Beyond 2050...Is it worth playing?

[Mistro]

I'm still new at this game and feel the time between 4000BC and 2050AD is too short to enjoy the units in their time periods. What's the sense of building knights if shortly I have riflemen and machine guns? It seems by the time I get my cities to the point I am only building military units, it's the 20th century already so when the game reaches 2050AD and the victory message appears, I feel like I'm just getting started so I continue playing. But I noticed less activity happening like seeing other civs going to war with each other or me. Though I'm still able to pick fights and play, it seems more quiet than prior to 2050. I even see other nations very undeveloped with only a few military units in their cities well beyond 2150AD.

Is it worth playing past 2050 or am I wasting my time if I would like other Civs to be as active as they are during the "official game time"?

Edit: I'm referring to playing BTS by the way.

 

[s.bernbaum]

If you plan to keep playing after 2050, when you start the game, start up with Custom Game instead of Play Now and uncheck the Time victory in the lower right. You can then make the other selections that you would make in the Play Now sequence of start screens in the one Custom Game screen. You can also make other choices but if you like the Play Now approach, you can get the same game but with the 2050 time limit turned off using this approach.

 

[Drakarska]

Sounds like your playing quick-norm speed (nothing wrong with that ). If you want longer times to enjoy your era's, the I recommend either epic or marathon speed. As for playing beyond 2050, that's a judgement call you'll need to decide. There are a few mods that are enjoyable past 2050 (ROM AND comes to mind), but IMO in vanilla BTS it's not that fun due to usually beating it before then.
I would head over to the mods section if your looking for something specific besides the base game.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

What's the sense of building knights if shortly I have riflemen and machine guns?

This is exactly why I don't play on normal speed. I strongly recommend trying epic or marathon.

 

[s.bernbaum]

Another vote here for Marathon (and huge maps). It makes for a more immersive game.

 

[Mistro]

In Epic or Marathon speeds, does it take more turns to produce stuff than normal speed giving the illusion of a longer game or is the production time (say to produce military units) the same as normal speed but the time eras are slower? I tried Epic before but did not understand what was going on time wise. I am under the impression that 2050 is the end of the "official game time" no matter what options are chosen. Am I wrong about that? Just want to know if the AI will act the same as they do in the barbarian days when they love to pick fights (do they act any differently after 2050). I will look into more mod options. FYI I have the Complete Edition.

I will try with the custom game options again too. Is there a way to choose our opponents or is it always random? There are a couple of leaders I been waiting to get revenge on but they have not shown their faces in the past few games.

 

[Peasley]

In Epic or Marathon speeds, does it take more turns to produce stuff than normal speed giving the illusion of a longer game or is the production time (say to produce military units) the same as normal speed but the time eras are slower? I tried Epic before but did not understand what was going on time wise. I am under the impression that 2050 is the end of the "official game time" no matter what options are chosen. Am I wrong about that? Just want to know if the AI will act the same as they do in the barbarian days when they love to pick fights (do they act any differently after 2050). I will look into more mod options. FYI I have the Complete Edition.

I will try with the custom game options again too. Is there a way to choose our opponents or is it always random? There are a couple of leaders I been waiting to get revenge on but they have not shown their faces in the past few games.

Custom game allows you to select opponents.

2050 is only an important date if time victory is on. If you uncheck that, then you can keep going as long as you like.

Production in epic and marathon games is slowed down, but there are ways to potentially reap more production from the greater number of turns, and your units will be relevant for significantly longer periods of time.

 

[Drakarska]

Echo what Peasly stated. Additionally, under custom games you have several barb options available. Be warned though, if you check the RB on mara spd, you game play will be a lot more hostile vs barbs, so fog busters is highly recommended.

 

[God-Emperor]

At the slower speed producing units (and everything else) take more turns. But at Marathon the unit build time is not proportionate as it is effectively only 2/3 as long compared to how everything else is scaled since on Marathon units take twice as many turns to build but research and buildings and such take 3 times as many turns as on Normal speed. On Epic everything is just 50% more: units and buildings take 50% more production, techs take 50% more research, etc.

In both cases you do get to use the units longer in their time periods since once they are built you have more turns before the techs that obsolete them come along. It is just a more obvious effect on Marathon than Epic due to the non-proportionate build time adjustments.

You can change a lot of setting by launching the game via the Custom Game menu item instead of the Play Now menu item. That includes the ability to select civilizations and leaders for each AI player (and your own) and some game options that you can't change via Play Now.

Since there are a finite number of actual techs (other than the recurring Future Tech) and a finite amount of land to occupy there is an inevitable point beyond which very little new will happen that would allow a civ that is behind to take the lead. If civilization X is twice the size of civilization Y in 2050 there is almost nothing civ Y can do about it as there is no more territory to grab and everyone has every tech so it can't get a tech advantage to use against X and since it has twice the territory X likely has twice the production capacity for producing an army in which case X can stomp on Y and Y can't really do anything about it. (Unless Y is the human, in which case you can play better than the AI to perhaps overcome them.) For skilled players this point often happens well before 2050. Games are usually won or lost long before then. So it is generally pointless to play on beyond that time.

