of my points before I did

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pigeonpigeon your point was way better detailed

Cheers

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Off-topic: how did you make my username blue and fake-clickable, Solam? I've seen others do it before but I have no idea how...

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oh hahahaha i didnt even think for a second that the realism was a issue... i just thought this was all over what time scale would be best....i dont think players will care if the time is realistic(atleast, i dont, i just care what time scale makes me feel a part of a world the most, say 1 month, that really works for me, but other people might like other timescales, that is why i suggested the setting to let the players choose.. :/ ) haha i feel dumb.

if we were to have a poll, i'd vote for a turn being anything but "a turn" ; i think adding any any sort of time scale is better than none. it makes me feel connected to the game in some way, like its telling a story, rather than running a game engine.

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Quoting pigeonpigeon,

reply 16

Off-topic: how did you make my username blue and fake-clickable, Solam? I've seen others do it before but I have no idea how...

pigeonpigeon - I did that once on accident. Like the HTML editor of this website figured it out automatically.

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I just copied and paste your name. I did not even see it until this morning LOL

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Philocthetes

Join Date 10/2003

+153

So whether they call it a day or a turn is irrelevant in my opinion, because whatever they call it the same complaints will still be relevant no matter what. I actually prefer day vs. turn. If it takes me x days to do something, it makes me feel like I'm part of a world. If it takes me x turns to do something, it makes me feel like I'm playing a computer game.

I have to agree about the general level of complaints probably remaining roughly the same no matter what the UI wording is. Turns vs. days, or weeks, or whatever--that just confuses focus when you're talking about level of detail and the decisions-per-turn burden for players.

I doubt that a bump in this area would keep me from playing far too much Elemental, but I like the idea that the game could include a 'sticky' and global version of the calendaer vs. turn number option that GC2 recently acquired.

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Quoting GW Swicord,

reply 20

I doubt that a bump in this area would keep me from playing far too much Elemental, but I like the idea that the game could include a 'sticky' and global version of the calendaer vs. turn number option that GC2 recently acquired.

What do you mean by that? I haven't played GC2 for a while. Mind explaining what that means?

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Philocthetes

Join Date 10/2003

+153

Quoting pigeonpigeon,

reply 21

What do you mean by that? I haven't played GC2 for a while. Mind explaining what that means?

I forget how many updates ago we got it, but there's now a handy little change to the main map calendar--you can click it to toggle between showing Day-Month-Year format to just showing turn numbers. It completely changed my ability to think (and post) about the pace/phases of my games because I just never got good at remembering what 'year' the game started or calculating how many 'weeks' it had been since X happened.

The 'sticky' and 'global' talk is because you have to hit the toggle every time you start GC2 if you want to see turns, and the change is only visible in that little box at the top of the main map. I'd also like to see it in places like the Timeline and Victory tabs, and even the Espionage tab--pretty much anywhere the word 'week' appears should change to 'turn' if the player wants that change on the main map.

Not that I'm lazy and demanding or anything...

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The 'sticky' and 'global' talk is because you have to hit the toggle every time you start GC2 if you want to see turns, and the change is only visible in that little box at the top of the main map.

YES! They should be able to make the talk thing much less of a hastle to always access.

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You know, this has always kinda bothered me. It's kinda like how I was always bothered by how traditionally disparate and infighting cultures like the Greeks and the Chinese are depicted as unified in Civilization. I kinda got over this by imagining that I'm controlling the aggregate culture... that there was in-fighting, but it simply wasn't depicted. More like, I was the Greeks fighting the Persians or some such.

One solution with admittedly quite a few problems is to use variable turn length. The game would slow down in times war so you can better control units on a day-by-day basis. Otherwise, during peace time, you could accelerate 10 years or something, and the game would pause if something wierd happened. You could queue up and automate tasks, even. That way, you get a more epic length of time without it taking 4 years for people to cross forests.

The problems is in multiplayer and that the game may not necessarily know when you want it to slow down.It'd be a bitch to program, too. With all the heroes you have out adventuring, you'll probably be doing something each turn.

Maybe you can have an AI bot take over while you're not doing anything. Just an idea.

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