They could change it from "weeks" to "cycles" or "galactic week" or some other fictional unit of time; this would remove the implication that 1 turn = 1 week and changing all instances of "week" to "cycle" would be pretty easy to do. Moreover, I doubt it would offend anybody if we suddenly moved from weeks to cycles.

Ugh, I really don't understand all the hubub about making things in a video game "more realistic". That in itself makes zero sense. I don't know about you guys but I play video games to escape reality. IF you're going to insist that they change the weeks into months (which is totally superfluous and ultimately makes zero difference to gameplay), then you may as well ask Stardock to take time dialation into account for ships traveling faster than light.

"Hey...wtf? I launched this ship and it says it'd get to Weber III in five weeks but it's not there yet?!?!?"

"Uh, yeah. THE FLEET made it there in five of THEIR weeks. But to us...heh...they won't get there for another 530 years. Boy, I sure hope we win our tech victory by then..."

This is ridiculous. The game features a campaign where you lose most of your techs every time, that resets the clock to 'turn one' (ie 2025) every time, and has magical lasers that confine energetic plasma. Complaining about the 'realism' of population fluctuations is just crazy.

This is ridiculous. The game features a campaign where you lose most of your techs every time, that resets the clock to 'turn one' (ie 2025) every time, and has magical lasers that confine energetic plasma. Complaining about the 'realism' of population fluctuations is just crazy.

Heh, no doubt. Anyone who knows anything about elementary particle physics and electromagnetics knows that man-made plasma has a horrendously high attenuation and loses its energy and cohesion after a few feet from its primary source of emission. Example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_rifle

I suppose someone is going to suggest that it's not fair that the ship textures are unrealistic and we should have the option to research "thermoptic camoflauge" so we can cloak our spaceships...

This is ridiculous. The game features a campaign where you lose most of your techs every time, that resets the clock to 'turn one' (ie 2025) every time, and has magical lasers that confine energetic plasma. Complaining about the 'realism' of population fluctuations is just crazy.

I believe that would be known as... "Suspension of Disbelief". It's what, in Star Wars, allows us to accept that an AT-AT has laser cannons, but wouldn't make sense having a Fix-Everything Device to repair fleets unless that was a specific part of the story that made sense in the context of the narrative [IE- do other APCs and Tanks have Fix-Everything Devices to help support ships?]. And let's be frank, part of a game is the feeling of a coherant narrative, and not just a bunch of spreadsheets with graphics affixed. This is where MooIII failed, IMHO, and GalCivI and II suceeds. However, the weekly turn is still ridiculous and along with the population factor it is a small unrealistic niggle in the otherwise plausable (allowing for Sci-Fi unrealistitudes, of course) epic stories crafted by the game.

GalCivII's story allows for laser guns, hyperdrive, aliens, earthlike planets in tons of star systems, and people somehow 'evolving' into 'energy beings'. It doesn't ever try to explain how people breed fast enough to put Bacteria to pace [except the "taxpayers" idea, which doesn't satisfy], and that ruins the feeling of versimillitude as much as occaisionally stopping to notice there's a couple of rifleman in your armies in Rome: Total War.

Obviously not a gamebreaking issue, but I would like Turns to be Months. It would at least help the population issue by slowing it down about 4 times and would make the game seem like it took place on a greater, more epic scale instead of weeklong beatdowns of empires and rises and falls within the span of a decade.

It's easier to accept someone saying simply that they want weeks turned into months rather than start rattling something off about any perceived "realism". About a space game. Where ships travel faster than light. And use impossible weapons systems. And that lets you hear them shoot at each other and blow each other up in space. And where you're in control of an entire galaxy instead of stuck at a crappy job, making sarcastic remarks in a forum.

It's easier to accept someone saying simply that they want weeks turned into months rather than start rattling something off about any perceived "realism". About a space game. Where ships travel faster than light. And use impossible weapons systems. And that lets you hear them shoot at each other and blow each other up in space. And where you're in control of an entire galaxy instead of stuck at a crappy job, making sarcastic remarks in a forum.

Why? Why not have them months?

Suspension of Disbelief. We accept that ships travel faster than light and somehow violate relativity, causality, and time dilation to arrive at a standard time because it's part of the story. We accept that ships have Plasma Guns, Phasors, Tri-Strontium Armor and all of this impossible stuff because it's part of the story and needed to make it work. And we accept the tired old cliche of sounds in space because otherwise it's boring.

Is the crazy population explosion part of the story? The rapid pace of warfare? Yearly Elections multiple times a year? I could believe something about maybe total nuclear warfare in Planetary Invasion, the rising trends of speed in warfare (Space Blitzkrieg, so to speak), and such for the latter, but I haven't heard anything about the former that sounds the least bit plausable.

Why not have them months? Everything seems to make much more sense in a monthly fashion.

