Late game war

noto2

Emperor
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Jul 11, 2008
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The first few games I played of Civ 5 that went to the late game were cultural and science victories (or attempts) and even that was slow enough.

On standard speed, standard sized map, a Civ4 game would last anywhere from 3(super fast culture victory) to about 10 hours for me (late game domination).

I've been playing the same Civ5 game now for over 15 hours and I'm in the industrial age trying to fight an intercontinental war. The UI is making this unbearable. I'm selecting each unit 1 at a time, giving it orders, and the UI is flying me across the planet from one battle to the next. Like... I have about 3 theaters of war right now, 2 naval and one land based, and instead of dealing with them in an orderly fashion, the UI is making me move 1 unit in one part of the world, then flying me to another part of the world to move 1 unit, then flying me back to the first part...etc...etc. It's a real effing chore. It feels like playing a very old game from the early 90's or something, with horrible, outdated UI.
 
This is one of the things in the game that are meant to help player but are made so badly it actually makes playing experience worse.

You can turn this off from menu: Options -> Interface options -> auto unit cycle.
 
It's annoying, and sometimes leads to mistaken moves, when the camera chooses to jump to a unit on the other side of the world instead of the one right next to the unit you just moved.

However, when I tried turning auto-cycle off,amazingly, things got even worse. I was forgetting to move units all the time.
 
I usually avoid this problem by just clicking the next unit I want to order while the previous one is going through its animations. So long as you've got a unit with moves left selected, it won't fling the camera away. I hate turning the auto-cycle off because it's pretty convenient everywhere else.
 
It's annoying, and sometimes leads to mistaken moves, when the camera chooses to jump to a unit on the other side of the world instead of the one right next to the unit you just moved.

However, when I tried turning auto-cycle off,amazingly, things got even worse. I was forgetting to move units all the time.

How can you forget to move a unit? Is there a way to end the turn without giving orders to every single non-fortified unit? Because if there is, I haven't found it...
 
I'm still playing the same game...it's been 4 days now, must be past 20 hours now. For the past 5 hours all I've managed to do is kill 2 opponents. In Civ4 I could often play an entire game, standard map size, speed, in that amount of time.

This is insane.... it's taking FOREVER to maneouver my units, 1 by 1, through enemy territory and slowly slog through his cities. It's not fun. I'm going to finish this game...because...idk...OCD? And then I'm not sure when I'll play another. Aren't games supposed to be fun?
 
How can you forget to move a unit? Is there a way to end the turn without giving orders to every single non-fortified unit? Because if there is, I haven't found it...

You can skip giving orders to units, in the sense that hitting spacebar or clicking do nothing is an order.
 
I'm still playing the same game...it's been 4 days now, must be past 20 hours now. For the past 5 hours all I've managed to do is kill 2 opponents. In Civ4 I could often play an entire game, standard map size, speed, in that amount of time.

This is insane.... it's taking FOREVER to maneouver my units, 1 by 1, through enemy territory and slowly slog through his cities. It's not fun. I'm going to finish this game...because...idk...OCD? And then I'm not sure when I'll play another. Aren't games supposed to be fun?

More units you move the more time it takes, because in Civ5 you have to look animations of movement/battle for every unit whereas in Civ4 you might have moved a couple of stacks and be done with it.

If you want to make it faster turn off single player movement animations and battle animations in options.
 
I'm still playing the same game...it's been 4 days now, must be past 20 hours now. For the past 5 hours all I've managed to do is kill 2 opponents. In Civ4 I could often play an entire game, standard map size, speed, in that amount of time.

Most people, myself included, seem to like the long nature of the game. I think you are correct about it taking more time than IV or III, but the pacing seems just right to me. I will confess that I don't understand how multiplayer can work. There seem to be plenty of folks who like epic/marathon pace even more, but I don't quite get that either as, like you, I like to complete each game.

This is insane.... it's taking FOREVER to maneouver my units, 1 by 1, through enemy territory and slowly slog through his cities. It's not fun. I'm going to finish this game...because...idk...OCD? And then I'm not sure when I'll play another. Aren't games supposed to be fun?

Be sure to use keyboard commands to speed things along. Only war if you find it entertaining. Fighting a carpet of doom I think is fun. I have given up trying to manage my own though.
 
If you really want to finish off a campaign quickly:

*Nuclear Launch Detected!!!!* (Notice that little blinking red dot on his capital? :lol: Better find that ghos.... er, submarine/bomber :rolleyes:)
 
I turned off animations and it helped speed things up.

