The Passage of Time

I am all for making a game as realistic as possible. "as possible" are the key words there. I think overall pacing of the game for better gameplay should determine units' speed, and not trying to capture accurate and relaistic walking speeds. Plus we don't know the distance of a tile is.

But I agree with you that it seems it takes forever to go anywhere, and by the time I finish a minor quest, years have gone by. For a champion I could see a lot of their life wasted just walking to places.

Hard to judge right now, since, as you said, there isn't much to do right now.

I can see how 6 turns could equal 1 year, and yet all champions/significant people being naturally long lived ... perhaps because it is fantasy as well as a game.

Honestly, its a huge change from the normal 1 turn per year, or even Total War's 2 turns per year. Honestly its hard for me to say how much I like the system, but it certainly contains lots of possibilities.

Also, as some multi-part quests have the potential to be within one tile, or only a couple tiles, I don't see it as a problem to spend a long time travelling great distances for a quest (like Marco Polo).

Yes but my point is that given the current turns per year and the distance travelled per turn, maybe five tiles if you have the right upgrades, seems unrealistic.  It seems to me that someone could travel further in two months, which is the number of months per turn, than that allowed in the game.  Just my thought about the current system.

Well, all of Zelda's Hyrule from Ocarina of time, if I have the scale correct, could probably fit onto a 9 tile spread. Or rather, Hyrule's country side would be about a block of 9 tiles, and each land would be anywhere from 4-6 tiles (like Red Mountain, Zora's Domain, Hyrule, Deku's Forest, Deserts, ect)

I could have mis-read it ... however I think that the tiles will be much more livlier, or at least cover more distance, than you might think.

Also ... Roads and Imperial Roads will increase travel times dramatically (I hope). For instance, lets say wasteland and opposite terrain is base movement cost. You move double speed on revived land ... and then if on a Road you move at three times the base speed ... so three times faster on Wasteland or 6 times faster on revived land. Then Imperial Roads will be a Solid 8 (or 10) times faster (in terms of distance covered), however Imperial roads cannot be built on Wasteland (only on Revived Life land or Revived Death land).

In this way ... exploring wilderness takes sometime, but leisurely strolling through your empire won't take too much time at all.

This is how I think it will/should be.

if six turns is a year then why can a kid grow up in like around 4 turns it seems lol i am extratoring but if  takes 16 or 18 years for a kid to reach adualt hood and if 6 turns is a year minum of 96 turns.

also is every one in game world immortal i know lord is but why is the husband or wife and why do the kids live just as along or longer ?

Personally, I hope everyone is "immortal" in game terms, but ages somewhat normally ... with the Exception that they shouldnt show grey hairs till 70. That way, every turn can be a year ... go abstraction! Woot!!

The main coolness of having, say 4 or 6 turns to make "a year" is that you could have Seasonal type things, like Winter Snows, and Pregger-Nancies. Of course, I would still like for babies to only take 20 turns to reach "adulthood" because getting your children up and running as Champions is cool from a game perspective. So perhaps age could be related to 1 turn = 1 year, while movement is whatever the Dev team wants (hopefully you can move faster on roads and on recovered land, and even faster just for being within your own borders/influence). Meanwhile, it would also be cool if 4 turns made a year, and each turn was a season. (Kind of like King Arthur I guess ... but moreso just to get those winter snows on the "winter turn").

I personally wouldn't mind some sort of clarification on the timescale of the turns. In all honesty I was under the impression that each turn was one day or at most one week in previous betas due to the amount of turns it took to train troops and get from place to place. Then heirs show up and suddenly they are aging! I really have to opine that the turns should either have a set standard timescale, or admit to non-concurrent times for different aspects of the game.

One example of what I mean is how in Civ 4 if you set the game length to "Marathon" everything takes longer to build, research, etc. The one thing that stays the same is troop movement speeds. In other words, in Marathon games you can spend many turns maneuvering troops and battling while little changes on your homefront. In contrast, on Short games you might learn gunpowder before your Archers make it to the enemy's city (an extreme example, but still...)! Perhaps the same sliding timescale can be applied to Elemental, or at least opened up as a moddable aspect?

Personally I would be fine with each turn = 1 season as that compromises between interminable infanthood of heirs and scouts taking a year to cross a bridge. My personal choice (and potential future mod) would be for the normal game to operate on day or week long turns - smaller scale adventures and gathering of refugees - but have a macro "Empire" mode where the game turns are years and truly epic stuff happens. This would only really be possible in single-player, but would allow both ends of the games scale spectrum to shine.

I like 1 turn = 1 season for the game play opportunities it could add. However, if there will be no difference in Seasons for the Vanilla release, then it might as well be 1 turn = 1 year.

I'd only want them to slow down the timescale if it makes the game more fun from a gameplay/mechanics point of view ... and the way all the strategic elements to create that gameplay is up to them ... so only they can really see which timescale is best (in their internal build ... and if not this one then the next one, ect)

I would figure 1 turn should be ~1 month. This way you have 3 turns per season, perhaps with reduced movement in the winter (or another disadvantage, possibly based on race).... this would add some meaning to the change of seasons besides asthetics and would mean you could travel a decent distance in a year.

