Like the thread title asks... how much time do you usually wind up putting into your games on average?

I take from 2-3 hours, depending on how fast I make my decisions. I've learned a bit of strategy here on the forums, so I'm hoping I can speed up the research and production times.

I play Epic Speed, Custom Maps with 6-12 civilizations, and I play on Settler difficulty, always with Time victory off, because that was the only type of victory I can win with it enabled.

10+ hours. ._.

10+ hours. ._.
H*** S***! Does it take you forever to make decisions???

Yeah, pretty much. XDD

I also like to go around and view everything.... plus I've only gotten -one- victory before the modern era, and it was a freak accident.

20+ hours on average.

I play marathon but bumped the tech costs up a bit again by about 50%, mainly because I like to extend the lifetime of each unit to have the option of having wars in any era without worrying about them becoming obsolete.

Are you guys kidding me? 2-3 hours to finish a game? What size maps and difficulty are you playing?

I must be really bad then. I take forever to make decisions and I hardly even do any micromanagement. :blush: I play on huge maps all the time and right now I must have about 50 hours put into this one game. Usually at the end (in the modern era) if I win it says I played something around 60 hours. One time in Civ III was even 80 hours.

But that's because I like to play with alot of civs in the game just like there are in real life to spice it up and add a more epic and realistic experience. The more civs the better is my normal train of thought.

But that's because I like to play with alot of civs in the game just like there are in real life to spice it up and add a more epic and realistic experience. The more civs the better is my normal train of thought.


I'd agree with your statement in general. Unfortunately the max my pc will handle is Large maps and approx 12 CIVs starting. Could handle more in the early stages but by late game it slows to a crawl if its any more/larger than that.

Standard Maps, Epic speed... up to 10 hours? I finished a culture victory in 5 hours and that felt Quick :mischief:

My fastest was a 4 Civ pangea duel, won in the 1500s with a total time of around an hour and 20 mins, epic speed. Average is usually around 3 hours, on Small maps wih 18 civs. Usually time victories. ^^;

For me it depends on the game somewhat, and the victory I'm going for. I currently play on Monarch, usually standard map and normal speed. My typical cultural victory attempt lasts 1.5-2 hours. If I'm warring, the game runs from 2.5-4 hours. The only time I've had games last longer than that was when something distracted me, such as getting up and watching my roomate play call of duty 4 while leaving the game running or something. I don't think I've logged more than 4 hours playing time in any one game.

I'd imagine epic would slow me down somewhat, but I tend to be very decisive on plans and then the steps needed to follow through on them. I get these times even when I'm running specialists and micromanaging heavily early on. Also, unit/building queueing helps me a lot, as does doing so with worker actions.

Standard Maps, Epic speed... up to 10 hours? I finished a culture victory in 5 hours and that felt Quick :mischief:

That sounds about like my games.

The fastest game I ever played was a Prince-level, 5 Civ Small Pangaea Conquest Victory, which took just under 3 hours.

I'd say my baseline is about 7 hours for a Standard, Epic Monarch game.

Decreasing (or increasing) any of those settings can drastically alter the length of the game (especially difficulty, where I start MM'ing everything).

Peaceful games are also a lot faster since each turn is comprised of fewer actions.

I can easily see how a Huge extra-civs map could take 60 hours.


-- my 2 :commerce:

I usually play Epic games that last +/- 15 hours. Think im a fairly slow player.

I'll take 15-20 hours per game usually playing a half hour at a time. I'm happy if I finish one game a month. I don't like being rushed. :)

Usually three or four hours per standard sized, normal speed game, and I've always considered myself a super-fast player.

Wow, two to three hour people, do you micromanage anything?

i usually play small shuffle map, noble difficulty, random leader and my games usually last max 4 hours usually 3 or similar...+ i always enable quick combat...
if i play on monarch i think the time of playing at least doubles...

I always play marathon, but let the RNG decide how big the world is.

Short games (usually Duel size) can be over in 2-3 hours.

Long games take at least 24 hours. Of course, I spread that over a week or so.

I am currently playing at marathon speed, Monarch difficulty, standard size, and standard # of opponents; and I average about 8 hours per game. They are starting to take a little longer because I am "tightening up" my playing for the next difficulty level.

Heathen

Something about 7-8 hours. Depends on how much I emphasize on espionage. Having to watch enemy moves (especially when they endlessly move back and forth on railroads) makes turns longer.

