How does game pace affect your strategy?

[Athenaeum]

I almost always play on Quick. Am I the only one who does that here? EVeryone seems to play on Standard.

In addition, how does game pace affect your strategy? Right off the bat, I guess I could see longer game paces leaving less room for mistakes.

If you take 30 turns to build a granary and you see an army at your doorstep, it won't help you to start building a warrior that's going to take 30 turns as well. You should have started building that earlier.

 

[joncnunn]

The portion of how does playing on a slower game pace than Standard and especially Marathon is answered here:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=545835

It's pretty much the reverse effects for playing on Quick instead of standard.

 

[Athenaeum]

I only play on quick so I couldn't even compare it to Standard.

 

[wayneb64]

I only play quick as well. I used to play standard, but a friend started playing on quick so I tried it, and I cannot imagine going back. The only downside is not being able to relate to the turn times posted here on the forums for when things should be done by.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I only play quick as well. I used to play standard, but a friend started playing on quick so I tried it, and I cannot imagine going back. The only downside is not being able to relate to the turn times posted here on the forums for when things should be done by.

No, quick globally buffs all science/peaceful based strategies and significantly debuffs war in general. Units are much less effective in quick than standard or especially slower speeds. On quick, units could take longer to heal than it takes to research a technology in some cases! Compare that to Marathon and it's just silly, but even compared to standard quick really impacts the war game.

Also, finish dates are always going to be faster on speeds like marathon, because similar to military unit moves worker unit moves don't scale. So, you can steal them earlier in the game and they have proportionately less time spent moving relative to building improvements. This type of stuff has a pretty big snowball effect on your yields.

 

[twilson1972]

i cant see the point in building units on quick, by the time they are built and moved to the enemy city they would be obsolete

I play epic - i used to be a marathon player on civ iv but production times are just to slow on civ 5

For pacing, i feel ancient/medieval/renaissance flies by too quickly, but modern onwards drags for me

That may be because by modern age i know if im going to win and its less exciting, early/mid game is the exciting bit for me.

 

[wayneb64]

No, quick globally buffs all science/peaceful based strategies and significantly debuffs war in general. Units are much less effective in quick than standard or especially slower speeds. On quick, units could take longer to heal than it takes to research a technology in some cases! Compare that to Marathon and it's just silly, but even compared to standard quick really impacts the war game.

Also, finish dates are always going to be faster on speeds like marathon, because similar to military unit moves worker unit moves don't scale. So, you can steal them earlier in the game and they have proportionately less time spent moving relative to building improvements. This type of stuff has a pretty big snowball effect on your yields.

So are you saying Quick is harder on Immortal/Diety or easier?

 

[Athenaeum]

No, quick globally buffs all science/peaceful based strategies and significantly debuffs war in general.

Are you sure that's necessarily true? It would take a lot longer time to rake an army together on Marathon, and once you did, if you lost a unit it would take you forever to build it back.

 

[Browd]

Unit movement and related combat mechanics (including XP per combat) do not vary by game speed -- movement is still just 2 hexes per turn. Yes, building units on Marathon takes longer, but you get 3 times as many turns to move units around the map, cap cities and earn XP. My most heavily promoted units are from the few Marathon games I've played. The reverse is true on Quick, where you simply have fewer turns to accomplish the same goals.

 

[Nick31]

With the obvious caveat that you should play on whatever pace is fun for you:

I think if you're trying to make the leap from Immortal to Diety, a few games at Epic Speed are helpful. As others point out, you get the advantages of worker steal and combat in proportionally greater superiority. I believe that allying a CS is somewhat more advantageous too, given the proportionality of things.

Combat, especially. Good range UUs will always give the AI trouble, but that's especially true on Epic, where if you can quickly decimate an AI horde, it's harder to replace it. Camels, Keshiks, and Chu-Kus are even more deadly on Epic than on quicker speeds where the AIs numbers recover faster.

In general, good play is good play regardless of speed, but you'll figure some things out, namely interaction with City States, or AI combat, or other things, that are more advantageous on slower speeds (I've only gone to Epic... Marathon is not something I can immerse myself in).

For those that miss the micro aspects, going to Epic offers more opportunities there as well.

 

[ShakaKhan]

I think the consensus is that slower pace = decreased difficulty. As far as strategy adjustments, units (and particularly UUs) with shorter windows of effectiveness have increased utility on slower game speeds. Also 1-shot items (Glibrary, oracle, ideology wonders, winning fair/games, Polish UA) are more valuable on higher levels.