I'm just remembering how MOO3 had 'turns' and 'galactic cycles' (or something like) which were different periods of time! I think a turn was equal to 1.5 GC . . . I didn't know why they bothered.

I don't mind the weekly thing . . although my population must breed like rabbits

Actually, we could be missing something obvious. What are all the "Sector Unusables" for?

I'll tell you. Cloning Racks. All of Russia, most of Africa, and some of Asia is filled with row after row of Cloning Racks.
Whenever we colonize a planet, any unusable squares are filled with the little buggers and they churn out 18-year old citizens with identities and money and jobs like they were Model Ts.

Actually, we could be missing something obvious. What are all the "Sector Unusables" for?

I'll tell you. Cloning Racks. All of Russia, most of Africa, and some of Asia is filled with row after row of Cloning Racks.
Whenever we colonize a planet, any unusable squares are filled with the little buggers and they churn out 18-year old citizens with identities and money and jobs like they were Model Ts.

Edit- Sorry for the double post, server hiccup

DuckofDoom Right on you got it!

To all the " Realism people " why dont we turn the weeks into years considering that if you had a planet with a population of 5 billion it would take everyone mating and producing children like factories even on the yearly scale to get to 10 billion like in the game.

Although i never even thought about changing the weeks to months until i came here yeah it might be a decent idea but no reason to get your panties in a bunch.

Since were playing a fictional game that defies the laws of physics cant we "pretend" the weeks are months or years or even decades if we desire. I dont mean to deflect peoples opinoins everyone is intitled to thier own and thats why these forums are here to get everyone opinions but, im my personal opinion although an option to change to different increments of time would be beneficial to some i think we should let the guys work out some of the less superficial parts of the game first.

My Vote Place this one on the todo list... Just at the bottom.

GalCiv2 Rocks!

Here is why having the Devs make this change is a bad idea---

1- They have stated that it is easily modded, so do it yourself.
2- If they start changing all these little things, that is how you wrek a game in a hurry, and this is a very very small detail. If you want it so bad, post on the modding boards and request someone make you a mod.

IMO, fix the population growth, don't change time to months. Weeks is perfect for almost everything but the poulation growth, and that isn't even that big of a deal.

Bottom line, everyone plays by the same rules--So what's the big deal?

Yes, CHANGE IT. This is a must do, take a simple Unix "grep" utility and do a global change of "weeks" to "months", or even "years". While you are at it, fix all the references to millions in places to billions (once in a while it is mixed up in the text files). Points: 1. This should not take the developers more than 5 minutes to do, so don't worry about time wasted. 2. This will make absolutely no change to gameplay or the way a game goes. 3. The reason to make this change is because it is a glaring flaw in logic and takes the thinking player out of the "feel" of the game. Much like a movie where a single thing happens that can ruin you enjoyment because it just doesn't make sense, this simple cosmetic change will help immerse the players who care (and won't bother those that don't) into the game world and improve the experience. 4. Field mice gestate for 28 days. Right now, my Terrans put fieldmice to shame and are reproducing like bacteria (about every 8 to 16 hours, by my calculations). 5. I showed this game to my friend, within 5 minutes he was laughing at the "weeks" idea, putting the whole game into the "goofy" category. I think I still sold him, but it didn't help the demo.

Why don't you change it? If you're so hot and bothered about it, go grep it yourself. It's just text.

I would go for years for that epic feeling. Month's and weeks are pretty much the same thing, I don't think months feels more epic then weeks at all, it's still just little parts of a year. But galciv dosn't feel very epic to me anyway so it dosn't really fit. Fleets are only around 3 ships for example.

You need to start using your imagination instead of compulsively looking for stuff that dosn't make sense to you. Everything in a sci-fi setting is logical since you can just make stuff up to make it so, like umlaut did. You are just assuming stuff and making things up when you think something is unreasonable as well. Such as how oftenly elections will be held in the future will alwayas stay the same, how fast is scientific progress etc.

Is the crazy population explosion part of the story? The rapid pace of warfare? Yearly Elections multiple times a year? I could believe something about maybe total nuclear warfare in Planetary Invasion, the rising trends of speed in warfare (Space Blitzkrieg, so to speak), and such for the latter, but I haven't heard anything about the former that sounds the least bit plausable.

Just make up that part of the story yourself if you feel it's so important. The reason why some things are faster then they should be and some things are slower should be obvious. Do you think it would be a good idea if growing enough population to fill up a world would take a few thousand turns? Or maybe let a (basic) ship move across the whole map if we have 1 year long turns.

#62 by Citizen JoHud Monday, March 06, 2006 9:40 PM Here is why having the Devs make this change is a bad idea--- 1- They have stated that it is easily modded, so do it yourself.

Is it indeed moddable? If you or anyone else would be so kind as to point me to the files I have to modify, I would gladly change the turns from weeks to months myself. However, I think that this stuff is hardcoded, but I'd love to be wrong about this.

