How to decrease the time a game takes?

[wannabewarlord]

howdy fellow fanatics,

I have a problem and it is about how long my games take. I usually have one or two evenings per week (ca. 4hrs per evening) to play Civ4. I would love to be able to start and finish (and hopefully win ) one game per evening. From what I read in the forums, 4hrs should be ample time to do so (at "regular" settings, i.e. small/standard maps, normal/epic gamespeed; noble difficulty) yet I don't seem to manage to and I have a hard time pinpointing where my loss of time comes from.

I don't micromanage excessivley. I do however check my cities every other turn or so, but mainly to stop growth when at the cap (or allow growth again once the cap increases; isn't there an automatism for that?) the rest I leave to the city governor with the appropriate emphasis buttons (commerce, production, etc.) activated.

Buildings, Units and Techs are also decided rather quickly (i.e. I don't muse dozens of minutes over what to build, move or tech next; I thinK I do know my techpath and appropriate buildings well enough by now to decide on a glance).

I rarely war early and efficiently, I am just not good at that (trying to get better though), so my games are usually not decided by early conquering or domination and I tend to end up going for space race (if at all) more often than I want to if I haven't decided to go for cultural (I am rather adept at winning in cultural, I think).

So my problem is that I end up nowhere near the end (or a winning condition, respectively) in an evening's game and then when I fire up a new session the next evening I rather start a new game from scratch than continue my old one (I have a problem with getting bored if it drags on too long).

any tips from you faster/more efficient players on how to optimize my game time and actually come to a conclusion in about 4 hours? Any pitfalls I don't see or any motivators on how to rather continue a game than starting a new one should it ever drag on a bit longer?

any comments greatly appreciated.

cheers,
wannabewarlord

 

[onomastikon]

My games take forever, and the only way I have found to save time is by playing on smaller maps and/or playing more poorly. Playing smaller maps really helps. Playing faster means making more mistakes and calculating less, so you might want to turn down the difficulty a notch.

 

[Hoticehunter]

Try changing the game speed to quick.
But 4 hours may be a little on the extreme side. I may be able to do 4 hours if I didn't do any wars. But I always have a war somewhere, and it's war that slows my games down dramatically.

 

[EweezE]

Play Duels on small maps with quick game speed and Advanced Start. That shouldn't be a very long game. If it is too quick then try 1v1v1's same settings. I think Advanced Start is what you mainly need though, because then you can just focus on the warmongering instead of city mangement. Which should speed along the game considerably since you don't have to "build" cities and buildings. I've never messed with the settings I've suggested, because I'm not pressed for time like you. I would if I were in your situation though .

 

[wannabewarlord]

thanks for those first answers. my problem is though that I exactly like the early start. I find exploring, building early wonders and getting my city to grow so much more interesting than plowing away with ready made stuff as advanced start would let me do. And I don't mind the managing options, on the contrary.

Maybe my goal is a bit unrealistic. but I've seen many people say their games are 3-4hrs and I myself already had shorter games, but they were on a much lower difficutly level.

I really wanna stick to noble, because I do plan to move up soon... well at least when I got the warmongering down. so far I seem to have little problem to win peacefully (i.e. culture & space race) but I really need to improve my skills at domination and conquering.

more answers welcome.

cheer,
wannabewarlord

 

[Cytral]

I also play 1 or 2 nights a week for about 3-4 hours. We continu the game though

Usualy we play the same game for 2 or 3 sessions, think the time will go up with more humans and wars

 

[andersw]

howdy fellow fanatics,

I have a problem and it is about how long my games take. I usually have one or two evenings per week (ca. 4hrs per evening) to play Civ4. I would love to be able to start and finish (and hopefully win ) one game per evening. From what I read in the forums, 4hrs should be ample time to do so (at "regular" settings, i.e. small/standard maps, normal/epic gamespeed; noble difficulty) yet I don't seem to manage to and I have a hard time pinpointing where my loss of time comes from.

I don't micromanage excessivley. I do however check my cities every other turn or so, but mainly to stop growth when at the cap (or allow growth again once the cap increases; isn't there an automatism for that?) the rest I leave to the city governor with the appropriate emphasis buttons (commerce, production, etc.) activated.

