What's the Appeal with Marathon/Epic?
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Dark_Ownage
Chieftain
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- Jan 6, 2008
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is marathon an expansion speed?
Jeff1787
Sarge
Get to emperor in a month. Then you are playing a different game!!! I am your humble servant.
Howard Mahler
Since Civ 1
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- Dec 7, 2003
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I play on the slow speeds, for the reasons others have given.
I also play on huge maps.
As has been stated, your units get the ability to move much further in a given unit of time (decade or century) on the slower speeds.
On a huge map, until you have airports, it takes a very long time to make stategic moves. You need the slower speeds to get things done.
Even then it might take half a decade or more to move an invasion fleet of galleons and frigates to their destination.
On the slower speeds there is plenty of time to fit the occassional war into the overall flow of history.
I also play on huge maps.
As has been stated, your units get the ability to move much further in a given unit of time (decade or century) on the slower speeds.
On a huge map, until you have airports, it takes a very long time to make stategic moves. You need the slower speeds to get things done.
Even then it might take half a decade or more to move an invasion fleet of galleons and frigates to their destination.
On the slower speeds there is plenty of time to fit the occassional war into the overall flow of history.
I've been wondering about this myself. Some say that epic/marathon is less difficult, does that still hold true if you use a larger map size? I recently switched from epic to normal mostly because of reading Obsolete's walkthroughs. I was thinking that epic speed was too much of an advantage, although I don't know if that is true.
vicawoo
Chieftain
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- Feb 12, 2007
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- 3,226
Alex, what is a pony of one trick? Pen is mightier for 400, please.
I guess some people might call it style, but not knowing how to win with an SE on prince while winning on emperor, or relying on quechua rushes does not make someone an emperor level player on my mind.
When I read about unconquered suns 11 tile block off or his pre-emptive war declaration, or moonsinger's 13 turn settler exploration on deity, that's what makes me think, damn, deity level players are crazy.
Monarch level, you should be able to run an SE, CE, wage early war, and have decent diplomacy/trading skills. Emperor level, well, I think they should be able to run an SE without pyramids get a size 15+ capital by 1 AD, good denying skills, manage war at any period, and probably win with a random civ on any map.
obsolete
Deity
What???
You make a unit, then put hammers in your wonder for 1 turn, go back to unit, next turn put it on the wonder again, etc, etc. Cycle till wonder is done.
What's the problem?
When you've built all the useful wonders youre stuck with tons of overflow you can't use.
Edit: Although usually at that point the game is won or lost already, but it's still annoying that having more than ~40 or so base production is pretty much a waste on quick speed(wonders being a notable exception, of course).
cripp7
Playin' Bored
on a standard map, how long does it take to complete a game on each speed setting? Let's say a domination win in 1800 A.D. when I first started playing Civ IV. I always started on normal, but never did win and started playing epic which I like a lot better.
Still_Asleep
Warlord
Epic is 150% of normal. Basically, you need 3 turns to get a tech that you would discover in 2 turns on normal. And everything else - with exception of unit movement of course - scales in the same way. This means that everything, including the effectiveness of leader traits and so on, works exactly as on normal. It is not that much of a diffference at all imo.
Marathon is completely different. Wonders/Buildings/improvements/research/culture/GPs are 300% of normal, while building units is only 200%. So units are relatively cheap, and will of course not be outdated any time soon. This means that it is enjoyable while you are at war and actually make use of the cheap units, but really crippling when you just build in peace, as you will simply hit the next-turn-button 3 times as often. And you really have to get used to it, because early game buildorders dont work anymore. The worker builds in ~28 turns while bronze working needs ~58 turns, thats a shocker o_O
Marathon is completely different. Wonders/Buildings/improvements/research/culture/GPs are 300% of normal, while building units is only 200%. So units are relatively cheap, and will of course not be outdated any time soon. This means that it is enjoyable while you are at war and actually make use of the cheap units, but really crippling when you just build in peace, as you will simply hit the next-turn-button 3 times as often. And you really have to get used to it, because early game buildorders dont work anymore. The worker builds in ~28 turns while bronze working needs ~58 turns, thats a shocker o_O
it's an update thing.