While months would make more sense for population growth and technological advancement, is it really necessary? Do your eyes burn if you see tiny little word that says week instead of month?


Sure, the Devs might be able to fix it in a minute.


I'll assure you that SOMEONE will come out and complain about how unrealistic it is to have the turns in month. "What do you mean I can build a battle cruiser in one month but I can't chunk out 5 scouts?"

You need a bit of imagination when playing games.. assume the time unit being whatever unit you prefer or else mod it in.

I would absolutely love to mod it in! However, due to either my correctness that is it not possible without decompiling the game code, or merely due to my unfortunate ineptitude in finding the files I need to modify, I can't.

This still simply reeks of retentiveness. I've had games where as I enter an approval crisis, my 'population' drops, then rises again quickly when the problem is resolved. The 'population' is *not*, categorically, the total sentient population of the planet. Let it go.

For a laugh, let's pretend it is. This means every single sentient on your planet is a soldier! A fantastically 'realistic' idea brought over from good ole MoO!

Frankly, the only 'realism' (ho ho) issue I have with population is that it isn't nearly large enough. If I control dozens of worlds and posess all kinds of nutbar technology, it should be trivial to maintain much higher populations than 60-odd billion. Of course, I don't complain about this since it's obvious, clear and explicitly stated that 'population' is not the total number of warm-bodied consumers. I'm more worried about issues like the UI potential and extending scripting and automation, but I guess some people have different priorities.

Yes, I am still holding a turd from the Clinton administration.

But that is neither here nor there. I don't simply want to change it due to the population issue. I want to change it so my stint at running an empire lasts decades of game time as opposed to a few years.

I can certainly see that - although I must play much slower than you, as I've stretched even early campaign missions to more than a decade...

To be honest - ridiculous population issue aside - it should be pretty easy to have a similar option to 'tech speed' that solves this to everyones satisfaction. I'm not sure this issue is really that important, and I just realised I'd scale the monthly turns to equal 4 weeks, so I'm clearly mad.

I'd actually like to see the non-violent victories allow continuation. Sure, it's pretty easy to win an alliance or influence victory, but how long can you maintain it? It'd be fun to allow a 'diplomat' to try and hold the alliances together, eventually sinking into brutality and falling back on an eventual military victory.

Well, I have yet to finish a game. But I'd be suprised if it took much over 20 years. When I play, I don't pretend I am one guy ruling over the Earth (I like to play humans for some odd reason, go figure -see handle ), rather I pretend I am playing the entire human race. I hope this is moddable, so any people who want to change it themselves can. I just think having game time pass quicker would add a more "epic" feel is all.


I mean it's by no means a gamebreaker for me, more of an irksome little peeve, akin to a nagging little brother who can't take the hint and leave you alone.

A Galactic Emperor long ago changed the name of a month to a week and all other time designations shifted accordingly.

No one seems to know why he made the change but rumor has it he bet someone in the royal court that he could bring forth an heir in 9 weeks.

This is the reason that some documents that pre-date the change still refer to months.

Again, to re-state obvious examples: In one turn, you will gain 200,000 or 400,000 new taxpayers per planet (based on approval rating). It is unreasonable to suppose that over a week, that many new taxpayers would be found. Elections seem to occur every 12 weeks, or at least they occur more frequently than every 52 weeks. This makes no sense (especially since the message that pops up says that its an election year; every year is an election year with weekly turns). Even if you can’t win the game in 10 years (as I’ve done), you can build an enormous empire and span the galaxy within that period. It makes no sense to imagine a race going from 5 billion to 500 billion taxpayers within a 10 year period. It strains the game’s credibility past the breaking point.

I just want to point out the obvious examples above would also follow the same if they changed it to months. In one month you gain 200-400k taxpayers? If you could instead beat the game in 100 years, does that make it more realistic? Does making a galactic empire in 100 years seem feasible?

I think that the whole concept of "it strains the game's credibility past breaking point" is just way off the bat. This isn't reality... it's never happened as far as we know. Let me repeat - it ISNT real, it's a game. In any situation where you are dealing with something that is not real, you are required to invest imagination. If you dont invest your imagination, this whole game is a load of fantasy crap.... every last detail.

To give you an example of using your imagination effectively. What is a week? Are we basing weeks purely on Earth's rotation round the sun? Doesn't make any sense! How long does a Galactic week take? What possible bearing does Earth's revolution round the sun have on a galactic time scale?

If it hurts that much to read that word "week" just pretend it says decade, century, millenium.... whatever fits your bill of reality!

I just noticed this in my last game: if you raise taxes up to 100% and everyone hates you, according to the "taxpayers are the only living people!" approach, high taxes kill. Try it out, and watch those taxpayers drop like flies.