I'm just testing a little mod idea I had today.

One thing that's bothered me right from the start of Civ III/Conquests is the very rapid advance of technology. It's ridiculous! Often you only get a chance to build three or four units of a particular type before they become obsolete. For example - pikemen, musketmen, riflemen etc., all seem to become obsolete really quickly, and they aren't the only units.

Also I've found that I never seem to have enough time to both wage a war, even a small one, AND continue progressing in tech. It always seems like an either/or - build a decent sized army and the gold and time it costs always seems to put me well behind in tech.

Is there a solution to these annoying game traits? Well, I'm testing one out right now. Basically all I've done is double the minimum length of time for each tech researched from 4 turns to 8. Whether this will have the desired effect or not I don't know, but so far it seems to be working out really well! I'm accumulating lots of gold AND building a decent sized army - of medieval infantry ATM, and usually I don't have time to build many of them.

Mind you, I did win the race to build the Great Library in this game, and that's allowed me to put my research back to zero and just accumulate gold. But all the same I'm enjoying the slower pace of this game quite a lot.

The other thing I did BTW was reduce the upgrade cost for all units by a third. Upgrades are too expensive IMO.

Now the changes I've made affect both human and AI so game balance shouldn't be affected all that much. But I'm wondering if anyone else has tried lengthening the research time, and what was the result? Interested to hear from others on this.

The other thing I did BTW was reduce the upgrade cost for all units by a third. Upgrades are too expensive IMO.

I agree - this was one change to c3c that i totally hate.

As for making the game longer, my first reaction is that the game is too long already; but now that i think about it, maybe this would slow the other civs down to my tech pace, and make money worth more (since i can accumulate more to spend on tech and other things.) Hmm...

My only concern is that it might make the game too easy. I feel pretty much in control of my current game already even though I only just got Feudalism. I've got a kicka$$ army of medieval infantry AND a pretty good infrastructure and I reckon I've got the measure of at least two neighbouring civs. Mind you, I have stepped down to regent level for this game, on previous games I was playing on Monarch.

Being a religious/expansionist civ has also helped a lot. Religious is a lot better than I thought, cheap temples and cathedrals AND only one turn of anarchy.

Anyhow, I'll probably have to playtest this mod a bit to see how well it works out.

As for making the game longer, my first reaction is that the game is too long already; but now that i think about it, maybe this would slow the other civs down to my tech pace

Yeah, that's the idea. Usually by the time I get into middle ages it's taking me at least 8 turns to get each tech, often more, while the AI is racing ahead. Now they can't race ahead any more! At least, not at the breakneck pace they could before.

Units constantly becoming obsolete is one of the fun things about CIV, and for that matter, history. Even world powers are constantly struggling to equip their military units with the latest tech; it is expensive and is usually done piecemeal, like in CIV when upgrades are expensive.

Well I think there's something weird about a game that often doesn't even give you time to march a new unit from its barracks to the front line before it becomes obsolete.

Another possible solution (needs some more work) to make units last longer:
Replace every tech with tow techs, the second is the former one, with prereq. the first.
So, you ave doubled the number of techs to research.