howdy fellow fanatics,

I have a problem and it is about how long my games take. I usually have one or two evenings per week (ca. 4hrs per evening) to play Civ4. I would love to be able to start and finish (and hopefully win :lol:) one game per evening. From what I read in the forums, 4hrs should be ample time to do so (at "regular" settings, i.e. small/standard maps, normal/epic gamespeed; noble difficulty) yet I don't seem to manage to and I have a hard time pinpointing where my loss of time comes from.

I don't micromanage excessivley. I do however check my cities every other turn or so, but mainly to stop growth when at the cap (or allow growth again once the cap increases; isn't there an automatism for that?) the rest I leave to the city governor with the appropriate emphasis buttons (commerce, production, etc.) activated.

Buildings, Units and Techs are also decided rather quickly (i.e. I don't muse dozens of minutes over what to build, move or tech next; I thinK I do know my techpath and appropriate buildings well enough by now to decide on a glance).

I rarely war early and efficiently, I am just not good at that (trying to get better though), so my games are usually not decided by early conquering or domination and I tend to end up going for space race (if at all) more often than I want to if I haven't decided to go for cultural (I am rather adept at winning in cultural, I think).

So my problem is that I end up nowhere near the end (or a winning condition, respectively) in an evening's game and then when I fire up a new session the next evening I rather start a new game from scratch than continue my old one (I have a problem with getting bored if it drags on too long).

any tips from you faster/more efficient players on how to optimize my game time and actually come to a conclusion in about 4 hours? Any pitfalls I don't see or any motivators on how to rather continue a game than starting a new one should it ever drag on a bit longer?

any comments greatly appreciated.

cheers,
wannabewarlord

My games take forever, and the only way I have found to save time is by playing on smaller maps and/or playing more poorly. Playing smaller maps really helps. Playing faster means making more mistakes and calculating less, so you might want to turn down the difficulty a notch.

Try changing the game speed to quick.
But 4 hours may be a little on the extreme side. I may be able to do 4 hours if I didn't do any wars. But I always have a war somewhere, and it's war that slows my games down dramatically.

Play Duels on small maps with quick game speed and Advanced Start. That shouldn't be a very long game. If it is too quick then try 1v1v1's same settings. I think Advanced Start is what you mainly need though, because then you can just focus on the warmongering instead of city mangement. Which should speed along the game considerably since you don't have to "build" cities and buildings. I've never messed with the settings I've suggested, because I'm not pressed for time like you. I would if I were in your situation though ;).

thanks for those first answers. my problem is though that I exactly like the early start. I find exploring, building early wonders and getting my city to grow so much more interesting than plowing away with ready made stuff as advanced start would let me do. And I don't mind the managing options, on the contrary.

Maybe my goal is a bit unrealistic. but I've seen many people say their games are 3-4hrs and I myself already had shorter games, but they were on a much lower difficutly level.

I really wanna stick to noble, because I do plan to move up soon... well at least when I got the warmongering down. so far I seem to have little problem to win peacefully (i.e. culture & space race) but I really need to improve my skills at domination and conquering.

more answers welcome.

cheer,
wannabewarlord

I also play 1 or 2 nights a week for about 3-4 hours. We continu the game though

Usualy we play the same game for 2 or 3 sessions, think the time will go up with more humans and wars

howdy fellow fanatics,

I have a problem and it is about how long my games take. I usually have one or two evenings per week (ca. 4hrs per evening) to play Civ4. I would love to be able to start and finish (and hopefully win :lol:) one game per evening. From what I read in the forums, 4hrs should be ample time to do so (at "regular" settings, i.e. small/standard maps, normal/epic gamespeed; noble difficulty) yet I don't seem to manage to and I have a hard time pinpointing where my loss of time comes from.

I don't micromanage excessivley. I do however check my cities every other turn or so, but mainly to stop growth when at the cap (or allow growth again once the cap increases; isn't there an automatism for that?) the rest I leave to the city governor with the appropriate emphasis buttons (commerce, production, etc.) activated.

Buildings, Units and Techs are also decided rather quickly (i.e. I don't muse dozens of minutes over what to build, move or tech next; I thinK I do know my techpath and appropriate buildings well enough by now to decide on a glance).

I rarely war early and efficiently, I am just not good at that (trying to get better though), so my games are usually not decided by early conquering or domination and I tend to end up going for space race (if at all) more often than I want to if I haven't decided to go for cultural (I am rather adept at winning in cultural, I think).

