This is a minor thematic issue, but does it seem odd to anyone else that each turn only represents one week? Am I supposed to believe that the population of my colony just doubled in 6 months? Those are some prolific breeders.
The time-scale of the game just becomes ridiculously compressed due to this fact. A standard length game would only be a handful of years (5 or 6 usually). That's a pretty short time to colonize and conquer the galaxy. I feel like each turn being a month would be more reasonable. Or better yet, just call them "turns" and let the player use their imagination to decide how much time is passing.
Well, I believe it represents not just births but also new arrivals. Calirfornia's population went up pretty fast on a weekly basis during the American gold rush. As more housing & food resources get built and become available new colonists are allowed to settle from elsewhere.
Where is that new population coming from? The population of my capital isn't going down.
Even if you ignore the population issue, 5 years still just seems like far too short a time to create a galactic empire from scratch.
Well as you said, it does require a little imagination as we play our pretend games. In this case, for me, part of any population exists either in a nomadic fashion and will settle where they can once there is living room. Or perhaps they are coming from all your worlds combined and the population on those worlds IS offset by new births. or perhaps first one, then the other. Dealer's choice, but point is, game is as feasible as you want it to be.
Originally it was a month, per turn, and it felt that way, then, as well.One week is just that much more ridiculous.
Interesting that it was originally a month. I wonder why they changed it.
I said it was a minor thematic issue, but it does grate if I'm at all interested in roleplaying.
I declare this not a real issue. Thank you that is all.
Depends on whether or not you view the game as a purely mechanical exercise or if you like to RP a bit with your strategy games. If you fall into the latter category, then you might view this with some frustration.
While I respect your opinion compares to the other issues of substance in this game this is peanuts.
I like to think of the turns as a month and even that doesn't always work. I have wondered if it would be possible to mod the game clock to reflect the time in months vs days.
This is a small issue that is not keeping me awake at night but it is an issue of immersion nonetheless. I tend to ignore the clock anyway and if I could turn it off I would. What is it good for?
In the distant future, the galactic "week" is equivalent to [insert your preferred time increment here].
There, fixed that for you. And you don't even need to download an update from Steam.
Another way to look at it is that the population listed is how many inhabitants are actually contributing to the civilization. A colony grows as it attracts unaffiliated denizens. There were millions of native Americans in North America in 1492. But most of them died of diseases they had no resistance to. On a hopeful note, perhaps stellar exploration will avoid such disasters, because the beings involved will have a higher intelligence and better technology. Maybe.
On another note, since everyone is flying around at warp 16 or so, well above the speed of light, it is probably a better question why time doesn't go backwards. The game should LOSE a week every turn.
That doesn't work. The game also unhelpfully lists the year.
And a Galactic Year is clearly equal to a Terran Solar Year? Use your imaginations people, we're gamers.
Well, all the spacefolk are hoors (as Ralphie from the Sopranos would say), which explains the population growth. But SD could mix things up and make things interesting by making a mass outbreak of STDs in your galaxy because of the hoorishness. Make it a Galactic Event: "Your women and men are too loose with their morals. As a result, STD cases have skyrocketed across your galaxy. Population growth will half for the next x turns as this dealt with. Also, productivity will drop as your worker are too...ah, shall we say tender?...to work for you. And those little crabs are no good at making or discovering stuff either - but you could try.....:
Benevolent: Cream and medication for all. 10% approval, -20% productivity
Pragmatic: If you can walk, you can work. Get the cream later. 5% approval, -5% influence, -10% productivity, -5% population growth.
Malevolent: Shaddup and work you hoors!! Plus extra hours for breaking our moral code . -15% approval, 5% productivity, -20% population growth."
As for how those cute little babies grow up so fast...Um, genetics, GM....I dunno...
I think you never will be able to get a realistic time scale on a turn in a turn based game. If a turn is long enough to explain population growth, than there will be the question why it takes so long to build a small ship.
However, I agree the short time span breaks immersion. Maybe they should go with something unclear like the stardate in Star Trek.
I think civs approach to it is pretty neat, with turns early in the game representing years, even decades, and turns later in the game representing just months.
Of course that doesn't really work in a sci-fi setting.
Now to poke some holes for funsies:
-The idea behind the game is that you are just starting out exploring space and that no intergalactic law exist (see various frogboy posts), therefore a "galactic week" does not exist.
-why do races other then Terrans use 52 weeks in a year format for their calendar? They would have their own vastly different calendars.
Why not just measure time according to an abstract "star date?"
It would avoid all the issues that come with trying to fixate on a real time increment for the turn length.
I want Imperial Time Span 535C7: Imperial Time Unit F9: Imperial Short Span 24.
If you are going to go for meaningless Sci Fi terms, why not go all the way?
That was certainly the lampshade they hung on it in Gal Civ 2.
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