Buildings, Units and Techs are also decided rather quickly (i.e. I don't muse dozens of minutes over what to build, move or tech next; I thinK I do know my techpath and appropriate buildings well enough by now to decide on a glance).

I rarely war early and efficiently, I am just not good at that (trying to get better though), so my games are usually not decided by early conquering or domination and I tend to end up going for space race (if at all) more often than I want to if I haven't decided to go for cultural (I am rather adept at winning in cultural, I think).

So my problem is that I end up nowhere near the end (or a winning condition, respectively) in an evening's game and then when I fire up a new session the next evening I rather start a new game from scratch than continue my old one (I have a problem with getting bored if it drags on too long).

any tips from you faster/more efficient players on how to optimize my game time and actually come to a conclusion in about 4 hours? Any pitfalls I don't see or any motivators on how to rather continue a game than starting a new one should it ever drag on a bit longer?

any comments greatly appreciated.

cheers,
wannabewarlord

Wow, 4hours is quick. Maybe doable on small, normal speed.
My games got faster when I turned on quick fight, ie graphics only show one punch and not 3, even though you said you don't war much, check this setting.
Turn down graphics, while I wan't a pretty world, turning down graphics does make it faster (probably even if you have a monster machine).
Some micromanagement is inevitable, yes.
More warring, on noble a domination win is faster in years than space race....
... on the other hand, wars include some micromanagement of troops and you'll get more cities to manage but even then I believe its faster.

I can w/o doubt say that I'm there with you on the "getting bored and come back next day to fire up a new game"

Finally, playing more makes it faster, since you're more confident with your descisions and make fewer mistakes.

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

I don't have good advice for you in this regard. A serious game usually takes around 20 hours, which means about a month for me. Taking longer generally improves the quality of your games a lot.

 

[Ringan]

I've gone through the game options to expedite my games. I removed all the pop up notices...and I would definitely recommend enabling "quick combat"...watching the same animation over and over again can get old and slow down warring a lot.

 

[unclethrill]

Click turns faster.

 

[wannabewarlord]

howdy again,

thanks for more comments. I think the quick combat might very well be an useful option to turn on. I haven't thought of that, thanks!

as for turning down graphics I think my machine has little to no delay because of processing power (yes, I got a monster machine...I wonder what for ) but it might be something to look into.

clicking turns faster is probably the last thing I'll do, as I don't think I can click it faster. I do need to make sure I moved everything I needed to and changed everything I wanted to. but it is true that a certain delay (waiting till the button turns red) lies in the ending of turns.

so maybe 4 hours is a bit too tight for a decent game and I would need rather two nights to invest in a proper game. this would bring it down to one game a week, but at least it would be of better quality and I would finally finish some games.

more feedback always welcome.

cheers,
wannabewarlord

 

[Underdawg]

Shift+Enter is your friend.

Quick Combat is your other friend.

Fast CPU is your biggest friend.

That is all.

I usually finish a Large 12ai game in just under 4 hours >_<

Though I rarely spend much time mulling over what to do next O.o

 

[GIO888]

Average game time 5 hours on Standard Map, Epic speed.

Just do other stuff less, this is Civ, right?

 

[wannabewarlord]

@GIDS888

lol, yeah this is CIV and I would love to do other stuff less. unfortunately that is not an option.

@Underdawg
Shift+Enter does what again? Ah well, I am gonna find out tonight. yes, tonite is one of the two nights I get, woohoo

cheers,
wannabewarlord

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

Shift+Enter forced turn end.

 

[budweiser]

Keep your civ small. Grow up, not out. This will save time. Try the Dutch. Try not to fight too much until later in th egame, like the industrial era. This will make the game go faster.

 

[`DG`]

try to queue production so you spend time investigating cities less frequently. Similarly queue worker's orders. It does require remembering broadly what is going on tho, so you can switch if the unexpected happens.

Fortify units you don't expect to move. Even ones you want to keep an eye on, if there's several fortify all but one of them.

The game settings are worth investigating, if you've missed "quick combat" you've probably missed a few others in there too.