So my problem is that I end up nowhere near the end (or a winning condition, respectively) in an evening's game and then when I fire up a new session the next evening I rather start a new game from scratch than continue my old one (I have a problem with getting bored if it drags on too long).

any tips from you faster/more efficient players on how to optimize my game time and actually come to a conclusion in about 4 hours? Any pitfalls I don't see or any motivators on how to rather continue a game than starting a new one should it ever drag on a bit longer?

any comments greatly appreciated.

cheers,
wannabewarlord

Wow, 4hours is quick. Maybe doable on small, normal speed.
My games got faster when I turned on quick fight, ie graphics only show one punch and not 3, even though you said you don't war much, check this setting.
Turn down graphics, while I wan't a pretty world, turning down graphics does make it faster (probably even if you have a monster machine).
Some micromanagement is inevitable, yes.
More warring, on noble a domination win is faster in years than space race....
... on the other hand, wars include some micromanagement of troops and you'll get more cities to manage but even then I believe its faster.

I can w/o doubt say that I'm there with you on the "getting bored and come back next day to fire up a new game":crazyeye:

Finally, playing more makes it faster, since you're more confident with your descisions and make fewer mistakes.

I don't have good advice for you in this regard. A serious game usually takes around 20 hours, which means about a month for me. Taking longer generally improves the quality of your games a lot.

I've gone through the game options to expedite my games. I removed all the pop up notices...and I would definitely recommend enabling "quick combat"...watching the same animation over and over again can get old and slow down warring a lot.

Click turns faster.

howdy again,

thanks for more comments. I think the quick combat might very well be an useful option to turn on. I haven't thought of that, thanks!

as for turning down graphics I think my machine has little to no delay because of processing power (yes, I got a monster machine...I wonder what for :crazyeye: ) but it might be something to look into.

clicking turns faster is probably the last thing I'll do, as I don't think I can click it faster. I do need to make sure I moved everything I needed to and changed everything I wanted to. but it is true that a certain delay (waiting till the button turns red) lies in the ending of turns.

so maybe 4 hours is a bit too tight for a decent game and I would need rather two nights to invest in a proper game. this would bring it down to one game a week, but at least it would be of better quality and I would finally finish some games.

more feedback always welcome.

cheers,
wannabewarlord

Shift+Enter is your friend.

Quick Combat is your other friend.

Fast CPU is your biggest friend.

That is all.

I usually finish a Large 12ai game in just under 4 hours >_<

Though I rarely spend much time mulling over what to do next O.o

Average game time 5 hours on Standard Map, Epic speed.

Just do other stuff less, this is Civ, right?

@GIDS888

lol, yeah this is CIV and I would love to do other stuff less. unfortunately that is not an option.

@Underdawg
Shift+Enter does what again? Ah well, I am gonna find out tonight. yes, tonite is one of the two nights I get, woohoo ;)

cheers,
wannabewarlord

Shift+Enter forced turn end.

Keep your civ small. Grow up, not out. This will save time. Try the Dutch. Try not to fight too much until later in th egame, like the industrial era. This will make the game go faster.

try to queue production so you spend time investigating cities less frequently. Similarly queue worker's orders. It does require remembering broadly what is going on tho, so you can switch if the unexpected happens.

Fortify units you don't expect to move. Even ones you want to keep an eye on, if there's several fortify all but one of them.

The game settings are worth investigating, if you've missed "quick combat" you've probably missed a few others in there too.

I don't have much advice here, frankly. My games typically take 10 to 24 hours each, but I play on Epic or Marathon speed. A game will take me at least a week or more to finish. And I like it that way. Civ IV is a wonderfully complex game and I like taking my time over all the little decisions.

To my mind the game has always been designed with long-term play in mind. Rather than aiming for a complete victory each night, I recommend satisfying yourself with one of the many "mini-victories" available. Such as finishing a wonder, or a war of conquest, or one of the races (to Liberalism, or circumnavigation, or to one of the free great people). Just tell yourself "tonight I'm going to play until I achieve X", where X is a goal that is realistically possible to achieve in the time you have available.

And once you achieve that goal (or fail), save the game, turn off the computer, and go to bed. Sleep is important. ;)

1. Settings, turn off the time-killers:
Movies, quick combat, advisor popups, friendly moves, enemy moves [F5 is better way to check enemy locations].

2. Queue buildings and units:
Past the initial period, queue 3-6 buildings in a city. You can always do a quick insert via the F1 screen, say when you get CoL and want to do Courthouses asap--click each city in F1, and Ctrl-click Courthouse to add it above all other builds.
Alt-click to continually produce units in a city. So eg all axes from one, all archers from another.

