Marathon

Hey there everyone,

Oopsyscoops here. I play 90% of my games on standard speed, and I was just wondering if / how many people actually play on marathon speed? Also, for anybody who DOES use that game speed, why do you like it and/or prefer over the other options? I'm not knocking it at all [I've tried it only briefly before I got impatient and gave up], just wondering if there's something about it that I'm missing out on. I can understand wanting to play on epic, as that gives you more time to utilize your UU for extended warfare before you surpass them technologically [among other reasons], but why marathon?

Or is it one of those "true gamers play on marathon" things? =P

One reason is that marathon is easier. The only immortal wins I've accomplished have been on marathon.

The AI compensates for its lack of strategic competence with huge bonuses. So it can crank out units and buildings faster.

On marathon, once you kill off their units and it will take much, much longer for the AI to build new ones.

So once you have a unit # advantage you can pillage away or negotiate lopsided peace deals. Or take the cities, if you want.

Marathon (= 300%) scales better with huge and giant maps.

Each era lasts longer and gives units more time to move and fight before they become obsolete, e.g. if it takes 20 turns for a unit to become obsolete by better tech on standard, it will be about 60 turns on marathon. In 20 turns a landunit may move between 20 to 40 tiles (without road/railroad). On marathon in 60 turns it is 60 - 120 tiles.

It goes back to Civ4 for me, and something I carry on. Most people find marathon easier, but I have always found it harder. The faster the game speed, the more I can just pop a few units after DoW. I'm normally peaceful, but didn't like that, so I cranked the speed to marathon and ended up needing to move down a few difficulty levels.

Every time I move up a level, I turn it down to quick. I actually won one deity game on Civ5, and it was on quick (though it was vanilla, as well).

I have to admit I get used to it as well. On faster settings, the AI can't handle the barb spawn rates, it seems. I tend to get a lot of easy friends, CS's or civs, due to the worker stealing barbs, which just doesn't happen on marathon, and, as such, I sometimes end up in a happiness hole because Ragusa gets a worker taken 3 times on its way back, or some such thing, and my growth can end up too high.

I also love the early eras actually meaning something. On quick or standard, it feels like those early techs go by too quickly. Normally playing on Emperor, on faster speeds, I never attacked with archers because cbows come too fast. On marathon, I can use archers if I'm marching to war early.

On faster speeds, I also feel less of a push to overcome the AI bonuses. A faster scout means a lot more ruins, and the sheer number of turns AI get with their bonuses makes them a pretty big deal. On standard, if Shaka gets civil service before I do, and I see his units on my boarders, I don't love it, but I know if I sic him on someone else, I'll have time to catch up. On marathon, I've had exactly that happen and he's chewed up the enemy and still had time to come for me before I was ready.

So, I started to help make be build more military, but many facets of it have grown on me, and, personally, I find it a bigger challenge, and so I have just kept using it.

Only true time wasters play on marathon though. I can hardcore nerd out for a few days and still not finish a marathon game!

I want the build time from the Normal speed but the tech time from Epic speed. That would be fun. Then you could build Colosseums and ancient wonders durning the ancient era and still produce ancient era units. There is probably a mod for it but I am on a mac and already play with a non supported graphic card so mods are a no no for me.

I like to play at Marathon speeds very much... Even got a little addicted to it...
The marathon game speed gives a completely new game experience:

1) Tactical proficiency becomes more more important, because to lose a unit on a marathon game is a *huge* loss, because unit recovery is much faster than unit production.

2) Bigger mobility, implying in eventually less units into play: barbarian spawns are slower.

3) Barbarians are weaker, because the fact that they don't recover hp is much more relevant. You can, for example, safely put your scouts to explore the map, and even do some barb farming with them in the first 100 /200 turns.

4) Civilizations with early unit bonuses have a huge advantage: Attila is f* deadly in a marathon game;

The disadvantages is it is a veeeery lengthy game... It can take a week (game time) to finish the game. So I end up retiring or starting new ones...

First off, thank you to all who replied and shared some of your insight =)

The trend that I'm seeing is that units become more of a focus with the Marathon speed [I figured as much] but there's also all this talk about the game being easier? I had never really considered that, to be honest. I might make the shift into Epic soon to try it out again.

As a follow up, have any of you actually WON a marathon game [any VT, though it would be nice to know which you achieved as well as any other general details for bonus points] and how long was that game for you in regards to real-world play time? My longest games have only lasted in the 400-450 turn range [roughly 10 hours on standard speed for me].

Also...

johnny_rudeboy said:

I want the build time from the Normal speed but the tech time from Epic speed. That would be fun. Then you could build Colosseums and ancient wonders durning the ancient era and still produce ancient era units.

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^^^^^^^^^ 10000X this O_O

I've finished many marathon games.

They can last for 1000+ turns on a huge map (though I'm not very fast in general), or they can be over almost as fast as a quick speed game.