Oh, and an answer to this:

What's the sense of building knights if shortly I have riflemen and machine guns?

The use of building the knights now is that having knights now can win you a war now. Having no knights now, only riflemen and machine guns in the future, can lose you the game now.

 

[Fippy]

It's why most skip Knights for Cuirs, with them and Cavalry you have units that can last very long..depending on how fast AIs get Rifling, but very often not fast enough.

Cannot recommend Marathon, game is not balanced on this speed so you are mostly cheating yourself.

 

[Tlalynet]

It's why most skip Knights for Cuirs, with them and Cavalry you have units that can last very long..depending on how fast AIs get Rifling, but very often not fast enough.

Cannot recommend Marathon, game is not balanced on this speed so you are mostly cheating yourself.

Are you trying to imply the game is properly balanced at any speed?

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Cannot recommend Marathon, game is not balanced on this speed so you are mostly cheating yourself.

The game isn't balanced or unbalanced by itself. You have to set it up to balance against something, namely yourself.

If you find yourself mowing down knights with machine guns, or crushing longbows beneath your tank treads, you might well find that making some adjustments would add to your enjoyment. Of course you also might enjoy that sort of thing and if you do then roll on.

I like marathon because I get to use my units. I can build them in the middle of my empire, or even on the far side, and they can actually reach the front lines before they are obsolete. This has a lot more to do with them effectively moving three times faster than it has to do with the production benefit. I move the difficulty up to get an enjoyable game. How exactly am I 'cheating myself'?

 

[Fippy]

look who cares, old topic we all know what marathon does all i said: I would not recommend getting used to that, you are cheating yourself if you think AIs can handle it well. If you have a different opinion, you don't have to start arguing with me about that, OP can judge by himself.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I would not recommend getting used to that, you are cheating yourself if you think AIs can handle it well.

So what you are actually saying is that I'm cheating the AIs, because I'm using a setting they 'don't handle well'. My solution is to give them a different setting that they 'handle better', by upping the difficulty. So far none of them have stormed off in a huff and refused to play with me.

If you have a different opinion, you don't have to start arguing with me about that, OP can judge by himself.

I didn't disagree with any of the effects of changing game speed that you pointed out. I'm just trying to clarify this 'cheating yourself' bit you threw in there. The OP can indeed judge for themselves. I recommend they make that judgement based on either trying it out (easy enough) or careful analysis of the changes listed and accurate prediction of how mach fun it will add or remove from the game for them (significantly more complex).

 

[Windsor]

What's the sense of building knights if shortly I have riflemen and machine guns?

Because it might be at the knights-era you have the window of opportunity and when you got rifles Musa got Infantry and Pacal is closing in on cultural victory.

If you're free to go to war at any time in the game, then you're playing below your difficulty.

 

[zampa86]

When I play I have never reached year 2050. Ever. All wins have always been prior to that, (I dont run with spacerace, dimplomacy, or timelimit though) And I tend to play maps where there is only one landmass. (Because otherwise you can win out of luck that you got the biggest island and simply could ride into victory from there.)

And for me when i get to like 25-30 cities (I often play the biggest map, with 18 opponents, and on epic setting, each turn when I reach tanks and such takes forever, since there are soo many cities to focus on. war on 2 fronts etc. So at times i find myself spending 40 minutes per turn. And simply wishing the game was over already. I have yet to win anything besides a domination victory, (I simply make sure any computer trying to get a cultural one is beaten to pieces.)

So i might be playing on too easy of a difficulty level then? Well if i move up one i get completly beaten. But I gave it a show 2 days ago and still working on it, havent had super much time to play though.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Slower speeds let you use each era's units longer.

However, usually this complaint is also a function of a player building too many buildings that don't pay back the investment in a reasonable time.

 

[need my speed]

I, personally, play on Quick, with Marathon's tech speed. Or on Marathon, with a tech speed of 1000. Something like that.

Surprisingly enough, I never finish a game...

 

[Mistro]

So perhaps I need to learn which buildings are important to build in a given city depending on what production I want to use that city for? I'm beginning to think I emphasize building all buildings in all my cities before concentrating on military units. I usually make a few military units for security purposes early on in the game while focusing on producing wonders and buildings that speed up production and lower costs.

When I first began playing this game my biggest problem was being in the negative financially so I began learning what buildings and improvements helped me with wealth and hammers. So I been trying to get all buildings in all cities. I am now rethinking this strategy as I think it is the reason that I'm not enjoying as much combat early on unless someone declares war on me. Am I on the right track with this thinking?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

When I first began playing this game my biggest problem was being in the negative financially so I began learning what buildings and improvements helped me with wealth and hammers. So I been trying to get all buildings in all cities. I am now rethinking this strategy as I think it is the reason that I'm not enjoying as much combat early on unless someone declares war on me. Am I on the right track with this thinking?

Very much so. Every building choice should be strictly scrutinized. There are some cities that will wind up with 2 buildings for much of the game, and a bunch that will have 5 or less (granary, forge, CH, barracks, maybe a library for early specs just as an example).

The only "gimme" build in 99% of cities is the granary. After that, even building wealth outright can beat making actual buildings depending on the situation and your goals; in fact it often does.