Does game speed affect difficulty?

I'm mostly curious about the Immortal & Deity difficulties. Will longer game give me a better chance to 'catch up' to the AIs or does the game balance this so game speed isn't a factor at all? In quick game speed I spend most of my early to mid game trying to negate the AIs early advantages. I've only won one immortal game after probably 10 or so tries at it and a couple close calls.

Somewhere along the way I started playing mostly quick games, but since moving up to Immortal difficulty I'm curious whether I should switch back to standard speed. I do like the brevity of a quick game (so I can play more games with different Civs) but if this is making the game even more difficult I'd definitely consider playing standard games again.

I guess the more generic question is other than number of turns, what exactly does changing the game speed do? I know they balance the tech tree and production times of things but is there anything else that is affected by changing the game speed? I imagine it allows more time for warmongering? If anyone knows of a thread discussing this topic a link would be greatly appreciated!

Game speed doesn't affect difficulty but it does reduce the required resources for building wonders, population growth, researching technologies,...,etc. etc.

Generally the longer the game is the more cash you may have, but if you go bankrupt you may be extremely screwed.

If you pick a game speed make sure to pick the right map so its balanced enough

small map or lower quick game speed

Small or standard normal game speed

Large map epic game speed

however :Never play marathon because the game isn't balanced to play it that way.
Either go Epic or standard or lower quick.
Olso don't play huge maps because the game isn't really made for it.

Longer game makes game easier for domination. You can kill AI units faster than they can produce or upgrade them.

Slower game speeds mean your units move further relative to tech speed. Its a buff to unit movement.

So if you war, you have more mobility.

I don't know if gold or hammers are slightly better or worse at slower speeds, but it will be negligible.

Slower games allow your units to move a lot more.

mice said:

I don't know if gold or hammers are slightly better or worse at slower speeds, but it will be negligible.

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From HoF games played last years, i can guarantee that the game speed also affect benchmarks and finish times.

Marathon is easier in all ways, just make sure to not lose too much units. Domination being the easiest of all.

I usually play on Quick, standard map. There's not too much difference in terms of difficulty.
You'll probably manage to get more Social Policies tho, and you'll get religion bit faster, and move through eras more quickly.

Basiclly, everything is slightly faster, but AI still plays the same. You can also catch up to Diety's techs faster, if you're good at managing techs (AI isn't the brightest at picking right techs )

Since workers move relatively faster compared to slower speeds, they can get all kinds of improvements earlier as well. It adds up.

direblade99 said:

Since workers move relatively faster compared to slower speeds, they can get all kinds of improvements earlier as well. It adds up.

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It takes them proportionally longer to improve tiles though.

One thing that's worth noting is, on Epic and Marathon, you can spend longer moving your first settler to a better spot without falling behind in tech and production as much. So i'd say they're slightly easier in that you can usually get a better starting spot on those time settings.

Slower games also require larger standing armies at all times. In standard you can generally get away with smaller armies, producing more if someone declares war and have them available in time to hold them back, and in-fact if you're playing peaceful this is often best as it will help you avoid the frequent upgrade costs relative to wars fought. That is all a really bad idea on Epic and Marathon though you need to anticipate wars and have the troops available from the start. This leads to increased unit maintenance, and I would disagree that you generally have more gold in slower games even before that consideration.

Shoshone also get hit pretty hard as the speed slows down, as they are much more limited in how many pathfinders they can produce in the time it takes for the surrounding area to become saturated by discovery.

However, economic mistakes in faster speeds typically get compounded a lot quicker. Suboptimal population placement, things like that. No one's perfect and it can often take a few turns before you catch a city doing something stupid. In slower speeds it's not that big of an issue. Worker movement as well, since movement in general costs more, you have to plan ahead for distance in your development plan, you can't really zigzag around wasting worker time in transit as much.

Then there's the aforementioned general unit movement increase vs everything else which scales with speed. Given unit maneuvering is a weak point of the AI, this gives the player far more opportunities to exploit it.

I don't think the speeds are over-all easier or harder than each-other though, they all have pros and cons.

Though I'll admit, I used to play marathon all the time. As I took the game more seriously, and played it less like a national role playing game, my preferred gamespeed sped up.

Always played marathon (longest time) on all the Civ's and Im certainly not changing now!

I heard that especially at higher difficulties, slower speeds effectively make the game easier, since in wars between humans and AIs the AI will always lose more units than even a halfway competent human player. And on slower game speeds, every lost unit takes longer to replace. So the game effectively becomes easier, even if the rules are the same for everybody. Can anyone confirm this? I only play on Standard speed.

On quick speed, it's hard to come back after a bad start. And miss click or «ho, I forgot to sell this lux or sign a RA's or buy this building» can be repeat.
Waste 10 turns is more complicate when a game run 200 turns over 300.

Sorry but anything lower than quick speed for me make the game realy boring.....

All i want is reach the ultimate military units and techs to start conquer other civ or get rid of the ones who treat my game.....so i only play quick.....even standard pace for me its like a turtles epeed contest.....

LoneRebel said:

I heard that especially at higher difficulties, slower speeds effectively make the game easier, since in wars between humans and AIs the AI will always lose more units than even a halfway competent human player. And on slower game speeds, every lost unit takes longer to replace. So the game effectively becomes easier, even if the rules are the same for everybody. Can anyone confirm this? I only play on Standard speed.

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Haven't really try anything above Standard, but one of my friends plays at Marathon. He said that it's easier to catch up with AI on tech (since AI doesn't put priority to science like human players, with AI sometimes never building NC, or very late in the game) and it's true about units, since AI usually doesn't use them well enough.

Quick speed is 50-50%. First 100 turns are probably the hardest on Deity since AI starts with extra units, plus they can pump them up. If Zulu or The Huns are near you, it can be rough start... but if you survive those first 100 turns, you can put some aggression into AIs yourself. The Huns are joke once you hit Medieval era, and The Zulus are easier to deal with once you hit Industrial. (Shaka will also lack in techs since he usually spams dozens of cities, so he's easily wiped out by other superior civs)

Hardest civs to deal with are those late game civs like Korea\Siam\Greece. Lucky for us, AI is still terrible at warfare.

So on Quick, if you have good start (first 100 turns) with strong culture\economy\techs, you'll probably win. Early wars with Zulu\Huns can cripple you on that since you'll have to build extra units which otherwise you wouldn't, if you're neighbors are more "peaceful" (let's say India)

Surprisingly , I've never been attacked by Mongols, unless I provoke them, like settling near them and tell them to get lost, even if my military is way beyond theirs. They seem to focus on attacking CS. Same for Assyria, this guy is either neutral toward me or very friendly (and stays loyal till the end).