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How many life-years in a game-year?

Started by rkelly17, June 03, 2014, 08:56:02 AM

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rkelly17

Over on the Shining Rock Forum our noble leader in his non-canine identity said, "People actually age a little over 4 years per year in this game." I had been figuring at 5 life-years per game year. I haven't done the math myself, but just took the word of someone on some forum. When I first started playing the game my initial impression was 4 years, but then that started seeming too little. Has anyone actually done the math on this or made careful observations? When I was converting dates to put my Allberger citizens into a genealogy program, assuming 5 life-years per game year seemed to work out OK (e.g., kids actually entered school at 10), but there are rounding errors and I used more than one cludge to do the calculations.

So, can anyone speak with actual authority--or even very well done pretend authority?

Kaldir

#1
I consider @torgonius to be (one of) the most authoritive person(s) on this subject, and he suggests 5 years of aging in 1 game year, in his Citizen Tracker post: "[..] the kid becomes a student. It's 2 game years from when they were born [..]". His spreadsheet also calculates with exactly 5 years in 1 year.

So I'd say 5 years, which could ofcourse be considered as "a little over 4 years".  :-*


Edit: No idea about where your rounding errors came from then. Were those just one year off, or was it more than that?

Edit 2: I see Torgonius even made his calculation even more clear here, on your request even! :D

slink

A lot of us glommed onto 4 person years per world year apparently due to herd instinct, but when corrected I observed my little people more closely and 5 person years per world year does seem to be the correct number.

rkelly17

#3
The rounding errors come because 12 game-seasons=5 life-years. That means a season is .4166666666666666666666 forever life-years. Granted a life-year is 2.4 seasons, but I was having trouble mapping that on to years and months, especially since the Gregorian calendar year ends in December and begins in January while the Banished game-year ends with "Late Winter" and begins with "Early Spring." I did a new spreadsheet based on Uncle Torg's because I wanted to start at a different date and when I downloaded his spreadsheet some numbers were hardened and I would have had to type all new years. I used a "fudge factor" in my calculations so that they would work out. Most of my year cells have this formula: =1780+(5*(GY-1))+(FF+1) "What does all that mean?" you ask. Well, 1780 is the start date, GY is the Game-year and FF is the fudge factor, which relates to the season. For Early Spring and Spring the FF is 0 and so on until the FF for Early Winter, Winter and Late Winter the FF is 4. "Wait a minute!" you say. "How come 0 is the FF for 2 seasons and 4 is the FF for 3 seasons?" Exactly. Since I couldn't figure out how to map the game-season to a precise number without having years like 1802.433 I fudged. Out of the 5 FF numbers 0, 1 , and 3 have 2 seasons each and 2 and 4 have 3.

I know this is way over-complicated and I am willing to withstand the jeers of the crowd. This is what happens when you obsess over Banished.

PS: The reason I said that most columns use this formula is that it doesn't work for years before the start year at all. If you need to figure out a birth year for your initial citizens you have to go back and that requires a different formula to work. I take no credit as a mathematician. My grade 12 math teacher thought I had potential, but I disappointed her greatly--for which I got in serious trouble at home, I might add. I just tried stuff out until I found a formula that seemed to work. In my line of work, dates were pretty much a given and you didn't have to figure them out; you remembered them.

Kaldir

#4
I love over-complicating things, so I merely cheer you. :D

I can see these calculation will give you some minor inconsistencies. It will also give some interesting dates. After 100 game years, your calculated dates will be near the end of the 23rd century, with merchants still arriving in row boats. These people must really have been banished to the middle of nowhere. :-)


Edit: I always imagined this game playing in the early medieval time, some 1000 years before your start date. :)

torgonius

I updated my original Excel sheet to account for the rounding errors. I didn't update the google sheets, though, as I haven't been playing as much recently.

Every 4 game years, the counter 'resets' to 0, so if Game Year 1 is the years 1000 - 1004, Game Year 2 1005 - 1009, 3 1010 - 1014 and 4 1015 - 1019, then for game year 5, 1020 is really 1020.00000000000. It wipes out the rounding error and keeps things relatively consistent.

One mod I'd love to see is making a 'real life' year be exactly 3 months, or 1 season in game. Citizens would still die at 90 (max), but now they'd get between 15 (60 years) and 22.5 years (90 years) before shuffling off the digital coil due to old age.