See King Arthur ... they handled 1 turn per season well.

If this was a more realistic Fantasy Battle Simulator or something (like a fantasy battle simulator) then perhaps 1 turn per month could suffice. But simply with all of the City Building and research elements, 1 turn per season or 1 turn per year would be more likely. Not that I would mind 1 turn per month ... although im not sure how the suspension of disbelief would play in, not to mention that rearing a child would take for bloody ever.

Well not really - Figure a Kid would grow up in 13 years for a girl (proper marrige age in the middle ages), or 15 for a boy (when a boy could relalisticly inherit).... thats 12X13 = 156 turns for a girl or 12X15 =180 for a boy - that sounds about right.

At 4 turns per year, figure 52 turns for a girl and 60 for a boy - way too short a time for a kid to go from an infant to a playable unit.

I disagree. 180 turns is way too long. I think around 50 turns is reasonable.

4-6 turns per year is also pretty reasonable. Though I would love to have 1 turn per month, then really cool weather effects could be implemented that 1 turn per season couldn't really do. But then again, waiting 180 turns for my kid to grow up does not equal fun.

Well figure in the average marathon game of civ 4 it takes 30 turns to make your first warrior, and that games biggest critisisim is how fast paced it is, even on the slowest settings....hopefully it'll take at least 12-24 turns (1-2 years) to build a decent unit here by the time betas over.... so in the time it takes to train 5-10 units or so, your kid grows up? even at 150 turns it seems rather fast...

Lol Strager .... 30 turns for a warrior is the EARLY game of civ (on marathon) where everything is mind-bleedingly slow. On all speeds, Civ eventually gets into 1 warrior per turn rigamarole ... of course not always 1 turn for the Better units .... thats left for quick speed.

For a child to grow up ... 180 turns is way too long, especially in MP (but also in SP). 30-50 turns is more reasonable, although I don't mind the 20 turns on 1 year = turn either.

By mid-game, if I can't easily equip one soldier in one season ... Im gonna think something is wrong (if I go the Civilization/Warfare Path).

Perhaps in early late-game a legion should take maybe 5-10 turns ... maybe longer. Whereas in early Midgame a Legion would (theoretically) take maybe 100 turns.

The main time-sink (for unit training) should be Iron, magical equipment, and specialty gear (super weapons, super armor, ect).

Training a 1000 club-men in late game shouldn't take more than 4-5 turns in a Super City, if that. The main worry at that point should be (Do I have enough People??). So then, if you have plenty of resources, if your armies are getting thoroughly hammered ... you can raise an immensely large army at the cost of a bleeding economy.

Of course, a well-equipped Legion should probably take about 20 turns or so.

One thing to remember about building up these large Legions is that the populations in Elemental are much smaller than even Classical Era cities. For example Corinth during the Roman Empire was pushing 750,000 people (an extreme example, but that's just *one* huge city). With populations like that, empires could skim men off for professional armies. Even earlier, the Zhou Dynasty of "China" (I use quotes because the kingdom only spread across a fraction of modern China) had populations above 30 *million*.

Elemental is set in a post-magical-apocalypse, the population are coming in from the wilderness, not being born. My point is that the scale of the game is so much smaller than Civ 4, so training 1000 club-men is a much bigger deal. This is mostly speculation at this point (with a dash of looking at Galactic Civ II ship production rates), but unless the scale of the game changes by a factor of 10 between now and release, I wouldn't expect to see cities producing hundreds of troops a turn.

Back to the real question: How much time does that turn represent? If the turn represents a month, then I think people will be able to swallow waiting a year for a platoon of trained men to appear, not so much if the turn represents a year. This descision directly effects the player (and beta testers' ;)) perspective on how different aspects of the game (heir aging, troop produciton, troop movement, quest time limits etc) relate to each other. While 1 turn = 1 day might be ideal for modeling time sensitive quests, it doesn't work so well with aging babies. Similarly 1 turn = 1 year adds the

s t r e t c h i n g

feel to everything local. Silly examples:

"You mean it takes 5 years to cross my empire on foot... on a *Road*!"

"Please Rescue my daughter! If you don't go right away she might die of old age!"

"So if it takes 1 turn in this nice city to train 1 soldier, would building a battalion of 50 give me a bunch of old men?"

If need be these can all be abstracted away, like in the Civ games, but there is neccessarily a loss of personal attachment in abstraction. Elemental appears to be avoiding this trap wherever possible, for example by actually modeling things like marriage and troop training/equipping, and it will be interesting to see if the passage of time gets the same treatment or gets relegated to the abstraction ghetto.

The Total War series managed to contain a meaningful Dysnasty System, while only a couple people died of old age (well maybe I tended to win the game early, but still). And they used a 2 turn per year system, where 1 turn = 6 months. Abstracted into either Winter or Summer.

