Why do we see lower production rates on 3X speed?

[ACE]

title inquiry

[28rommel]

Yep. Known issue, and unsure if the devs can/will fix this. Form discussion on the official Foundation Discord, many veterans say it is most prevalent when it comes to the production of wheat. Veterans say "Just don't play on 2x or 3x speed."

Have you seen this "lower production" with other items/goods that are produced? If so, which ones?

[ACE]

It takes forever to get labor to come build my city and expand it so now fning way am I playing on anything less than 3X. For all of it's visual spendor the actual gameplay is about as arresting as updating a spreadsheet and watching paint dry. I just want to know why it makes a difference in what speed we play on since that should make zero logical sense.

[Freyja]

That is really bad... I had no idea that was a thing. That should at least be mentioned in-game.

[Bored Peon]

Originally posted by 28rommel:

Yep. Known issue, and unsure if the devs can/will fix this. Form discussion on the official Foundation Discord, many veterans say it is most prevalent when it comes to the production of wheat. Veterans say "Just don't play on 2x or 3x speed."

Have you seen this "lower production" with other items/goods that are produced? If so, which ones?

It is most prevalent on wheat because each trip is 10 wheat. It does make a difference on other stuff that is noticeable like berries and charcoal.

When I tested it last night I went form a constant scrapping the bottom of the barrel with charcoal and berries. Then it gradually increased the supply stored.

It would be nice to hear something official on it.

[Cozy Fawn]

I HATE HATE very much HATE playing on speed one so I've just started moving my "Workplace Production Time" in the rules when I make a new game to "Fast" to make up for the dropped production.

[Ishimuro]

just never play on x1, always play on x3 and tailor your production chains to fit the needs, you will need more, but you never will see the issue ^^

and not only the veterans say "then dont play x3", even the game devs keep on sayn "its a game about beauty and chill, its a city builder, not a management game"

maybe we should hint em, that we need a kinda working management to build a good looking city ... but i guess you can also build a nice looking town with just low density tier 1 houses and some bushes

if x3 doesnt work and has issues, disable it, force the players to go slow

[AmesNFire]

Originally posted by Cozy Fawn:

I HATE HATE very much HATE playing on speed one so I've just started moving my "Workplace Production Time" in the rules when I make a new game to "Fast" to make up for the dropped production.

I do this with owning all territories and deposits revealed at the start.
The game flows rather well, even if I do miss the 2x and 3x speeds.

[City Builder]

Originally posted by ACE:

It takes forever to get labor to come build my city and expand it so now fning way am I playing on anything less than 3X. For all of it's visual spendor the actual game play is about as arresting as updating a spreadsheet and watching paint dry. I just want to know why it makes a difference in what speed we play on since that should make zero logical sense.

Purely a guess here... It would seem to make sense that when on speed x3 the game has to drop calculations or executions or whatever their called so as to try to keep up the performance in the game, so in my mind I simplify it to be something like
Speed 1 calculations executed
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Speed 2 calculations executed
1 2 3 5 6 8 9
Speed 3 calculations executed
1 3 6 7 9

So like dropping calculations to accommodate for the speed increase since it's usually not all about the graphics but the CPU that has to do all the calculations.

Again just my guess and based on some old game I used to play that had similar problems when running on higher speeds.

Can it be fixed? Again a guess, probably but only with slowing down the simulation or us playing on speed 1 because it would rely on the processing power of the individuals computer.
Edit: Cleared up some terminology and info.

[Catnip-King]

Originally posted by AmesNFire:

Originally posted by Cozy Fawn:

I I've just started moving my "Workplace Production Time" in the rules when I make a new game to "Fast" to make up for the dropped production.

I do this with owning all territories and deposits revealed at the start.
The game flows rather well, even if I do miss the 2x and 3x speeds.

See my setup has been Affordable upkeep on territories rather than owning all, that felt just a little too cheaty to me. But Workplace Production Time sounds like a great thing to add to my lineup. I also always do slower renewable resources (default seems too fast for me, my forester is too good at his job)

I have also tried turning Depleteable Resources to ON and wow, it sucks no wonder it's OFF by default. It's reasonable for Iron, and I would still appreciate it for that, but having your sole source of stone be a mine or two at the corner of the map after early game is awful. Do not recommend.

Also, checking on Achievement percentages, it seems like most people have also decided pretty quickly to playing with custom rules. High completion of early-early things, like building a builders WS but pretty low for early-mid game stuff like taxation.

[ash]

Originally posted by ACE:

..I just want to know why it makes a difference in what speed we play on since that should make zero logical sense.

Incompetent programming. Plain and simple. It's actually the similar issue seen in a game where game mechanics are directly impacted by the speed of your computer. eg: the game is easier the faster your computer.

Somewhere in the game mechanics code it will be directly/indirectly affected by the real elapsed time when calculating yields for crops etc.

The reason it is a "bad thing" is that the game will be fundamentally easier or harder based on your choice of game speed.

I haven't seen another game ever sold here on Steam that has this issue. There may well be some, but if true it is a big technical fail for a city building game.

[Jaeggerjack]

The only "Workaround" is probably Just Having way more Wheat Farms. Tho I did have a Save with 2 Fully Staffed Wheat Farms, where my Storage was constantly full with Wheat, but my Mills never took it out of Storage (despite it being right next to them), they only took it directly from the Farm. Thus I was atleast for the earlier time never in stock with bread. After force Stacking flour it was kinda solved tho Mills still displayed perma "no ressource available" despite having a stock of 900 units of wheat lol

[Stefan1200]

Oh, I always play at 3x speed. I didn't know, that this has disadvantages.

Maybe this is also the answer, why my cheese production is so slow? 6 cheese production buildings (with ~10 milk farmers around them) are not able to produce enough cheese (they have more than enough milk). But one bakery and one butchers are enough for the same amount of booths and habitants. Really strange.

[RayBeans]

Lol. Now I know.... I heard of this issue way back in EA, but I thought they figured it out and solved it....

[Phytoseiulus Persimilis]

Yesterday I was following a paviour trying to understand how this guy decide where he works, mixing with 1x and 3x speed. And it seems to me that the actual real time the paviour spends in free time is the same in x1 and x3 speed.

[Feral Grumpicorn]

Originally posted by Catnip-King:

I have also tried turning Depleteable Resources to ON and wow, it sucks no wonder it's OFF by default. It's reasonable for Iron, and I would still appreciate it for that, but having your sole source of stone be a mine or two at the corner of the map after early game is awful. Do not recommend.

Also, checking on Achievement percentages, it seems like most people have also decided pretty quickly to playing with custom rules. High completion of early-early things, like building a builders WS but pretty low for early-mid game stuff like taxation.

I played through the challenge mode achievements and depleting resources isnt really that bad. Stay with wood construction until you get a bit of trade on and then just buy stone. Its only need for construction (until citizens), so the stone cost in construction can be converted into a gold cost. Its manageable.
The general theme of a challenge mode game is that its slow. So its a real bummer that you cant use 3x speed, because your production margins are already tight enough. I mostly play with 2x and switch to 1x while planning bigger construction and getting to 600 population (even without a monastery) is possible.

By now I think its no accident that we dont get any stats on buildings. It would highlight how much of a mess some of the mechanics of this game really are.