You have an internet connection, so I see no reason for not downloading and installing the official 1.74 patch.
obsolete
Deity
When you've built all the useful wonders youre stuck with tons of overflow you can't use.
Edit: Although usually at that point the game is won or lost already, but it's still annoying that having more than ~40 or so base production is pretty much a waste on quick speed(wonders being a notable exception, of course).
You can always use overflow. People even try to make sure they get overflow.
I still fail to see the problem.
If you have too much overflow (like cumultated overflow from building the same cheap unit again and again finally gets you), what's over either the cost of the last build or your own total honest hammers (the biggest from those 2) gets converted to gold.
In some way it's like you're forced to build gold, even when you don't need to.
Is it a problem? not in my opinion.
The fact is you can't build more than 1 item per turn, no matter how hard you try.
exception : you can draft and build a unit in the same turn.
.Matjillam1
Chieftain
- Joined
- Nov 12, 2007
- Messages
- 44
That just makes no sense. Did you not see that extra hammers get applied to the next unit?
Well, if the city is building heaviest military unit in 1 turn, there isn't any benefit from getting those extra hammer to next unit
An exampel to my theory:
At quick speed: City A has 70 production (with Heroic Epic). Heaviest military unit costs 50 hammers, so it takes 1 turn for each unit.
At marathon speed: Here, the timer is set like x4 of quick speed, so the military unit costs 200 hammers, still with 70 production. So it takes 3 turns to finish the first military unit but 10 hammers get carried on the next unit. So all in all, no hammers are wasted.
DrJambo
Crash-test dummy
Good post! The ability to raise units quickly in response to a barbarian incursion or an AI declaration of war at the quicker speeds makes a huge difference. If barbarians or an AI civ attack a weakly defended city at Epic speeda and you're ill-prepared, there's little hope of being able to raise an effective counter in time.
I had my first Civ 4 (and BtS) conquest win on a normal sized map yesterday. It wouldn't have been possible if I had played it faster than Epic.
I feel that you fall behind in tech if you are at war for a few turns on normal. On epic, you can take a few cities, and get back on track without much loss. Having 10-20% research without SE, for a few turns don't hurt at all.
And the best thing, you get to play with modern units before it's game over.
I feel that you fall behind in tech if you are at war for a few turns on normal. On epic, you can take a few cities, and get back on track without much loss. Having 10-20% research without SE, for a few turns don't hurt at all.
And the best thing, you get to play with modern units before it's game over.
kcmarkwell
Chieftain
- Joined
- Oct 26, 2005
- Messages
- 91
Don't tell me you are calling emperor level games a joke unless they are played on quick speed. You better check with some of the better players. You won't find one who mastered this game in a month. Maybe you are a Civ genius....
Emperor games are fairly easy on anything slower than normal speed if you know somewhat what you are doing. Basically on slow speeds, just build huge stacks of anything and go crush your neighbor. Maybe it only took me a month to get good because ive played every other civ (1,2,3,etc). Take, for instance, sistuil annihilation using ragnar right now. The game is pretty much wrapped up and he started not anywhere near another civ. If you are playing islands, maybe tough, but any map with a neighbor close by is pretty easy to own on those slower speeds.
madscientist
RPC Supergenius
Very well put and pretty much describes my feelings on marathon. It does not scale the same way that standard/epic speed does, thus more difficult to go from one speed to another.
This has always been a frustrating thing for me as I can never play along with posted games as I am so unaccustomed to standard/epic speeds, things go along too fast and I make continual mistakes.
It's another reason I decided to do the RPC games since there are very few marathon speed walkthroughs/demo games on these forums, and very for BTS.
