Knupp715 Wrote:I suppose so. I thought that since this being a broad answer and not a specific one he might be able to answer. I know there has been talk that the epic game speed was changed due to a small minority who wanted it longer/shorter and the Civ developers changed it and now might change it back in the next patch. What I wasn't sure about was whether they were changing it back to be longer or shorter.
Broadly speaking, the major changes in the last patch seemed to be a direct response to the more vocal complaints about Civ4. The combat patch stemmed from "spearman vs. (wounded) tank" arguments.
Epic/Marathon was probably a response to "stupid AIs launch before I kill them!" complaints. Indeed, Marathon is probably called internally, "Okay, punk, if you think the game is too short try this."
The only problem is that the 1.09 game speed and combat behaviour was already very finely balanced in the playtesting. Sirian et. al would probably agree with me if they were allowed to -- Sirian's very immediate, entirely negative reaction to both changes alone is enough evidence. If it's not, then consider whether the good strategic minds here would let Civ4 go through testing without trying to balance game speed and combat?
. The 1.54 changes either reverted to something tried earlier in the beta testing, before release, or (possibly worse yet) to a simply new formula. Whichever it is, the new speeds (which are simply XML changes) and combat (game code) haven't been as finely balanced as what shipped with the game. I, for one, look forward to seeing what happens in the next patch.
If nothing happens, then it's not a total loss -- Soren mentioned in a CivFanatics thread (on AI programming) that the SDK (whenever it's released) will simply be the C++ code needed to run the game rules and AI. It'd take a very fine interpretation to suggest that the game rules don't include combat resolution code, so if nothing happens in a patch, RBCiv can come up with an official version.