As for game pacing... the thing is, my life is such that I game in a feast and famine sort of fashion. I'll get a couple of days of peace where I can do a lot of gaming, and then I won't be able to touch my games for a week or two. I hate starting a game and getting half way through it, and then leaving it for a week or two and trying to pick it up after. I just can't get into a game that I last played 12 days ago, it's immersion breaking for me.

I can play a game for a few hours and put it away and pick it up the next day, but a week or two is too much, and since I only get a few days here and there to game, what I really need is a game I can finish in, maximum, two days. It's difficult to do that in Civ 5, I've found.
 
I also have difficulty finishing a game if it's taking too long. If I'm going domination and it starts to take too long to the point it isn't enjoyable, I'll start a new game. I nearly canned a game tonight that I'd been playing all week but am happy I decided to play it out. Of course, this isn't something I've experienced with V alone... I definitely got tired of the endgame in III, probably less so in IV thanks to being able to move stacks together instead of by individual units.
 
When I'm playing any of the island maps, I have no problems with a slow game, eating islands carefully, while building infrastructure behind me, as I go a-Viking .

Once I get my Happyness numbers under control, around 4-5 islands with 6-8 cities, I can then go hunting other Civs for fun and profit .

While peaceful expansion lets you set up a defensable empire, this is a wargame, and you WILL, at some time need to punch out a neighbor or six; I prefer to let Bozo's get up to 2-3 islands, so that when I hit them, knocking over their main island, I can leave them with a crappy city, after forcing a Peace treaty, to trade with; having made sure that THIS Bozo cannot bother me later !
 
Well, the thing is, every Civ game has had a bogged down late game, but 5 is by far the worst. I'm talking about those games where you know i's decided, you've got the game in the bag, now you just actually have to go through and win the domination victory.

1 UPT works great in the early wars where you're fielding a half dozen to a dozen units. It's quite fun, then. Late game, however, when you've got two dozen ships and three dozen land units it just gets so frustrating.

At least in Civ 4 I could set cities to auto produce units and set waypoints, and then move them in stacks. With those anti-micro management features I could still get turns done in 30 seconds. In Civ 5 I'm happy if I can finish my turn in under 4 minutes during a late game war.
 
What specifically about your wars is taking a long time? Getting your troops to your destination? Positioning them right? Waiting for animations? Building up forces? Whittling down enemy units/cities? Maintaining infrastructure well enough to support the new cities?

I know you already mentioned the sheer number of units being an issue, but I wouldn't think it's that simple. A lot of the units in my late-game wars just end up being fortified (melee as meat shields and a bunch of misc units sitting out of range of the action), but even bombarding with as high as 2 dozen units shouldn't take more than a minute or two provided animations are off. You might just be micromanaging a lot more than you actually need to. Once air units come into play and your range/siege get 3-range, you don't have to be very tactical in war. It's pretty easy to swarm and overwhelm most AI civs unless they've become a monstrous runaway.

Failing that, quicker game speeds, smaller map sizes, and fewer opponents are the most obvious ways to quicken up domination campaigns without knowing more about how you play, your game settings, etc.
 
Yeah turning off animations helped a lot. Everything you described takes a long time, though. Moving the units from one continent to another takes an enormous amount of time. Also... I find something really odd about intercontinental wars in Civ5 BNW. Since there are huge pockets of the other continent that are empty I don't even really need a navy, I can simply move my entire army to the other continent and then declare war. I've brought a navy along in my games, but I realize now it's unnecessary.
 
Did you know about the trick where you can just right-click the tile you want a unit to ultimately end up at and they'll move toward there automatically without you having to order them every turn? (Sorry if that's a crappy description but I don't think it has any sort of title.) That helps out a bunch and it sounds like you might not be using it. If you've been methodically moving 20 embarked units one-by-one across huge oceans then I'm not surprised that turns take so long.

Army/navy balance really depends a lot on your game settings. You can avoid huge vacant spots by adding some more civs or picking a more watery map and/or a high sea level. Bumping up the difficulty can help too since the AI won't have any happiness or gold problems to prevent expansion. And if all else fails, you can always stick an expansionist civ (Rome, Shoshone, America, Russia, etc.) into the game and they'll generally gobble up every plot of land they see.

In any case, even if it's possible to fight intercontinental wars solely with a land army, a navy is still a worthwhile investment. Battleships are among the most OP units in the game and carriers are the only way you'll be able to get the air game involved. It's also best to counter the AI's navy with one of your own, so your army doesn't get mauled and so it can focus on the immediate threat of land units. If nothing else, it never hurts to have some protection for embarked units, especially after subs come into play. It's not necessary per se, but it's more effective.
 
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