Which Civs benefit/worsen on Marathon games?

Chris3894

Warlord
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Apr 25, 2014
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I'm considering doing a marathon game and was wondering how it affects certain Civs and how powerful they are. Are there any Civs you can think of that benefit from the longer game or are worse off from being in a marathon game?
 
The Huns are Amazing in Marathon games, with their horse archers (that do not cost you any horses) and battering rams the only thing that will slow down their mass experienced army before gun powder is is the Great Wall.

This was the case in my Hun immortal Marathon game, I had my entire continent conquered by the medieval era, only to learn Khan had conquered his continent by the end of the medieval era. That was a good game for warmongering.
 
If single player then all civs benefit from Marathon. If multiplayer then civs with early war UUs benefit.
 
Civs with an early UU benefit the most. Songhai does pretty well, because the triple gold from camps scales up and works quite nicely for him.

Spain does a fair bit worse: the 500 gold from finding a Wonder first does not scale up, and is a lot less meaningful on Epic/Marathon

Science-mongers in general do a bit worse because warmongers have more time to pull them apart before their lead snowballs. The balance between Korea and Babylon goes more to Babylon on longer games, in my opinion. Babs' early defense helps more there.
 
Early Warmongering civs benefit because unit movement doesn't scale with game speed. So where it normally takes a couple centuries for your army to cross a continent and attack your rival, on Marathon it'll only take a couple decades. Thus, more turns of warring per era and more time to use particular units before they're obsolete.

I imagine, off the top of my head, the Huns, Rome, and Greece would be especially good since they each have 2 early game UUs.
 
Early Warmongering civs benefit because unit movement doesn't scale with game speed. So where it normally takes a couple centuries for your army to cross a continent and attack your rival, on Marathon it'll only take a couple decades. Thus, more turns of warring per era and more time to use particular units before they're obsolete.

I imagine, off the top of my head, the Huns, Rome, and Greece would be especially good since they each have 2 early game UUs.

Until I bought the full BNW pack a couple of months ago and started playing a more "refined" game, every game I've played, dating back to Civ 2, was on Marathon. I'd say about 95% of these ended up as a domination victory.

The reason? Simple, you've got so many more turns to apply military tactics (and the AI is incompetent at war), that it's almost hard not to win a military victory. Just be patient, move your formations cautiously, and let the AI waste their resources with suicide charges, while your units all have ridiculous upgrades (say hello to my 3 double-shooting ranged catapults who just marched right through the entire Roman Empire).

In other words, I think all Civs benefit from a Marathon game, IF you play a warmonger game. In Marathon, just make sure a runaway Civ doesn't get so far ahead in tech that they spam superior navies or beat you to flight significantly.

(I've enjoyed playing standard speed and employing real strategy so much, I'm almost embarrassed it took me so long to switch. I will say that I think it could be a bit more balanced so that we have about 30-40% more time for warfare in the earlier ages…..various early windows of advantage don't seem to last quite long enough unless you time it perfectly).
 
(I've enjoyed playing standard speed and employing real strategy so much, I'm almost embarrassed it took me so long to switch. I will say that I think it could be a bit more balanced so that we have about 30-40% more time for warfare in the earlier ages…..various early windows of advantage don't seem to last quite long enough unless you time it perfectly).

Well, there's always the middle ground: Epic speed.
 
Well, there's always the middle ground: Epic speed.

Epic speed is my sweet spot. Marathon is really a slog, but Standard tears by pretty quick. Quick itself... no thank you. In the time it takes your unit to cross a big map, it's obsolete. What the hell?
 
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