So I have been thinking lately about a solution to the ungodly amount of time it takes to play a multiplayer game of Civ V because I’m not sure I have actually fully completed a full multiplayer game yet. Usually this is because of syncing issues coming up with my friends (jobs, kids), or the fact that when we go back to a game in progress after a few days nobody seems to remember what the hell they were doing. I love Civ V and I love how fun it can be to play with a couple of people, I just need it to actually end in a night.

This got me thinking about making a mod that allows the game to run in real time versus turn based. I have been mulling this around for a while in my head and figured I would ask a community of people probably more experienced with this stuff than I am. So I’ll explain the aspects of it and let me know if it’s complete nonsense that will never work or whether it is possible!

General flow of the game

So basically I haven’t been able to really work out the balance of the game but I was thinking that 1 turn could be equal to 20 seconds of real time. I kind of figured this would be the easiest way to go about converting everything to real time as it wouldn’t take much changing the core game really at all. If you have a city producing 30 production a turn, you just have the city producing 30 production every 20 seconds. Ideally I would want the game to still flow in real time even while players trade and barter, while players are selecting new technologies and productions, and even while players are participating in the world congress. This would take some work to override the system in place that kind of freezes anything until you pick a tech or production or whatever.

Combat

Combat was the most complicated part of this idea. I didn’t want this to turn into an RTS because I really like the pacing and strategy of civ and I want this mod to still have that spirit. So you can’t just fully have the combat in real time because that would essentially change the fundamentals of the game. The movement is easy, slow down the frames of animation and movement to their equivalent turn based movement (so one warrior will move one tile every 20 seconds in example). For the actual combat I was thinking of implementing a stamina system to all units (a system already in place sort of with the air units) that depletes after a unit attacks another city or unit and recharges after 20 seconds. This would allow for the other player getting attacked to retaliate with his units and also react if his (or her) city is being attacked.

AI

My only real big issue I see with this idea is that in the late game the computer is calculating so much stuff for the AI and I think that system would totally fuck up with this real time idea. So I would assume that would take some rework or it would take this mod working on a human player only game (which also means no barbarians or city-states which I don’t particularly like the idea of). I’m sure there would be some sort of work around but at the moment I can’t really think of how to change anything until I actually get a look at the actual system running the AI and how it works.

Wrap up

I think this would be an interesting way to solve how long a multiplayer game can take. I think it still holds true to the strategy core of the game as well as offering new ways to implement new strategies only possible with this type of play. I can imagine listening to two buddies bartering over some luxury goods all the while I send a few armies to fuck shit up in one of their civs while they are distracted. I think it offers a faster pace with a little bit faster movement on the player’s part but it is still in no way an rts, which I find a little too fast pace and stressful to enjoy that well online. Games that go for 200 to 250 turns would still last a little over an hour to an hour and a half still, and I was also thinking there could be a way of changing how quick the game moves through a slider that changes the time interval.

I don’t really have any experience with modding at all but I am a junior software engineer major so I feel like I could be a lot of help with writing scripts and game design changes in general. I honestly don’t know if the tools given with this game are robust enough to actually implement this in any way or if it would have to be one of those mods that totally has to come in and break and change everything. Let me know if I am way out of my league on this one!

I haven't read it all, and I'm also not a Civ fan, BUT if you think the idea is good and it deserves your time go on and try to make it :)

I hate to be a downer but there isn't a hope in hell of you getting a mod like that to work. You'd probably have an easier time making a real time version of civ using old civ 2 art assets from the groud up.

What you are describing is an entirely new game.

Honestly I think this is just too complicated to pull off. I'm not sure it is possible, in fact, to get around the game needing turns. The system needs to process so much information for all the players, and I'm not sure you can really mod around that. Seems like such a fundamental change. I don't know for sure, admittedly, but it doesn't really seem plausible.

Why not mod an existing real time game into something more like Civ instead?

@geraltitude: from everything I am hearing on here I figured as much unfortunately that what I was describing is too insane. I will certainly Look into some rts games that I could tweak as that probably would be easier

@physicalscience: I suggest trying out Sins of a Solar Empire if you've never played it before. It's one of the best attempts I've seen to make a real-time 4X game.

It would be easier to take something that already has real time progression for example Europa Universalis and mod some semblance of Civilization onto it. Others have tried this but since stopped, because it a pretty big task to bolt one games system onto another.