Any tips on how to play faster?

[provoko]

I've been trying to play the game faster since I take soooo long for one turn to go by.

I use governors (but only for moods), automate workers, go to points, I'm not animating my enemy moves, and I'm not animating my own automatic moves. Is there anything else I can do to end the turn faster?

By the way, is there a way to not animate enemy attacks?

 

[Beorn-eL-Feared]

I think you need to practice your micro and apm, for one, and have a long term plan for two. Increasing your actions/minute count makes you play faster, but if you know where you're going, the road will be shorter to victory. Know your way and stick to it, you'll make progress.

 

[IPLAY4FUN]

I just prefer to take my time throught the game. Sometimes i may only get a couple turns done a game. I do all my worker actions myself, govern all my cities, and make sure i can see every movement that is going on. I want to make sure i can do the best i can and the computer doesnt mess anything up. Also i dont want to miss any computer movements around my territory. They may sneak a boat by or something that you cant see next turn and you could sink it. But, the games all about having fun so do what ya like.

 

[Bluemofia]

I never automate my workers, only for polution. Then i keep them fortified in a big SOD of wokers, and activate some of them when there is a need to them. Micromanaging, I just live with it, because I'm not really rushed to finish any games though.

 

[provoko]

I just prefer to take my time throught the game. Sometimes i may only get a couple turns done a game. I do all my worker actions myself, govern all my cities, and make sure i can see every movement that is going on. I want to make sure i can do the best i can and the computer doesnt mess anything up. Also i dont want to miss any computer movements around my territory. They may sneak a boat by or something that you cant see next turn and you could sink it. But, the games all about having fun so do what ya like.

Holy crap, haha, thats the exact opposite of what I'm looking for. I used to play like that when I first got civ3, it's what I used to do in civ1, but the amount of time I spent on one turn was insane.

Also the civil disorders that would happen without governors was unacceptable. You manage an entire civilization, someone decides to go to war with you for no reason, and every single city goes nuts, hehe. Oh and don't get me started with workers, it's fun in the beginning, but eventually when you're telling 20 workers the same thing, UP and R or M, it takes away from the fun of the game.

Well whatever, I guess I'm playing the game as fast as I can. However:

Theres one thing that eats up my time and I can't work around it, it's saving the game. The autosaves are great, but they only save up to 5 previous turns and it's only the beginning of turns. Is there any way to autosave every single turn, and have it save at the END of the turn instead of the beginning or both?

 

[bingen]

By the way, is there a way to not animate enemy attacks?

Turn off animate battles.

 

[TimBentley]

CrpMapStat allows you to save all your autosaves to a folder. I believe there's no way to automatically save at the end of a turn.

 

[sprang]

Is there any way to autosave every single turn, and have it save at the END of the turn instead of the beginning or both?

No. But you can save real quickly at the end of turns - set the "stop at end of turn" flag, and then just Ctrl-S each turn. I use short save names: a, a1, a2, a3, which makes it go real fast.

 

[Bluemofia]

or use the name it gives you.

 

[provoko]

The two replys above is actually whats wasting my time the most. Every single end of turn, I crtl-s, type awar.sav or aaaa.sav or aaaa2.sav and so on. I'll remember one thing I have to do, and save again, so on and so on. Argh. Thats why I like the autosave cause it saves when you've finished doing everything BUT it's only for the past 5 turns, dumb.

So this CrpMapStat will save every single autosave? If thats the case, I'll never push crtl-s ever again, unless it's for testing something in the middle of a turn which I rarely do.

Wow that actually save a ton of time. Ok, so I did get something out of this post, thanks guys. =)

 

[Gyathaar]

Personally I always save at end of turn, and used to give them unique names.
Now I store every game in seperate folders, and just use the default file names.. much faster and I can easilly see what years the saves are from

 

[Puppeteer]

Thats why I like the autosave cause it saves when you've finished doing everything BUT it's only for the past 5 turns, dumb.

You can adjust how many autosaves it makes. I stumbled across this recently, started to change it then decided not to. I think it's in preferences. It may be in the INI, but I'm pretty sure I remember a graphical text box in which to enter the number of turns to save, so somewhere in preferences or at the game start options.

I'm not at home, so I can't see where it is now. Also, I've been playing Conquests 1.22, so I don't know if it's there for all versions.

 

[Michelangelo]

You can also use Mapstat and CivAssist. They greatly help reducing time spent for checking all the leaders if there are possible trades, or warn if a city is going to riot and tons of other usefull stuff.

You'll spend most of your time on the "action" part of the game (fighting and building) which IMHO are the most fun part.

 

[Puppeteer]

I'm pretty sure I remember a graphical text box in which to enter the number of turns to save, so somewhere in preferences or at the game start options.

I must've been inhaling some bad fumes when I recalled the graphical settings box. It ain't there.

However, "Max Autosaves=10" in the Conquests.ini will give you 10 autosaves, for example. Or so I'm told; I haven't tried it, and I don't know if it works in earlier versions' ini's.

 

[provoko]

I must've been inhaling some bad fumes when I recalled the graphical settings box. It ain't there.

However, "Max Autosaves=10" in the Conquests.ini will give you 10 autosaves, for example. Or so I'm told; I haven't tried it, and I don't know if it works in earlier versions' ini's.

I'm gonna try that after work.

Disabling animating battles is really bad. It's too fast, yet the animated battles are too long, there should really be something inbetween. Like show the very first second of animation, then show the results of health, and lastly the dying/runing animation; it wouldn't take more than 2 seconds.

Right now battles can last 5-9 seconds, not so much, but if the enemy AI brings in about 30 units, you gotta sit through the whole thing and visa versa which can total up to 5 minutes before you can load the previous game. I usually end up alt-tabing and ending civ process through task manager, heh.

But now I use disable animated battles if the enemy wants to attack with 30+ units.

 

[vmxa]

You could leave the animate battles on and then hold the shift key at some point (I think caplock also) to speed past the rest. I have used this on games where I have several hundreds of units attacking me (mostly I just walk away and come back later).

 

[provoko]

"Max Autosaves=10" in the Conquests.ini will give you 10 autosaves, for example.

Yup it works. I have to add "Max Autosaves=10" to the ini file, cuase it's not there to begin with. This is great. I'm gonna put it to 100 and never save again, haha. Unless I have to save in the middle of the turn, which is rare.