3. Early network Worker:
Soon as you can spare one, put one Worker on "Build trade network", then forget about connecting anything manually except the occasional vital one.

4. Rally point(s) for units:
Click on city bar [so it glows a bit], then Shift + right-click on tile where you want units to go. Much easier to deploy from 1-2 nearby staging areas than from 6-7 distant cities.

5. Specialize for speed:
If I see a Library finish, I know I want a University there next. Barracks = Stable, Market = Grocer = Bank, and so on.

6. Name your cities by function:
I rename most cities, how the heck can I remember if the Missionary city was Xnotheckggyorklip or Inkdgewsatbsmxftory? "Mounted" is my horsey city, Oxford is guess what, same with Wall St. This saves quite a bit of time with 20+ cities, plus forces you to make an initial "This is a ___ city".

6a. Name cities by location or resource:
Alternatively, "East Iron" is easier to hunt down than Pisa when you get a message about it. Btw, to find location of an event, look it up in the log and click the message--the map should center on where it happened.

7. Use Log rather than screen messages:
Life's too short for the scrolling screen messages. Nine times out of ten, who cares that I completed a Library and started an Aquaduct? Ten times out of ten, I don't want to know my Alt-click unit city completed an axe and has started another. Either the F1 screen or the event log will tell you what you want to know, when you want to know it.

8. BUG mod:
I just downloaded this a few minutes ago--it's ready for 3.17. From all I hear, this should be a big time-saver. Its home is here (http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=268).

9. Play the neighborhood:
Got Shaka and Monty nearby? War WILL happen, so make it on your terms. Prepare, dictate, manipulate. This will save a lot of scrambling time.

9a. Play to a plan:
Hemmed in? You'll need to take out Hatty with Cats and Swords.
Isolated? Peaceful economic build-up, tech some trade-bait, and early Optics.
Focusing on a plan speeds up all decisions.

10. Wars - plan long, execute fast:
Nothing more tedious than a slugfest. If you know it's coming, spend 50 turns prepping a 20-turn war, not 20 turns planning a 50-turn war. Have a clear objective, look for capitulation or peace once achieved.

11. Avoid war:
Did I mention war weariness? And I don't mean the game mechanic. Without a nearby psycho, it's easy to avoid war. Build a powerful military, and mind your diplo/religion.
With a psycho, bribe him to attack, or others to attack him--your objective is to keep him occupied until he becomes irrelevant. Then wipe out in 20 turns if desired.

12. Teeny shortcuts:
Group all siege and bombers to bombard together;
Spacebar = skip turn;
The "F" key will fortify/sentry/snooze ALL units--saves hunting their different action icons.

13. Cottage economy:
This is probably the quickest one to play, rarely a poor choice for Financial leaders.

14. Capitulate immediately when attacked:
This advanced tactic speeds up wars dramatically.

My last game took 50 hours......

howdy fellow fanatics,

I have a problem and it is about how long my games take. I usually have one or two evenings per week (ca. 4hrs per evening) to play Civ4. I would love to be able to start and finish (and hopefully win :lol:) one game per evening. From what I read in the forums, 4hrs should be ample time to do so (at "regular" settings, i.e. small/standard maps, normal/epic gamespeed; noble difficulty) yet I don't seem to manage to and I have a hard time pinpointing where my loss of time comes from.


There are so many factors involved in game time that it is impossible to reach a conclusion simply based on what others comment about their games.

If one is playing an OOC, a Wonder Economy, a small, cramped map on normal or quick speed, those factors can reduce play time.

My suggestion would simply be to use slower speeds/smaller maps. BUG mod can also be useful to decrease microing.

Personally, my games are usually epic and vary considerably (one game I had was 1 hour another was 16 hours and a game I am playing now will soon overtake that).


Tip: In order to not get bored when playing, how about post one of your games up on these forums with screenshots? I did that with 4 games so far and it has really helped me "motivate" myself to continue playing.

Thanks to everyone for some really useful tips!

MikeFleury: Thanks for the briefing on all those shortcuts and improvements, I think that is really gonna help (except for #14, I am not sure you meant this seriously ;) )

Sisiutil: Cheers for taking the time to post in my insignificant question. Know that I read your ALC games with great interest and learn a lot from it. Your Beginner's Guide is still my bible :)

You give a valuable tip in that I should set myself little goals in between, and I just did that yesterday evening, when I said I am gonna wipe out Hannibal and curb Sitting Bull's enthusiasm. Lo and behold Hannibal is no more and Sitting Bull is mighty pissed, leaving just me and Washington to compete for Domination and a nice save game for me to continue tonight (although my cities are a mess, I need a cleanign up before I go for the big one :D )

All others: Thanks as well for the comments. Some really useful stuff in here and I am gonna try to implement it all.