 

[WeneedmoreCivs]

I love playing it at the slowest pace (I have a mod that creates a different pace, but it's similar to Marathon) because it feels far more immersive and my games will last weeks.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

So are you saying Quick is harder on Immortal/Diety or easier?

Quick should be easier for science, harder for domination.

Are you sure that's necessarily true? It would take a lot longer time to rake an army together on Marathon, and once you did, if you lost a unit it would take you forever to build it back.

Who loses more units consistently on high levels of play, the human player or the AI? Who is more likely to turn up with stuff like range 3 logistics horse archers?

The player.

However, regardless of VC marathon should always win at an *earlier date* than alternative speed settings, even if a pure peaceful game on mara isn't necessarily easier. If nothing else, workers are stolen and move faster and so you have infrastructure up earlier in the game on a "by year x" basis.

 

[reddishrecue]

I preferred quick often and have started many quick games. I haven't tried the other speeds because quick is fast that you can use more games because of the speed.

 

[ComradeKroo]

Quicker games make warfare investment is less effective.
Marathon games = war games.

 

[NiceOneEmlyn]

Quick should be easier for science, harder for domination.

Who loses more units consistently on high levels of play, the human player or the AI? Who is more likely to turn up with stuff like range 3 logistics horse archers?

The player.

However, regardless of VC marathon should always win at an *earlier date* than alternative speed settings, even if a pure peaceful game on mara isn't necessarily easier. If nothing else, workers are stolen and move faster and so you have infrastructure up earlier in the game on a "by year x" basis.

I totally agree with everything you have to say. The area highlighted however might be giving the wrong impression to people that have never played marathon! Whilst playing marathon deity, I have found that you cannot steal a worker from a CS until turn 60 - 100, I would imagine that if you play easier difficulties then the CSs would be even slower producing that first worker! (I am going on the assumption that CS build speeds are the equivalent of AI build speeds per level of play).

 

[Acken]

Basically while most yields are multiplied by a factor to make the experience similar there are 2 main differences:

-Units stats do not change. This means that during the same time frame units move and attack more slowly on quick than on standard. For the same reason units move and attack much more quickly in marathon. This may not be very intuitive but see it like this. If it takes a scout 3000years to explore the whole map on standard you probably could achieve the same result in 1000 years on marathon (same amount of turns but smaller time frame). Therefore the scout moved "quicklier" in marathon.

-Great musician concert are discounted (get a premium) twice on quick (epic or marathon). Making their strength not 0.66 of standard but 0.66^2. This may be a bug actually.

These 2 things mean
-Quick is usually considered harder to win by domination and culture. However it is easier to defend if unprepared.
-Marathon is easier to win by domination and culture. However it is harder to defend if unprepared.

 

[Tabarnak]

Quick is the least forgiving. Value of how you scout in the beginning is higher. Pretty important stage for mp games where quick is the very common speed used.

Barbs begin to spawn at turn 11 making a scout opening a priority if you don't wanna be stuck somewhere too soon.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Basically while most yields are multiplied by a factor to make the experience similar there are 2 main differences:

-Units stats do not change. This means that during the same time frame units move and attack more slowly on quick than on standard. For the same reason units move and attack much more quickly in marathon. This may not be very intuitive but see it like this. If it takes a scout 3000years to explore the whole map on standard you probably could achieve the same result in 1000 years on marathon (same amount of turns but smaller time frame). Therefore the scout moved "quicklier" in marathon.

-Great musician concert are discounted (get a premium) twice on quick (epic or marathon). Making their strength not 0.66 of standard but 0.66^2. This may be a bug actually.

These 2 things mean
-Quick is usually considered harder to win by domination and culture. However it is easier to defend if unprepared.
-Marathon is easier to win by domination and culture. However it is harder to defend if unprepared.

The unit move is enormous as a factor. You can win games outright with a new unit that would be very difficult to accomplish on standard or quick. What's the practical limitation for, say, horse archers on marathon? They're likely to be usable for 100's of turns!

I have found that you cannot steal a worker from a CS until turn 60 - 100, I would imagine that if you play easier difficulties then the CSs would be even slower producing that first worker!

True, but the instant you do get that worker, you start to pull ahead with his superfast move speed. Even before that, you've scouted more land and uncovered more city states sooner on a date basis.

 

[Tabarnak]

Scaling speed with map size isn't a bad idea itself.

Quick speed for small maps or smaller, standard speed for standard map, epic speed for large maps and marathon speed for huge maps usually represent the best overall immersion when we compare moves vs turns taken.

I will never play a game at quick speed on a huge map!