I save before going to wars, thats why is easy to take decisions, so yes - 2-3-4 hours a game and it is getting faster.
I do not do micromanagement, but its ok for Prince victories:king:

O-O! So you admit to cheating! :p Reloader. :p

20+ hours mostly, playing marathon speed (normal & epic are nono for me :crazyeye: )

O-O! So you admit to cheating! :p Reloader. :p

Saving the game now and then is not cheating it is just giving your nation a second chance
...in case you fail miserably at the first time :lol:

Varies from three to six hours. I like playing Marathon speed, but it can be frustrating in the early game and destabilise things in the later game if the map is too large...the longest game I enjoyed was as Justinian with Continents and I kept myself from beating my main rival (Asoka) up for long enough that the game was interesting enough to play and then started looking for resources on the other continent, elbowing others out of the way in the mean time. I don't think I scored highly (ended up with a space-race victory) but that game took two or three evenings' worth of playing so possibly that was six hours+. Most other games last one evening; I don't keep track (I even keep overwriting the saves because I am too used to saving a lot by clicking on the first in the list...just to keep the game from being lost when the computer CTDs...before I save the new game as a separate file) of the actual time but one game is one night's worth of play unless I am playing on Marathon.

I started several Marathon games this evening and ended up quitting because for some reason things just went so slowly on any kind of leader that I found it difficult to stay afloat. Playing on Hemisphere or Archipelago, I thought it was my lack of ocean-going vessels that was the problem, since I wiped out my rival civilisation pretty quickly and got bored and fell behind (hint: Boudicca does not do well with technological advances). After that I tried Lakes with the Ottomans, and finally Lakes with Darius...holy !!!!...I might as well quit again, this time because I have achieved Gunpowder by about 400 AD (on Settler).

As for micromanagement I'm getting better. I'm finding it easier to stop clicking Enter or automatically moving my Research slider down a notch when I need more money. I just found the "Emphasise Production" icon. I'm trying not to use the Debug tool too much - if you get momentum going, though, you neither really have to micromanage nor cheat, which feels better than doing both all the time. I've yet to devise a really sound strategy for starting off with only one Settler ;):):( but even with this Boudicca (twice), Churchill, Rameses and Mehmed didn't take off that well.

After this I will go and play Darius on Marathon Hemispheres at Chieftain level just to check it's not just a lucky fluke.

EDIT @Leo: I never reload. I just restart...

Are you guys kidding me? 2-3 hours to finish a game? What size maps and difficulty are you playing?

I must be really bad then. I take forever to make decisions and I hardly even do any micromanagement. :blush: I play on huge maps all the time and right now I must have about 50 hours put into this one game. Usually at the end (in the modern era) if I win it says I played something around 60 hours. One time in Civ III was even 80 hours.

But that's because I like to play with alot of civs in the game just like there are in real life to spice it up and add a more epic and realistic experience. The more civs the better is my normal train of thought.

Yeah i'm similar. My last game was about 55 hours I think, but then I do play on marathon and huge with 18 civs. Also my laptop slows down a bit come the modern era, that might cost me a couple of hours overall. But it's worth it, I, like you love the epic scope of a big long game, with all it's twists and turns and protracted wars.

Huge map, 12-15 civs, marathon, prince or monarch, 15 to 18 hours.

I'll occasionally play a short game (small map, 3-4 civs, normal speed, noble) if I want to look at a mod. Those games take a couple of hours.

My average game on Noble, Standard Maps, Epic, Big & Small last about 7+ hrs.

Although I would say about 90-95% of my games I never finish. I'm a chronic restarter, so my real average game last 2hrs and then I restart :D .

huge maps, marathon speed, 18 civs. rarely finish in under 20 hours.

Standart maps , normal speed, between 3 and 11 h ( normally depends of having modern wars or not... the wars with tanks and guided missiles take sooooo long... ), average 5/6 h

They used to take 24 hours, but since I only play on weekends, I don't have much time to play.

I'm an obsessive micromanager; always at Normal speed, Large or Huge maps (usually continents or pangaea), Emperor level. The longest game I've played took 166 hours, or darn near a week if I'd played non-stop.

I always play on large maps (I would play huge.. But there to slow.. Maybe Huge maps, nearly 100% water?) Somewhere near 12-18 players will do per map. Also, Playing on quick with 1:30 - 2:00 per game.

But on CIV 3... thats a differnt story.. Huge, Max players, 4 hours.

I am amazed and a little shocked at how quickly some players play this game!:eek: My last game (standard speed and map, monarch difficulty), clocked in at 64 hours. I am about halfway through my current game (standard speed and map, emperor difficulty), and currently at 28 hours.

Needless to say I micromanage everything. Not because I love micromanaging, but because I cannot stand the thought of suboptimal organization.

I don't see anything odd about spending 60 hours on a 400 turn game. That only works out at about ten minutes a turn on average, which isn't very long if you are managing lots of cities and moving lots of units.

I got used to playing like this with Civ 2. If you didn't micromanage every tile in that game, you stood to lose massively from wasted production.

