But in Civilization, it takes much longer to do such things. Conquering the world takes much longer than even 1000 years. One beef I have with the CIV games is the unrealistic passage of time. It shouldn't take 200 years to build a phalanx unit or a legion of swordsmen. I hope Sid fixes the problem with time passage in Civ3.

I don't like the unrealistically slow build and combat, but if it wasn't slow then the railroad/capture capital syndrome would exist from the very beginning of the game. One tiny flaw in the AI (or your) defense and bang! Game over.

The only thing I can think of is to have 2 time scales (stop me if this is how Europa Universalis does it, I've never played it...). Your Civ rumbles along happily, for a thousand years, inventing stuff and growing in population (this timescale speeds up as tech advances, and you get Agricultural and Industrial revolutions...). Military stuff doesn't happen much on this timescale, armies are posted, barracked and sentried and do patrols. There would be a lot of strategy in setting up your defenses...

Then as soon as you're attacked/attack, involved empires go to the fine timescale and you can put your production on a war footing, units move a square in a day, or a week or something (again tech dependant?). This goes on until a cease fire is agreed (when one civ runs out of resources built up in the peace period?). Then you go back to turns covering whole years or more... Damage is tehn doen to the Civ's cities and rescources depending on what happened in the war period.

You'd need a warning whenever a civ you know about goes into this fine time scale, as they might be amassing armies that you don't know about...

I think this is a great idea for realism, and solves the problem. I have absolutely no idea whether or not it would work, or if I'd actiually want to play a game that does this because it would make life really complicated. On balance I'm happy with thing the way they are.

quote: Originally posted by Pingu: on 05-11-2001 10:33 AM this is one of those tricky things, the slow passage of time is essential for events that happen on teh scale of empires, which is what Civ is really about. This makes the movement and creation of units unrealistic... The only thing I can think of is to have 2 time scales (stop me if this is how Europa Universalis does it, I've never played it...). Your Civ rumbles along happily, for a thousand years, inventing stuff and growing in population (this timescale speeds up as tech advances, and you get Agricultural and Industrial revolutions...). Military stuff doesn't happen much on this timescale, armies are posted, barracked and sentried and do patrols. There would be a lot of strategy in setting up your defenses... Then as soon as you're attacked/attack, involved empires go to the fine timescale and you can put your production on a war footing, units move a square in a day, or a week or something (again tech dependant?). This goes on until a cease fire is agreed (when one civ runs out of resources built up in the peace period?). Then you go back to turns covering whole years or more... Damage is tehn doen to the Civ's cities and rescources depending on what happened in the war period. You'd need a warning whenever a civ you know about goes into this fine time scale, as they might be amassing armies that you don't know about... I think this is a great idea for realism, and solves the problem. I have absolutely no idea whether or not it would work, or if I'd actiually want to play a game that does this because it would make life really complicated. On balance I'm happy with thing the way they are. Pingu:

The problem with this scheme is that unless wars are infrequent or involve all the powers all the time, how can this work???

If CivA and CivB are at war but not any of the other civs the timescale would need to adjusted according to your scheme. But since there can only be one timescale for everyone, then CivC, CivD, etc would also go to the smaller timescale even though they are not at war at all.

In any case, the problem extends even for non-military movement. Does your boat carrying caravans or diplomats also require the "finer timescale"? If so then it would seem that you would need the same finer timescale all the time!

Also, it wouldn't be necessary to discover Level 5 of something to research a related tech. Getting to, say, Level 1 of Air Combat and Level 5 of Naval Combat (Battleships) should allow you to research and build Level 1 Aircraft Carriers (Naval Aviation) (pre-WWII carriers).

And one should be able to appropriate funds to multiple research projects. So I could research Level 3 Quantum Physics, Level 2 Aircraft Carriers, and Level 1 Computers at the same time. The total science funding level may be determined as in traditional Civ. The funding levels would determine how much science goes to each research project.

This give greater technological continuity and flexibility. Also, it is much more realistic - it allows for a finer differentiation in power and progress. One problem is that there needs to be a new time increment. Only if I have many turns to build my new F-86 Sabres and use them before they become obsolete by my discovery of F-15s would I bother to build them. So we need a greater degree of temporal resolution in order to utilize this greater degree of technological resolution. Could this be fixed or avoided somehow? Or do we really mind playing a longer game if it allows the game to be more interesting?