And as for posting a game. Yes I was gonna do that sometime but I tend to get sloppy in the mid-game and people will be like "WTF?" :lol:
I shall play a clean neat game sometime in the future and try to post it. This community's tips are invaluable!

cheers,
wannabewarlord

I guess I'd be someone like what you're looking for.

I usually play emperor/epic (working on immortal). My games last 2.5 to 4 hours on standard map sizes. Major tips:

- Fast combat
- Quick moves
- Hotkeys (m for mine, t for cottages, shift + P for pasture, etc)
- Queue your building production so you don't get popups for that every second.
- I strongly advocate against automating workers until later in the game. Once you've improved all the land you can expand peacefully into it's usually ok though. Just make sure you set them to leave old improvements.
- Stack move. Don't do pure stack attack but you can attack with a bunch of like-units.


I'm probably missing a few things I do without even thinking about it. One thing you can try to do for speed practice - "host" a multiplayer game (use LAN/direct IP whatever) and play it by yourself (just hit start). Set the game timer to "blazing!!!". This will FORCE you to finish a game in a few hours, although if you wait max turn timer later on it could still take like 5-6 in theory. I actually find that timer SLOW, so if you play it enough you should get used to doing things quickly ;).

When I play on Noble, I normally win in around 2 1/2 hours.
When I play on Prince, (if) I win in around 6 hours.
The difference?
I can afford to automate workers on Noble:lol:

Check out BUG mod (http://civ4bug.sourceforge.net/), it gives a ton of options for notifications of growth, health, unhappiness, changes in what the AIs will trade and all kinds of stuff, and you can write yourself reminder messages that will pop up a number of turns later. Makes micromanagement way faster and easier.

Yes, I Installed BUG yesterday. I have yet to find out what the little blue squares with funny symbols mean on top of my Unit Action Buttons, but concerning Notifications and stuff I am way happy; and yes it does help reducing "downtime" a lot.

However, I have yet to start writing notes but I need them dearly. I regularly forget the most important stuff (hey I have the Pyramids since 10 turns...why exactly didn't I switch to Representation? :crazyeye: )

cheers,
wannabewarlord

And as for posting a game. Yes I was gonna do that sometime but I tend to get sloppy in the mid-game and people will be like "WTF?" :lol:
I shall play a clean neat game sometime in the future and try to post it. This community's tips are invaluable!

Well, if you're sloppy in the mid-game, then that's precisely what you should post, in order to get the most worthwhile tips. Trust me, I'm speaking from experience here: posting a saved game to get advice isn't about pride, it's about improving your game. Most of the board participants are pretty civil with their comments--especially compared to other Internet message boards! ;)

Your best bet is to conquer a neighbor early, and everything gets more interesting from there.

You could also try faster game speeds, but it depends on how and at what stage of the game you want to try to win.

OCC Space Race is going to be a slow game, for example but if you want to win from gunpowder you should start by keeping others crippled. Island countries you can sit privateers outside their borders and block off their trade and watch their economies die. Anything that slows down the AI can speed it up for you.

You might also turn off espionage unless you love the feature - it does slow things down.

Lastly, turn your graphic options to the lowest setting for faster transition of turn-by-turn. You might also tinker around and see if you can give yourself a 1 min limit or 2 min limit per turn.


Conquest/Domination tends to give the "fastest play" that ends the game the quickest.

So I finally continued a game yesterday and what satisfaction it gave me!

I was specifically going for domination, seeing as beside conquest the other victory conditions are not too hard for me to achieve on noble (methinks after proving I can dominate, it is time to move up a level...). I ended up winning diplomatically after all because after I built the U.N. and made Monty happy (and having Sitting Bull as my vassal), I was homefree for a diplo win and used that to "shorten" the game time.

After 5hrs 15min I won the game and I felt extreme satisfaction.
5hrs instead of 4...not so bad. I think for the future I will set myself up to roughly six hours and spread it over two evenings. That'll at least give me one proper game per week.

again, thanks for all the tips which I slowly begin to implement one after the other (already did save time with quite a few improvements to settings).

cheers,
wannabewarlord