Years Per Turn?

**Landwalker** · November 17, 2007, 10:53 AM

I was wondering why SS uses 1.5 years per turn. It seems like an add choice by virtue of its number alone, but I'm curious about it for a couple of other reasons.

(1) The goal of the long-game Grand Campaign is to hold 70 (!) regions, plus one or two specific ones that are more or less irrelevant to this. At 1.5 years per turn, that means you have about 320 turns to get the job done. That seems to me like an awful rush, roughly one settlement every 4½ turns. Doesn't leave much time for consolidation or slow-and-steady play.

(2) I know it was the case in vanilla, and assume it still is, that agents and family members age at the rate of half a year per turn (which would explain some of the "bugs" I noticed people mentioning about characters who should be 113 only being in their mid-sixties, and so forth). As far as I know there's no way to change this.

So, I'm curious to here why SS opted for 1½ years per turn, instead of one year or even half a year per turn. It would match up more closely (or even exactly) with character aging, and would slow down the progression of the game enough for slow pokes like me to have more than a snowball's chance in hell of actually meeting the victory conditions.

Cheers.

P.S. Yes, I know you can change the year progression rate in descr_strat. That isn't what I'm asking. I'm asking about the decision, not how to change the result.

**Queen Annes Revenge** · November 17, 2007, 11:14 AM

I can't speak for King Kong obviously, but I feel that this is a perfect pace for me. I've tried playing 1 ypt games, but I just get really bored fielding units of militia waiting for the late technology.

If you're behind schedule early in the game, don't worry. Once you get cannons and heavily armored knights (well, depending on the faction) you will have the ability to take multiple settlements per turn.

**Caesar Clivus** · November 17, 2007, 07:06 PM

Basically I believe KK felt that 2 years per turn was too fast and 1 year per turn was too slow

**Landwalker** · November 17, 2007, 07:29 PM

Originally Posted by Caesar Clivus

Basically I believe KK felt that 2 years per turn was too fast and 1 year per turn was too slow

Fair enough. Tis all a matter of preference, I suppose. The slow-poke that I am, I've toned it down to two turns per year, and I wouldn't be surprised if I still didn't make 70 provinces. At least now I have 960 turns to try to meet it.

The only problem is that turning down the pace can lead to cities growing too fast (comparatively) or elite units becoming available too early chronologically, since growth rates and build times remain unchanged, but I think I can live with that.

Cheers.

**Caesar Clivus** · November 17, 2007, 08:03 PM

You can change that too though. You can increase building times in export_descr_buildings.txt. Growth rates can be changed in descr_settlement_mechanics.xml. Or you can up the population levels required for each tier of settlement at the bottom of the mechanics file.

**Landwalker** · November 17, 2007, 09:16 PM

Originally Posted by Caesar Clivus

You can change that too though. You can increase building times in export_descr_buildings.txt. Growth rates can be changed in descr_settlement_mechanics.xml. Or you can up the population levels required for each tier of settlement at the bottom of the mechanics file.

Yes, but that's a lot more work, especially with the growth rates (since you have to figure out what an appropriate growth rate would be for each settlement. You can't just chop it in three, or a lot of places wouldn't grow at all.) I don't have the time or inclination to do all that work, and I have to have some sort of carrot hanging over my head (in the form of fancy units) in order to keep me chugging along through the campaign.

Maybe a mod will roll around one of these days that adds a lot of new units so that it can reasonably slow down the chronology of the game (to, say, half a year per turn) and at the same time offer enough "incentives" at each "tech level" to keep things interesting all the way through. Of course, I have no idea what those new units could possibly be, so it's unlikely that will come about. Even so, I enjoy things quite a lot as they are now, even if I can expect to have top-tier units running around in 1200 AD.

Cheers.

**Caesar Clivus** · November 17, 2007, 11:04 PM

Well just up the population requirements for each level. Population will grow at the same rate, but it will take longer to get to the each upgrade and hence, delay the year when you get top tier units. Easy to do and you can easily tailor it to your liking

**Landwalker** · November 17, 2007, 11:05 PM

Ah, that's an interesting solution. I'll play through some campaign as-is for a while, see what I think about the pacing (and see when the big guns start rolling out of the settlements), and then I might start fiddling around with that. Thanks for the idea!

Cheers.

**Okocim** · November 18, 2007, 02:11 AM

I myself enjoy the pace, but... when I see a crusade lasting 15-25 turns it make me scratch my head. If say Milan goes on a crusade to Cairo, they should land there with in 5 turns or so... Its been 20 turns and the French only got to Jerusalem.

**Schod** · November 18, 2007, 02:51 AM

I've never seen crusaders get on a boat in 5.1

**Okocim** · November 18, 2007, 03:31 AM

yeah maybe they should to speed up the process... as far as Milan goes I said "they should land there with in 5 turns or so" I meant to imply sailing to Cairo.