 

[Sisiutil]

I don't have much advice here, frankly. My games typically take 10 to 24 hours each, but I play on Epic or Marathon speed. A game will take me at least a week or more to finish. And I like it that way. Civ IV is a wonderfully complex game and I like taking my time over all the little decisions.

To my mind the game has always been designed with long-term play in mind. Rather than aiming for a complete victory each night, I recommend satisfying yourself with one of the many "mini-victories" available. Such as finishing a wonder, or a war of conquest, or one of the races (to Liberalism, or circumnavigation, or to one of the free great people). Just tell yourself "tonight I'm going to play until I achieve X", where X is a goal that is realistically possible to achieve in the time you have available.

And once you achieve that goal (or fail), save the game, turn off the computer, and go to bed. Sleep is important.

 

[Brian Boru]

1. Settings, turn off the time-killers:
Movies, quick combat, advisor popups, friendly moves, enemy moves [F5 is better way to check enemy locations].

2. Queue buildings and units:
Past the initial period, queue 3-6 buildings in a city. You can always do a quick insert via the F1 screen, say when you get CoL and want to do Courthouses asap--click each city in F1, and Ctrl-click Courthouse to add it above all other builds.
Alt-click to continually produce units in a city. So eg all axes from one, all archers from another.

3. Early network Worker:
Soon as you can spare one, put one Worker on "Build trade network", then forget about connecting anything manually except the occasional vital one.

4. Rally point(s) for units:
Click on city bar [so it glows a bit], then Shift + right-click on tile where you want units to go. Much easier to deploy from 1-2 nearby staging areas than from 6-7 distant cities.

5. Specialize for speed:
If I see a Library finish, I know I want a University there next. Barracks = Stable, Market = Grocer = Bank, and so on.

6. Name your cities by function:
I rename most cities, how the heck can I remember if the Missionary city was Xnotheckggyorklip or Inkdgewsatbsmxftory? "Mounted" is my horsey city, Oxford is guess what, same with Wall St. This saves quite a bit of time with 20+ cities, plus forces you to make an initial "This is a ___ city".

6a. Name cities by location or resource:
Alternatively, "East Iron" is easier to hunt down than Pisa when you get a message about it. Btw, to find location of an event, look it up in the log and click the message--the map should center on where it happened.

7. Use Log rather than screen messages:
Life's too short for the scrolling screen messages. Nine times out of ten, who cares that I completed a Library and started an Aquaduct? Ten times out of ten, I don't want to know my Alt-click unit city completed an axe and has started another. Either the F1 screen or the event log will tell you what you want to know, when you want to know it.

8. BUG mod:
I just downloaded this a few minutes ago--it's ready for 3.17. From all I hear, this should be a big time-saver. Its home is here.

9. Play the neighborhood:
Got Shaka and Monty nearby? War WILL happen, so make it on your terms. Prepare, dictate, manipulate. This will save a lot of scrambling time.

9a. Play to a plan:
Hemmed in? You'll need to take out Hatty with Cats and Swords.
Isolated? Peaceful economic build-up, tech some trade-bait, and early Optics.
Focusing on a plan speeds up all decisions.

10. Wars - plan long, execute fast:
Nothing more tedious than a slugfest. If you know it's coming, spend 50 turns prepping a 20-turn war, not 20 turns planning a 50-turn war. Have a clear objective, look for capitulation or peace once achieved.

11. Avoid war:
Did I mention war weariness? And I don't mean the game mechanic. Without a nearby psycho, it's easy to avoid war. Build a powerful military, and mind your diplo/religion.
With a psycho, bribe him to attack, or others to attack him--your objective is to keep him occupied until he becomes irrelevant. Then wipe out in 20 turns if desired.

12. Teeny shortcuts:
Group all siege and bombers to bombard together;
Spacebar = skip turn;
The "F" key will fortify/sentry/snooze ALL units--saves hunting their different action icons.

13. Cottage economy:
This is probably the quickest one to play, rarely a poor choice for Financial leaders.

14. Capitulate immediately when attacked:
This advanced tactic speeds up wars dramatically.

 

[bennos76]

My last game took 50 hours......