Obviously there are very different ways to enjoy this game, which is one reason it is so great.:goodjob:

On Epic speed, on standard and large maps which I usually play, it takes from 7 to 10 hours. I could spend 10 minutes on a turn I guess, but no matter how long I spend looking at everything before I click on "NEXT TURN", I still realize I forgot something the second I click, so what's the point of waiting that long to delay the inevitable "damn"? hehe

I don't micromanage my cities' workers (I leave the governor ON, except on rare occasions, like the GP farm). Sometimes I'll use the "focus on production" or such buttons. But I can imagine manually managing each tile of each city taking a whole lot of time. I can enjoy doing that in the early game a bit, but not past 5-6 cities. So I guess I can say bye bye to difficulties higher than Noble, or something like that.

I don't put my workers on AUTO, though, that the AI is really bad with. I do use "auto-trade network" when most of my land is improved.

I am amazed and a little shocked at how quickly some players play this game!:eek:

Me too! I almost don't believe them.

I go crazy when I have to micromanage something in more than 1 city.
I go crazy even if I have more than 3 cities to focus on. I let all the other cities build units/barracks/libraries/theaters well whatever are my goals, no city level specialization for more than 2/3 cities (I can go to extremes what so ever - like all my cities running scientists/working cottages and building science when there is a need for particular tech quick)
I mostly have only 2 worker team to fulfill tasks of national importance:) Other workers do things on their own.
Heh - little explanation on fast playing:)

My last game took 15 hours, but that dragged on and I left the game open for a while. So, I'd say about 10 hours or a bit more is a good estimate.

Ive found my games are +10 Hours. from 12-14.

I'm currently on a Marathon of the Revolution Mod on a 4 Civ starting Earth Map. Im at more than 16 hours so far.

I once beat the Civ3 War in the Pacific as Japan in 11 Hours, and used only 11 turns of the game, a feat I do believe. So go figure how long I took on decisions. Domination victory with all of Japans WW2 objectives met by January 1943.

Just finished a Marathon game (Prince; 18 Civs; Great Plains; Agg AI; Raging Barbs) as Rameses; got a 35k+ space win in 1762. It took 25 hours according to the game; about 10 days in real life.

Me too! I almost don't believe them.

Just play a standard map with normal speed or quicker. After setting up core cities with the specialized improvements, workers get automated. Cities queue buildings. Similar approach with techs. Adjust when needed.

Even when warring, that's less than 6 hours easy. I've won dominations much faster than that actually, though my one domination on Monarch did take around 5 hours.

Usually three or four hours per standard sized, normal speed game, and I've always considered myself a super-fast player.

Wow, two to three hour people, do you micromanage anything?

Only when necessary, aka usually the first 4-6 cities. IMO my gameplay is not tight and winning on emperor+ might need me to micro more than just up through the first war that allows me to conquer an entire civ (that's around the time workers get automated).

A lot of time can be saved with military waypointing and queues. A lot. But you do have to be careful, since such pipelines will get sniped by the AI (auto waypoint units won't promote unless that's set to auto, which is a terrible idea). However, usually the AI is not in your territory that deep, and even if it is going to be you can still do it before wars.

Hotkeys also help, as does a good machine. All the timesavers plus fast decisions add up. It's possible once you get used to it, though I'm finding at higher difficulty I do need the extra 1-1.5 hours.

Wow TheMeInTeam, great tips! :goodjob: Thanks!

I play on small maps (currently Noble but working on that) with a few extra civs to spice things up. An average game will take around 8-10 hours depending on how many time my girlfriend interrupts me.

I am working on my micromanagement and have been trying some new strategies lately in preparation for the jump to Prince.

Marathon speed, huge map, low sea level, 34 civs...I'd say about a week - if I had nothing else to do. :lol:

Takes me about 10 hours to play a standard sized map with 7 civs and epic speed.

One thing I have noted is that games with a lot of warfare take a whole lot longer for me. I know about hitting the alt and cntl keys to highlight groups of troops and moving the stack of doom as one, but still, it can take a while to go through all the battling. I would think people that get a game done so quick must not be looking at battle animations. Those can add up fast, a few seconds here a few seconds there multiplied a bunch of times over for all the fights.

I think the whole worker deal plays a big role in speed. If you micromanage every worker, it will add a lot of time to your game, but I feel like I do a lot better if I control them. When I do decide to start automating them late in the game, I can usually feel the game speeding up.

Marathon speed, huge map, low sea level, 34 civs...I'd say about a week - if I had nothing else to do. :lol:

How do you get 34 Civs on a low sea level map? Maximum my game allows is 18, and thats even when I try the 34 Earth map world builder save from the Creation & Customization forum. (I have no idea why it's like that.)

Even more so, how do maintain diplomatic relations in all that chaos? (Most civs will constantly beg you to go to war for them.)

about 8 hrs. i have a question though, is there a way to make tech prices go up (so it takes longer to research) and a the same time keep buildings, units, etc the same price????

about 25 hours for a marathon huge terra mape 11 civs