Now im not saying that we need to copy their system, however if a 70 year old man can die of old age in Medieval2 Total War, and it comes as a Suprise to the gamer ... then there will be no disbelief if some family members live an extra 20-30 years. Maybe have a family members age limit to be 100-120 (if they die at all), and have turns be either 2 turns per year or 4 turns per year.

Also, having children come of age at 14 or 16 could save a little time in the slower paced (not 1 turn = 1 year) system.

I still say 1 turn should be 1 month - its the best of both worlds. More realistic (less abstract), while not so slow (as in 1 turn = 1 day) as to make things take forever.

In my opinion, 1 turn per month IS so slow, and 1 turn per day (or week) would be downright impossible (unless turns take 5 seconds or less).

1 month per turn would be so damn slow that ... I would still play the game (grudgingly) and if it was decided to play any slower I would contract some serious player apathy.

That being said ... if enough things were added to make the months interesting, I could be attracted for one or two fun playthroughs ... the rest of which would be comparable to slogging through a Massive Galaxy on GalCivII (although probably more fun :p)

I would say that the slowest "fun" speed would be 1 turn for 2 months, or 6 turns per year. It splits each season into 2 turns (or 3 turns if you only have 2 seasons), so there is some variability, and yet games do not become mind numbingly slow.

I still prefer 2 turns per year or 4 turns per year ... however if you absolutely wanted slow, the most I could bearably do (and have fun) would be 6 turns per year.

It pretty much depends on how much can happen in one turn, both with movement and production. If it's 1 month per turn, then I expect that things happen really slowly(Like Marathon on Civ). But that's only feasible if the turns themselves are short(probably because you get new stuff so rarely that you just press the turn button 9 times out of 10). A regular civ-game on normal speed might take some 350 turns. Supposing Elemetal had games as long(frankly, a supposition that isn't based on anything), that would translate into just 30 years. Which would be far too little in my opinion.

I think that a normal game should last perhaps 5+-2 generations of in-game time. That would be about 4 turns per year(or so), which would be one turn per season(which has it's own nice qualities).

However, 1 turn per 6 months might be the optimal thing here. It might seem stupid that armies moved slowly across the land, but it'd probably be better regarding the dynasty system.

But we'll probably have a better idea of what time each turn should symbolize as the beta goes onwards.

Since I haven't gotten into the beta yet and have yet to experience the time effect I cannot argue the points. But reading this has brought up a few questions in my mind.

One: does this game have seasons, if not then year = x turns doesn't matter there. If so and I have deduced this is a game like Civ or MoO then it would strike me as a 2 or even a 4 turn season really is to short to appreciate the tactitcal and strategic properties of a winter or summer season.

Two: Even if the time is abstracted, this game has no time frame reference with a real world like Civ does. I.E. If you are still using archers in Civ by oh say 1600 for sake of aurgument. You know you have done something wrong. Why, based on our real world knowledge of how things progressed in our time frame.

Now seems to me I have gleaned two things when it comes to champions from the forums. They grow up to be usable quick enough. But they die to fast to be useful. Now obviously you can't have one without the other unless the grow to 18 in 2 turns then thier aging slows down at maturity and they live for the next 100 turns. (Which now thinking about it, could be a perfectly acceptable biology and fix to the problem lore wise)

But if I had to make a choice between the two extremes I would rather wait longer for my champion so I could make use of him longer. Also on the matter of turns equal realistic times. I know from my experience playing MoO that without a time reference like what you get in Civ because it is based on history, A Turn to me is a Turn. I almost never pay attention to the scale of turn vrs years. So for players like myself the abstraction is a moot point.

Granted again I have yet to get into the Beta and could be wrong. But at age 34 and growing up on classic turn based game because real time wasn't even a glimmer in it's daddies eye. I find the model tends to hold true.

This is the key point I think. Seasons really need to matter if they are going to go in at all. Fighting in the winter should have more casulties, maybe even force your armies (but not certain units) to stop and wait out the season. If the season is too short, than it removes all the strategy of it.

Even if you had 1 turn = 1 month, you would need 6 turns of winter and 6 turns of summer to make it "long term" meaningful. Whereas I don't mind the "happenstance meaningful" of fighting during the winter in Rome Total War.

But yea, if your going to make turns/gamespeed bullshit long you might as well do it right. Which is having only 2 seasons, at 6 turns a piece.

Regarding Seasons:

In games like Civ or MoM seasons are not represented in part because of scale, but also because the games do not (and do not pretend to) model the seasonal military campaigns that characterized warfare in decentralized (Fuedal) periods like Europe following the fall of the Western Roman Empire. By this I mean the player does not see large peasant forces (on both sides) return for harvest season so that they can avoid famine, leading to a period of small scale skirmishes before the war can return in earnest. In general games instead present the "Standing Army" concept as normative, when in fact professional armies emerged at various points in history as a marked deviation from the standard seasonal warfare levy armies.

Based on the beta and everything shown so far, Elemental is following this trend. This makes perfect sense because Elemental is based on an extremely centralized government with absolute command authority, fitting professional soldiers. Following this, we should not expect details like army supply lines or seasonal changes any more than we would have to manage our soldiers pensions and retirement housing