Last one I finished was emperor difficulty, with Venice, on a huge map. Was actually going science, but decided super late and ended up just ending it with a diplo victory. I got so far ahead that I just wanted to be a wonder hog I probably could have ended it at least 300 turns sooner had I actually gone for it. The game lasted about 1050 turns, though, and I was playing it for nearly a week.

It was getting to the point I almost quit (and I sometimes do) because I was so far ahead and it was just dragging on, but Venice was pumping out end game wonders in 15 turns, so my interest in sparkly things kept me interested.

If I sit down and play, not WORK, just play, talk to my wife, step away from the computer sometimes, etc., a marathon game normally takes me about a week of fairly dedicated play (as in, civ is my passtime...not watching TV, playing lots of other things, reading, etc.) but I tend to like my maps on the huge side of things too, which means more turns normally needed, as well as more time for my computer to process AI turns.

The game is easier on slower speeds because war/conquest happens faster relative to the build & tech times. As war & fighting is probably the human player's biggest advantage over the AI, this helps the human player.

I prefer Epic (1.5x) to Marathon (3x); Epic feels nicely stretched out, while Marathon is just a bloody slog to finish.

I enjoyed Marathon and found it not as long in real-life time as you might expect. Things don't complete as fast, so it's a lot of next turn-next turn-next turn. I would say Marathon was like 1.5x slower in real-life time. Marathon was most absolutely easier. The problem I had was, I was winning in Medieval and not getting to even play in Industrial. I want to muck around with the settings some more and try an Information Era start, marathon game. But I already know the AI is worse the weirder settings you get.

I find the game easier on the slower speeds, never understood the argument about marathon being easier, I think it's mainly made by people who have only played a game or two on it not hundreds. Sure just like at any speed you get lucky sometimes and have an early victory, but usually the games last for me around 700 turns (I'm doing poorly if I get beyond the year 1800 is my metric for gaging how I'm doing). When I play on faster speeds I always seem to ahead of curve on winning which makes these games go even faster (I almost always do dominance victories I don't have the patience for the other types, which is contradictory for a marathon player I realize).

I like marathon because it lets me play of the units for a long time, on a huge map you can often get one or two runaways who can sometimes be challenge to eliminate and I just like to play a single game for really long, probably comes from those times I was able to get people to play Monopoly for a few hours when I was a child..lI just really liked immersing myself in it and forgetting about everything else (though usually I had to do this with a good book ).
One other advantage it slows down my favorite part of the early game exploration.

Edit: I think I realize why people think it's easier it's because of the era you get to, but it's really the number of turns it takes that matters, it takes a lot longer to get to the higher eras in marathon hence you often win in an earlier era, but that does not mean it was easier of course if you get a couple of good runaways you can go up to 1000 turns and well into modern era (if you like robots, marathon probably isn't a good choice). I once got into a really hairy game with Germany, he had managed to take over 2/3 of the world before I even ran into him (map had an unusual number of road blocks) and I finally gave up and went for a diplo victory if I hadn't that game could have gone 1100+ turns (a little too long). I get to nukes in maybe 10% of the games I play--again that in no way means it is easier. I do wish science was a little slower when playing marathon.

Hundreds of games on marathon?

I wish the end game was better. It seems the result is a foregone conclusion but you still have a few hours of game play left to finish. I usually restart long before winning.

I mostly play on the Giant Earth Map (180x94) with 43 civs and use epic or marathon speed.

Epic and Marathon let you get more use out of the Ancient and Classical era units. It's fun to use Advanced Setup to pick the AI opponents and play with just ancient civs.

I find Marathon takes way too long, so I play on Epic speed.

tetley said:

Hundreds of games on marathon?

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I mostly play civ5, I'm retired, so yes.

To clarify: if you play one per day (and sometimes I do two) it doesn't take long civ5 has been out for awhile now.

darkskies said:

I mostly play civ5, I'm retired, so yes.



To clarify: if you play one per day (and sometimes I do two) it doesn't take long civ5 has been out for awhile now.

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A game a day?! I can't wait to retire.

There's no way my wife would leave me alone long enough. There's dishes that need to be washed, regardless of what Shaka is doing.

One marathon game a day? Sometimes two? And these are marathon games that are somehow harder...

tetley said:

One marathon game a day? Sometimes two? And these are marathon games that are somehow harder...

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There are many hours in a day and I have trouble sleeping. As I said my games usually go about 700 turns. Also sometimes I don't finish a game when it's obvious I'll win and decide to start a new game instead. I'll admit I haven't been playing quite that much in the last month gone back to my scifi games while waiting for BE and also starting to learn galciv III. It helps to live sans-wife (just the dogs)...I wouldn't recommend this for most however.

Steam says I've got well over 4000 hours on Civ5, but sometimes I've been known to leave it running idle so I'd knock 25% off that. Why else would I hang around a forum called "Civilization Fanatics Forum?"

The funny thing is I played Civ on an Amiga then forgot all about it until Civ5 came along, sad to think of all those hours I wasted on other things like working.